I've been exercising long stored locomotives now that I've got track up. Yesterday, it was my Flyer Y3. Now that I can view it at more or less eye level, I noticed an issue. It runs fine, but there's a manufacturing flaw that I never noticed before.
The rear engine on the fireman's side has the eccentric crank in the wrong position. The crank and linkage on the prototype drives the valve in the steam chest that controls steam volume to the cylinders, along with controlling forward and reverse. Prototype locomotives could have the crank in either the leading (in reference to the axle) or following position, but not both.
A quick investigation shows the crank is keyed to the driver and can't be repositioned. I discovered there are right and left driver castings as determined by a key-way and my Y3 has two right drivers on the rear engine. Arrggh... The front engine is has the eccentric in the correct position on both sides.
It's way too late to claim warranty and a replacement driver (has the gear, whereas the same driver on the front engine doesn't have the gear) is listed as "unavailable." I didn't dig any deeper, but I doubt it will be an easy fix otherwise so I'll just have to live with it. 99.9% of guys probably wouldn't notice this, but it's now something I can't unsee and can't help being moderately disappointed. The Flyer Y3 is a really nice locomotive otherwise.
Rusty
