Rocket Fuel

I run butane fired steam locos, albeit of the garden railway variety as produced by Roundhouse, and I tend to use the large bottles of Gas that can be bought from B&Q etc. An adapter can be bought from (I think) either Brandbright or failing that Garden Railway Supplies, or maybe even Roundhouse themselves. (I don't personally know OTTOMY, as my adaptor was supplied with my first loco when I bought it 2nd hand)

Hope this if of some help,

John

G'day All, Hornby's Rocket used a burner that was made by Ronson. For those that do not know Ronson made, among other things, Cigarette Lighters. After we discovered a fault with the original Rocket Burners, Ronson changed the design and Hornby placed these in all future models. They also replaced the burners in all of their Store stock.

Careful here. Butane in lighters is actually liquid, the pressure is going to what is needed to keep it liquid at whatever the ambient temperature is. Boiling point of butane at 1 atmosphere is 4 degrees C.

The bigger containers for gas lights, portable stoves whatever are often propane, boiling point -42 degrees C, thus a far higher pressure is needed to keep it liquid at ambient temperatures..

Perhaps your Rocket should have a boiler test? :-).

In article , Alan P Dawes writes

Two, actually. 'normal' and 'iso-' butane

The 'C' hanging down at the bottom should be an 'H'! Iso-butane also called 2-methyl-propane, ie. propane, as the top diagram but with only three 'C's, with a methyl group attached to the 2nd 'C'. Terry's 'C' would have to have a valency of 1, whereas carbon actually has a valency of 4.

What was this thread about? Rocket fuel????

Tony

^ H not C

Being pedantic: You have obviously not heard of the change to a world wide systematic naming for organic compounds that was introduced nearly 40 years ago. Industry should now be using systematic names instead of the 'common names' and labelling should reflect this.

Butane is the systematic name for what was once called n-butane

Alan

Hehe,

Thanks one and all for your comments, it is funny how an innocent request for info about obtaining larger quantities of butane for my Hornby Rocket turns into a chemistry lesson!

Wouldn't that dangly -C make iso butane unstable?

If you get them from your friendly camping or boating supplier, they are just "propane" or "butane". We use either for our boat's cooker, oven and fridge. As long as the correct pressure reducer is used, it doen't matter which is used, the only thing being that they have different freezing and boiling points. They both will work cookers, fridges, blow torches et al. It just doesn't matter! The only real problem is in the connectors, but we have both anyway! One is in a red/orange bottle, the other a blue. They both burn well!

Dave.

replying to Graeme Hearn, RocketMan wrote: Graeme, I?m having burner problems with a newly acquired Rocket and have just seen your note. Have also just bought a replacement from Tony Green but the design is quite different (it uses a C clamp to attach to the firebox rather than a double O washer/clamp on the original. The ?new? burner also extends a full inch further into the boiler. I am trying to work out which burner is the second iteration by Ronson? Rgds Keith Skinner