@mlavender480 posted:I’m admittedly no steam expert, but in the videos I’ve seen, there seems to be a lot of steam leakage at the rod and valve packings. The exhaust also doesn’t sound quite right to me but then I’m not sure what a compound is “supposed” to sound like, either. It sounds like one loud exhaust followed by three weaker ones, if that makes sense?
I have Link's recordings of N&W Y classes working in both simple and compound. In simple they sound much like any simple articulated locomotive, with 4 exhaust beats per engine, or 8 total exhausts for the locomotive. Since there is no mechanical connection between the two engines, the exhaust beats can vary randomly as the two engines go in and out of sync.
In compound mode, only the low pressure cylinders exhaust through the stack so the engine sounds like a regular 2 cylinder engine, with 4 total exhaust beats.
It sounds to me that the 1309 is not properly timed as the four exhausts when running in compound should be equally loud and equidistant in time from each other. That was commonly referred to as the engine being "in square".
Valve timing is an art and they may still be learning how to set up this particular machine.
