Technical

I have had great success getting an 2004 Mallard running sweetly again, but the whistle has been fighting me. It was falling apart every time I removed it to work on the loco.

I went to steam up a couple of nights ago and there was a wisp of smoke, faintly brown smoke, looked a bit like steam backlit by the red cabin light, and that was the end of the loco.

I took it apart and found that one of the pipes of the whistle had fallen off and created a short circuit when I carried the loco from where it had stopped back to where I fill the water and oil drop. The whistle is in a poor state with an end cap missing as well. It all seems so loose, I am disappointed, but not surprised that it has destroyed itself.

I have ordered a new circuit board from the club shop and I have also ordered a new relay from eBay to see if I can resurrect the circuit board. I will do my best. There are a couple of interesting messages regarding the relay.

I have made a small coil of wire and soldered that to the pipe to simulate the missing end cap and hope that the heat around there will not melt it, it's a leadless solder, so it should have quite a high melting point.

The more difficult challenge is fitting the loose pipe back with any hope it will stay put. I can see a recommendation in the forum messages to fix a stray end cap on with superglue, but this is the higher temperature end of the arrangement and superglue is only any good up to 80 or 90 centigrade. Does the club and its collective membership have any wisdom here? How can I get that sucker to stay put and refrain from short circuiting the loco in future?