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Oak Road - 2013 to present (a fictitious place somewhere in Somerset) - Raising Money for Meningitis Research


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Having just acquired another two sheds from Graham, the dreaded code 75 / Bachmann 66 problem seems to have reared it's ugly head again, although each of them seems to have it's own issues! I thought I'd cured this with the EWS shed but even that's still playing up a bit, so I thought I'd have another go at making them more reliable on my not so standard, and very uneven track.

 

There's a few little things on the snag list: Bogies catching on underframe, NEM pocket catching on sandite pipes / lifeguards / airdam, and middle axle rock. 

 

The catching bogies are an easy fix - file down the NEM pocket, and add a shim of 25thou to the top of the bogie tower. This cured both those problems straight away, but the centre axle issue is a real bone of contention and coupled with the small wheel flanges, it's not rocket science to see how the loco derails so easily. Due to the design of the drive train, it's not possible to un-drive the middle axle and for those of you not familiar with the drive train on these, a worm gear sat on top of the tower drives the outer most axle, which drives the middle one, and then in turn drives the inner most axle. The axles themselves have brass bearings that clip into the bogie tower, making them completely rigid, so I took a round file to the centre carrier and elongated it (as I'd done with the 37s) allowing the axle to float upwards until the drive gear stops against the other gears. I also removed the 'clip' part of the bogie tower moulding for the inner / outer axle so that the bearings could drop downwards - you can limit the amount of drop by filing (or not in the case) some material from the bogie frame moulding. It was a bit unnerving having to re-engineer a £160 loco that I'd bought from the Folkestone show before xmas, but I can get new towers if it goes wrong.

 

After testing it at lunchtime, there's still a slight issue with the rear middle axle whereby it's not dropping back down so, I'll just need to open the slot up a bit more, but it didn't fall off on any of the problem areas. It didn't stay on completely though - it fell off on some code 100 in the fiddle yard, well a point to be exact so this brings me to the last part of the fix. During a conversation with Hattons, they told me that they'd increased the weight of their 66 chassis as they said the Bachmann sheds fell off because they were 'too light' - I'm not going to disagree with this either because I think some more weight over the cab ends will help the bogies track better. All that remains now is to add some lead shot in and around the cabs after correcting the sticking middle axle, and I'll be ready for another trial run. 

 

What will be interesting is to see if the Hattons loco with it's fixed axles, suffers the same 'see-saw' issue that the Bachmann one does....I guess it won't be long before we find out  :good:  

Edited by scoobyra
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  • RMweb Gold

Congratulations to Mike on a great outcome among esteemed company in the BMRA results.

 

attachicon.gifModeller of the Year - Bronze - scoobyra.jpg

 

The full results appear here - https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/141585-british-model-railway-awards-2018-the-winners/

 

Well I certainly wasn't expecting that!! Thank you everyone that voted for me, I'm feeling really proud. :good:

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I need to admit defeat with the 66, for now at least.....I may be able to build models but my mechanical engineering knowledge failed me miserably last night. After filing out the slots for the middle axles, I created a problem whereby the gears pulled the axle upwards on the trailing bogies in a forward direction, and although the loco still runs, it looks a bit naff! All may not be lost though as Paul (RHB) and Lee Davies have given me some advice on how I can try and cure it but for now, it's back to the drawing board. 

 

Please don't follow my actions as you may end up with a Shed that doesn't work!

 

That said, if I can get my hands on a spare bogie assembly, or maybe even just the tower, I think it's possible to modify the housing and convert the bogie to two axle drive, leaving the middle axle to float unpowered.....I'm not beaten yet!

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Well I certainly wasn't expecting that!! Thank you everyone that voted for me, I'm feeling really proud. :good:

 

I hope you don't mind me choosing a pic of a mundane road junction for the certificate but I do appreciate just how good that scene is having had to do similar projects.

 

Feature2.jpg

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I am not sure what is available parts wise in OO, but I have found a reliable solution to the rocking centre axle on Bachmann Co Co bogies working in P4.

 

When rewheeling the model, I use a 14.5mm (scale sized) wheel on the outer axles, and a slightly smaller 14mm diameter wheel (black beetle) on the centre axle.  This 0.25mm change in radius is enough to fractionally lift the centre axle, eliminating the rock and significantly improving running.  

I guess the same could be obtained by fractionally turning down the OO wheel, otherwise its a simple conversion to remove a wheel, file off  the pin points and put the Bachmann gear on a replacement.)

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I am not sure what is available parts wise in OO, but I have found a reliable solution to the rocking centre axle on Bachmann Co Co bogies working in P4.

 

When rewheeling the model, I use a 14.5mm (scale sized) wheel on the outer axles, and a slightly smaller 14mm diameter wheel (black beetle) on the centre axle.  This 0.25mm change in radius is enough to fractionally lift the centre axle, eliminating the rock and significantly improving running.  

I guess the same could be obtained by fractionally turning down the OO wheel, otherwise its a simple conversion to remove a wheel, file off  the pin points and put the Bachmann gear on a replacement.)

 

Cheers Rich, that's what Lee suggested doing as he does it for his EM stuff. I wanted to try and keep the original size wheels if possible as the 66 has a lot of 'wheel' on show

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Cheers Rich, that's what Lee suggested doing as he does it for his EM stuff. I wanted to try and keep the original size wheels if possible as the 66 has a lot of 'wheel' on show

 

That does make a lot of sense, do you know anyone with access to a lathe?  It would be a pretty straightforward job to machine .25mm off the the Bachmann wheel 

 

Another thought that I have considered in the past is to drill out the inside of the gear to a loose fit, it would give some compensation to the centre axle.  

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That does make a lot of sense, do you know anyone with access to a lathe?  It would be a pretty straightforward job to machine .25mm off the the Bachmann wheel 

 

Another thought that I have considered in the past is to drill out the inside of the gear to a loose fit, it would give some compensation to the centre axle.  

 

The gear thing was another thought I had last night too, but I couldn't get the thing off of the axle!  :laugh:

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Mike,

Just been catching up on RMweb from the last 12 months (hence the deluge of 'likes') and wooooow how has Oak Road continued to grow. It is easily one of my favourite layouts, right up there with World's End and New Bryford. Your attention to detail is superb. Congratulations on the Modeller of the Year award, well deserved. 

Hopefully I will finally be able to admire Oak Road in person this year...

 

Alex

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After a great weekend helping Ian and Rhys drive trains on Tidworth at the Stafford show (we didn't crash any for a change), I spent the last two evenings making some changes to the track work in to the bay platform and stone sidings. The board joints here have always been a bit iffy and as mentioned previously in the thread, there's a rather annoying ski ramp on both sides of the join, so I've relaid part of it and made it all level. The downside was that it caused another issue further along with one of the points! That was fixed by taking a file to one of the switch blades and also lifting the outer edge of the sleepers slightly to raise track. I've also sorted out the run round headshunt so that it works, although I'm going to fit stay alive capacitors to the sheds so they don't get stuck on the overgrown section. Next up will be the ski ramps on the mainline but I'm not so sure about these!

 

One thing to note is that the springy wire on the Cobalts doesn't seem to be man enough for my modified Peco points so I'm going to try a slightly thicker gauge to see if it helps.

 

The 66 saga is still rumbling on and again, having fixed one issue, I've caused another! So here's the fix.....

 

 Remove bogie and take off bogie frame...

 

661.jpg.6c5f63f72519fe6446379bfc094f0c73.jpg

 

Remove centre wheel

 

662.jpg.f718be9406e962cc7a534c7902996213.jpg

 

There's a shoulder on the gear that needs to be removed.....

 

663.jpg.d2201ca6dc5b150ebabf70e50fecdfb8.jpg

 

...like this....

 

664.jpg.0580b73f0ece29c3fa2cbb2e33c89503.jpg

 

Take two lengths of springy wire, in this case the old Conrad point motor actuator wires....

 

665.jpg.e49d5f036010cb32cf3dc94412ab11d9.jpg

 

...and put an 80 degree bend on them at one end...

 

666.jpg.3427c8686798d736dad983564512cebf.jpg

 

Drill two holes in the bogie casing and put the wires in to them so that they lay over the axle with the cut down gear swapped with the unmodified one......

 

667.jpg.45ae27b641831d9c4940ca7da67324ee.jpg

 

..and then put the unmodified axle back in to the centre bearing carrier with the wire beneath it...

 

668.jpg.3d7af902e7419002caabba3d9198920a.jpg

 

Too much tension on the wire will cause the front wheels to lift so there's a bit of trial and error getting it right....but once done, it provides a welcome bit of compensation to an otherwise rigid design. I've since cleaned out the dirty grease and replaced it with a tiny drop of loco oil!

 

Now to the consequential issue........

 

The wheels now rock in the bogie block causing the loco to wobble (even more than most of them do already) quite badly, down the track. I'm no engineer so I'm hoping someone can explain why and what I need to do to correct it. Ray Norwood showed me a picture of a bogie whereby the wire went over all three axles, similar to the Penbits version and this will be the next thing to try.

 

I'm not beaten yet! 

Edited by scoobyra
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Oak Road is going back to Fareham Rotarail for the second time in two years! Chris Thomas has invited me back and will donate the money raised for the exhibition to the Meningitis Now Charity - this is another amazing gesture to help me raise money for Meningitis research.

 

This will also be the only time that Oak Road will appear on the South Coast until at least the later end of 2021 and possibly not until 2022. 

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This arrived this morning, with massive thanks to Tim Horn..........

 

43041.jpg.8811760313c8b706babbabf8bc613c22.jpg

 

There's also an article on the Meningitis Now website which can be found here https://www.meningitisnow.org/support-us/news-centre/news-stories/model-fundraiser/

 

Thank you everyone that's supported me so far...it's really appreciated.

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23 minutes ago, Southwich said:

Looking good Mike! Quick question if you don't mind - are your signals CR signals? If so how are you controlling them? Would appreciate any guidance!

 

thanks in advance,

 

Will

 

Yes they are buddy, and they're being controlled manually with push buttons

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1 hour ago, scoobyra said:

 

Yes they are buddy, and they're being controlled manually with push buttons

Thanks Mike! I assumed they were - I don't suppose you've got any photos of how you've wired them up? Have you used the circuit they provided or an alternative?

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