These few pages are all about my Feldbahn 0‑6‑0 from Station Road Steam
and the “little” side projects associated with it. The creation of this website was highly inspired by
reading Gentoo’s Journals from time to time. The field reports and little stories,
written by Colin, the author of Gentoo’s Journals, helped me to figure out some difficulties or even prevented mishaps
from happening in the first place. So if you haven’t been there already, I’d like to encourage you to at least take a
glimpse.
The first letters contributing to the Feldbahn Journal were typed on 10th May 2022, in expectation to steadily
build up a compendium of helpful and perhaps even entertaining articles over time.
Some say the injector is probably the most mysterious part engineers have ever come up with.
In this article I’m not going to cover the technical details and functionality of an injector, as others have already covered this subject very well. I’d rather like to share my experiences with them, specifically on the Feldbahn, so you get the chance to experience a much quicker start than I did.
The cover image shows an Injector No. 5 – two of them are fitted on the Feldbahn.
After I’d seen pictures of other Feldbahns on the internet with having derailing bars attached to them, I thought to myself it might be wise to have one too.
I figured the most vulnerable parts must be the cylinder drain cocks because they were pretty much the lowest – and additionally – one of the more “fragile” parts on the loco. So in case of a derailment, it would be very likely that they would be damaged. This also meant that the derailing bar had to come down pretty low to serve its purpose.
Some measurements were taken and after a CADing session, I had a plan that could be put into action. Conveniently, the bar could be cut out of some stock material – to be more precise: a 50x50x4 mm L-Profile, 380 mm long.
After I bit the shape out of the steel and applied a coat of red paint, the result looked like the thing had always been on there – mission accomplished.
As an engineer of a steam engine, one must be able to feed and keep up with a well-set fire – or even start one at first. Unfortunately, since the 7¼" Feldbahn 0-6-0 is my very first steam locomotive, I’m not equipped with such tools.
Even after hours and hours of extensive search through the internet I couldn’t find firing irons that satisfied my needs. I wouldn’t say there weren’t any, but either they had the wrong dimensions or they were far too expensive for the purpose for which they were intended for. So finally I found myself in a position where I had to come up with my own design.
