Ruby

I haven't mentioned much about the trains - I think I wrote about all I could on the Lynx Mountain and Blackberry page ( which I haven't updated in some time - there are still baby pictures of No 1 son and no mention of No 2). But here's the latest addition to the roster - a cantakerous little dragon called Ruby. Ruby came from an Accucraft kit. Yes, I had to put it together. It wasn't difficult - I've made more complicated models with Meccano - but the neat thing is she's live steam. The two knobs on the rear control gas flow to the burner and steam to the throttle. The lever is forwards/neutral/backwards. I've had her running (sort of) three times now. Current problem is the timing. Steam engines have a complicated system of valves and eccentrics that all have to be in the right position at the right time. On the first run, Ruby ran better in reverse than forward. I though this was me setting the timing off a bit, but apparently that's how it comes from the factory. Huh. So off to the Internet for some wisdom .
Yow. This is a little more complicated than I thought. Which kind of ticked me off at first - I mean, who wants a toy that you have to adjust until it works? Oh yeah - me. I'm the guy who built his own telescope instead of buying one from London Drugs and spent a week aligning the optics. Then there is the hand laid track in the railway which takes me a day to make 6 feet. And the laser show, and the sound system... OK - a lot of things don't quite work as well as something from the store, but it's the journey, not the destination. Unless the destination is like ,Disneyland, then it's all about the destination.