Leeds Central Model - Lincoln (Newark) show 25/26 Feb

[45609]

The door is always open......

http://www.scalefour.org/

Would you like to buy a copy of Watchtow.. ....sorry.... I mean Scalefour News?

[Atlantic 3279]

But can I keep all of my own earnings after tax, and can I opt in for blood transfusions if and when necessary? Oh, hang on, we're talking about P4 aren't we, not the door to door religion squad.

P4 modellers are mostly okay, when they are not evangelical and are willing to admit that "scale it down regardless" doesn't work with everything. In fact our local P4 group tolerates me at meetings......but I don't inhale .

[ten ten]

We had the Watch.... visitation as far as the shut garden gate. Can we come in and discuss faith? Woof woof big dog ,hates visitors hurtles round corner of house to gate, snarls. Does it bite? Dad said you can always put faith healing to the test.Er no,we will come back another day, Never did.

[45609]

"scale it down regardless" doesn't work with everything......

Hear hear. The best working P4 models I have seen have always been just that. Models and not absolute miniature replicas of the real thing.

[Blink Bonny]

Ay up!

Just been reading the thing about L1s.

Mine has always been fine. In fact, it was used, brand new, to test the track on Old Mills for electrical OK-ness and ran for an hour nearly both ways with no derailments.

I have also run it on Mole End which does have some less than perfect joints with no problems.

Mine was the BRM review sample so it makes me wonder if this one was specially fettled before being submitted for review?

[Atlantic 3279]

Now that John has pointed out the limitations of my brain the other evening, by reminding me that I CAN run DCC fitted locos on a normal power supply (after a fashion anyway), I have tested the re-ponied L1 through all of my pointwork at slow and at breakneck speeds and the pony truck behaves itself a treat.

The loco has that silly stuttering movement in reverse, characteristic (I now remember) of certain DCC chips fed with wholemeal electricity.

[Manxman1831]

Doing well with the L1, Graeme. We had a Hall for Ruddington, came DCC fitted and could we heck get it to move using DC. Fitted it with a blanking plate in the end and never looked back.

[Coboman]

I have 4 Fowler and Stannier 2-6-4 tanks which use the same pony truck. All bought new, two worked fine out the box, two were a right PITA from the word go. To look at them underneath there was nothing to tell the difference. I've modded the two naughty ones and one of the good ones to single pivot and left the other to see if it stays good. One thing to note is the single pivot ones look more realistic negotiating bends than the original setup. I just wish Hornby would abandon this daft system. I see the forthcoming new GWR 2-8-2T has them at each end......

[Saint Johnstoun]

I run three Fowler 2-6-4 tanks and one Stanier one regularily and have 3 LMS liveried Fowler ones in reserve. I have found that the front pony trucks misbehave occasionally but the key problem I found was the back to back on the wheels which was slightly out on at least two and needed micro adjustment.

If this is not right the wheels tend to 'ride' checkrails and frogs! L1s are worth checking for this two although it is one prototype I do not have in my collection.

[manna]

G'Day Gents

I must apologize to Graeme, for my earlier statement that I've never had any problems with my L1, I always run my engines into Edgware, smokebox first,which is the way they always left KX, they then ran round, returning to KX bunker first, today on a test run, to check out the way valve gear works, I put it on the other way round, and at the entrance to the fiddle yard, it de-railed, tried again, and again it de-railed, but this time I was watching very carefully, as it came round the corner, and hit the straight, the pony wheels was probably at a 35 degree angle to the rails, and then drove up the point of the point blade, I'm not to worried as it's taken me 2 years to find this out

But for as loco designed for train-set curves, it makes you wonder !!

manna

Unworried of Booborowie

[Atlantic 3279]

Glad to hear it's a "no worries" situation - would hate to think that you might have cancel the barbie at the weekend. Do things ever get that serious in Aus?

[manna]

G'Day Gents

Things only get serious when there's a fire at the brewery and you have to move the barbie to the brewery

manna

[Atlantic 3279]

Warning: This forum entry includes an example of "Kingy" moaning about DCC again...

One of the problems with electricity that's trying to be far too clever for its own good, is that you have to have perfect continuity between the supply and the loco (or other device), unless you have some sort of charge-storing device on board to keep the chip alive during momentary power interruptions - otherwise you can have rather tedious interruption and "re-setting to start up sequence" on certain functions such as sound. It's much easier with simple DC, you just prod the loco or give the baseboard a discrete (or otherwise) knock, and you're back in business. Anyway, the Leeds Central Stationmaster was fed up of one or two Bachmann pacifics displaying less than perfectly continuous pick-up of the juice, and asked me what I thought about adding tender pick-ups. We did consider transplanting the Bachmann tender bodies onto pre-wired Hornby underframes, but they are not a direct fit and the cost of the basic frame, the bottom plate, and possibly a suitable set of new wheels soon mounts up if you decide to do several locos. I was then daft enough to suggest that I thought I could "easily" add pick-ups to the Bachmann underfame, so I was given the job. It WASN'T as easy as I had imagined. My tentative Plan A was to glue long strips of PCB to the sides of the well-tank and attach the pick ups to those, also adding a small tubular socket to the front of each strip to accept a simple push-in pin connected to the loco wiring. There appeared to be room for the PCB behind the wheels, but that's not much help when (as I discovered) you cannot then get the wheelsets in or out as this demands that ALL of the original extravagant amounts of sideplay are still available! I also found that even with the strip pre-tinned to guarantee easy/quick soldering, it was virtually impossible to get an iron in to attach pick-ups without damaging the plastic side-frame mouldings in the process. I therefore had to come up with a Plan B. The well tank and scoop are clipped and glued to the floor of the main moulding, and I could have taken those off to get more space. There's certainly no room to slide strips of PCB between the well-tank floor and the thick axles unless you alter things, but I didn't really want to start making alterations to the tender mouldings, especially if it turned out that I still couldn't fit the pick-ups as I wanted. You can see below how I fitted the PCB in short pieces in the end, with bridging wires, plus the somewhat strage shapes of the pick-ups. These run on the inside of the wheel bosses rather than on the wheel rims, in order (I hope) to minimise their effect as brakes. The shape has to be carefully arranged so that they don't twang or even chatter on the spokes as the wheels turn, and don't touch the axles. The job took ages in the end, and I frankly wouldn't want to do another, but I've posted the result here in case others want to do something similar or can perhaps suggest a better way to do the job.

My belief now is that it would actually be easier and quicker to change the mounting of the loco's Cartazzi wheels as I have done of my own converted A2/2 or A2/3 chassis, so that the wheels are sprung and they steer properly, incorporating split-axle pick up as part of the job. It would also be easy enough to short out two of the loco's bogie wheels to get some added pick-up.

[Coboman]

I've fitted pickups to quite a few Bachy tender engines and can't say I found it that hard. I've never bothered with more than one axle either as I've found that more than adequate to help a stuttering drive wheel pickup only loco. New locos have wireing in the tender already which makes the job easier still. I also use very very fine brass sheet to cut strips from, from Aunty Elieen's Emporium. It is so fine and delicate that it applies hardly an resistance to the rotation of the wheel and is silent. I've never got on with phosphor bronze strips. I always use superglue to stick it down too as it can be removed and leave hardly any sign it was ever there.
Jim

[AJ427]

My office window looks out onto the single remaining wagon hoist that's about all that's left now.

You ought to put a link to your project on here AJ, to suit those of us who do not, for various reasons, methodically trawl RMWeb on a regular basis. Your project has to be relevant by virtue of the shared GN West Riding lines geography.

Better late than never. I really ought to get on here more often. This is looking really good Graeme. Any news on future exhibitions?