Channel 4 model railway challenge

[ColinK]

Another very enjoyable programme.

 

When you consider all the railway programmes that have been on TV recently, the controllers clearly realise the huge interest in railways which must be good for our hobby.

[Coppercap]

Given the length of the journey and the need for regular fuel/water stops, wouldn't a tender have been a good idea?

That would only have come off the track just as much as the engine has. I expect a connection between the engine and tender would have suffered and water/fuel pipes damaged. The coach that was used early on to make up a train proper (they keep calling the engine a train...)was soon abandoned.

[Chris M]

Right from the start last year I couldn’t understand why they chose 32mm track instead of 45mm. Silver Lady would have been much more stable.

Taking a tender would have been no help as they have to stop Silver Lady to manually top her up with water through a top feed on the boiler. She is in improvement over the basic Lady Anne (and most others) for this task as at least you can fill the boiler while there is still pressure in it. Simpletons like me are happy to rely on filling the boiler with water (then drawing off a bit as per instructions) and filling the gas holder with gas. Virtually every time mine runs out of gas with just a few drops of water left in the boiler which is how it is designed to be. I fill the steam oil chamber while steam is being raised. They are amazingly easy machines to run, even for people like me with absolutely no previous knowledge. I wouldn’t want to keep one going all day though and I appreciate the effort going in to just running the loco. Running a diesel outline for a while would have been easier on the crew.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Chris M

[Titan]

They are using 45mm gauge, and as far as I am aware that was always the intention.

[TerrySVR]

It's good telly as far as I'm concerned

[Legend]

Yes I thought this week was very good. Enjoyed seeing the engine traverse some of the structures under construction for the past three weeks, like the viaduct(it really should have been the steam engine) , trestle and the incline .  The spiral  looks a bit precarious!

[73c]

Andy and Cameron made a good team looking after the loco

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

It's working for the target audience. My wife (complete arts graduate) is watching it partly because she enjoys it, and partly to talk to her colleagues (also arts graduates) about it today. (She spotted that the Hambleden Valley Line at the CMRA show was using the same kit too.) And they have found the chap in the office who has a couple of live steamers and a track in his garden, and are planning a little party when the weather improves.

 

This is the slippery slope that leads people who have quite enough to do building their OO layout getting talked into having some R/C live steam for summer afternoons in the garden.

[Tricky Dicky]

I have quite enjoyed the series and look forward to the final episode. I have found it entertaining particularly the interaction between participants even some of the p**ts though cringeworthy at times have proved good entertainment. I admit I am not hung up on the semantics of wether it is a model railway or not and accept that the track used was the only reasonable solution considering the constraints involved. I am pretty sure our Victorian predecessors would have jumped at using a similar solution if the engineering was available.

 

My only gripe if I can call it that is I would have preferred to concentrate on getting to Inverness by whatever means rather than employing pseudo Victorian solutions that did not really demonstrate or even use the engineering principles of the structures they copied. The truss bridge was best left as a box section if it needed making lighter then a bit of judicious use of a hole saw would have achieved better than cutting triangular holes in plywood thus diminishing its natural strength. The viaduct as someone has already said could simply have been made with a few concrete blocks spanned with planks, the plywood solution was never going to demonstrate why the arch was such an appropriate solution as employed in Victorian viaducts. The trestle bridge was the only structure that demonstrated the engineering principles especially when one of the builders applied his whole weight to a section. More of things like the spiral was what was needed, here was a problem and a bunch of people came up with an appropriate solution.

 

Richard

[Mike Storey]

It's working for the target audience. My wife (complete arts graduate) is watching it partly because she enjoys it, and partly to talk to her colleagues (also arts graduates) about it today. (She spotted that the Hambleden Valley Line at the CMRA show was using the same kit too.) And they have found the chap in the office who has a couple of live steamers and a track in his garden, and are planning a little party when the weather improves.

 

This is the slippery slope that leads people who have quite enough to do building their OO layout getting talked into having some R/C live steam for summer afternoons in the garden.

 

That is exactly what happened to me......

[MJI]

Model Railway themed Big Brother. Blinkered advocates of several gauges and standards with strong opinions on the ‘era’ descriptions used by Hornby, a mix of kit building fanatics and RTR devotees, locked in a room for several weeks, give them Modelling mags in plastic bags.....

 

TV Gold; tears, tantrums, passion, blood, snot, tragedy, murder.....

 

Railway Modelling on Prime Time TV,....BOOM.

 

And it would have real toilets for Tony

[MJI]

I binge watched 4 episodes yesterday.

 

Good TV.

 

Nice to see real people. Including a chap with facial hair I once saw in a Halifax cashpoint queue.

 

Funny really as the other two programmes I watched had a Mr Portillo crossing the country. And yes I was trying to identify the Deltic in the York episode.

 

Saw mention of Hard Sun, was OK, binged it on I player when I forgot to record episode 1.

[Mike Storey]

There's also a narrow gauge railway in Ireland where the passenger service is operated push-pull fashion, with the driver driving the loco by radio control from the carriage for the return journey.

Given the length of the journey and the need for regular fuel/water stops, wouldn't a tender have been a good idea?

 

You cannot do this with a gas fired loco - yes, you could have water in the tender but would also need an axle driven pump to draw it forward, but it would be pointless as the gas would run out long before the water. I do not know of any gas loco which (legally) has a flexible pipe running from a tender placed, extra gas tank to the burners in the loco under pressure. A twisting, turning flexible hose connection between a loco and tender is a rather different proposition from the fixed, stable gas hose link to your BBQ. You would also run out of steam lubricant too, essential to prevent seizure, if you kept going and going. I have managed to keep one of my gas fired locos going for over an hour by topping up with water, gas and lubricant every twenty minutes. Many have kept theirs going for much longer.

 

The only way to have done that is with a 16mm coal fired (well, charcoal really) loco, and these are readily available commercially (as Roundhouse or Accucraft adaptations or some hand built), using a tender to hold water (with axle driven pump on the loco) and "coal". They are beautiful machines and lovely to watch and smell, and very expensive (mostly). But they are also very demanding of the operator and require semi-constant attention with the fire. The tender would also be an additional set of wheels to stay on the track. It would also have sunk without trace in the lock. I very much doubt a coal fired engine would have proven any better/faster, and without smell-o-vision, we would not have appreciated the difference either!

 

WARNING: do not show coal fired locos to your wallet, as they are very addictive. Step away from the loco, unless you have loadsamoney to spare......

Edited January 29, 2018 by Mike Storey

[Titan]

The servicing technique eventually settled on seemed to be the 'little and often'  Put a few squirts of water into the boiler every five minutes or so, and you will only have to stop for a few seconds at a time. When the gas runs out you will still have a boiler full of hot water, so it will be ready to go again almost as soon as the gas is lit.

[peter220950]

You cannot do this with a gas fired loco - 4yes, you could have water in the tender........... I do not know of any gas loco which (legally) has a flexible pipe running from a tender placed, extra gas tank to the burners in the loco under pressure.....

Quote from selling details for

 

kingscalelivesteam.co.uk/brittania

 

"The fully sprung brass tender contains the re-chargeable gas tank and also carries the water supply for the engine"

 

So it's technically possible.

 

Peter

[Phil Parker]

They are using 45mm gauge, and as far as I am aware that was always the intention.

 

The piece of the track I have in my office is 32mm gauge. I beleive there was a plan originally to use an O gauge train. Presumably by the time the decision was taken to go narrow gauge, the track had already been commissioned.

[rockershovel]

Why not one of these

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bachmann-G-Scale-Baldwin-2-8-0-American-Loco-Radio-Controlled-Battery-Powered-/173112300865

 

Battery powered, radio control, 45mm Gauge..

[Phil Parker]

Why not one of these

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bachmann-G-Scale-Baldwin-2-8-0-American-Loco-Radio-Controlled-Battery-Powered-/173112300865

 

Battery powered, radio control, 45mm Gauge..

 

Off the top of my head:

• It's a converted RTR loco. For this sort of project, you'd want to do the conversion in-house so easily swappable batteries were part of the design and you aren't relying on someone on eBays wiring. You'll need more than one loco too. Silver Lady is a pretty much off-the-shelf model.
• There's LOTS of valve gear that will be damaged the first time the loco rolls.
• Spare parts are an issue. The Roundhouse guy packed spare bits when he left for Scotland.
• Lots of plastic body parts to break.
• It's American.
• It's 45mm gauge, the track is 32mm and unlike the Roundhouse loco, you can't move the wheels inboard easily.
• It's not British.
• It looks like a steam engine, but doesn't have the charisma of a real one.

 

Sorry, but Silver Lady is an excellent choice of loco for this job. Roundhouse are a British company producing an excellent, rugged and reliable product. Running a real steam engine the length of the line adds something to the whole challenge as you need drivers who can get the best from it - as was shown last night. 

[Huw Griffiths]

Also disappointed not to see Silver Lady crossing the viaduct, and a buzz box doing the honours instead - would have made better TV to have steam (and it's pretty clear that there was a reserve loco in place as it was used in the funicular) and if substitutes were being allowed then that should have been used instead.  In fact steam on the viaduct would have been one of the highlights of the show.

 

As a matter if interest, when Stuck Drawbridge was trying to justify using the battery shunter, the reason given was the fact that Silver Lady had a high centre of gravity, hence the derailments, but with all the engineering experience on tap, a solution should have been possible using some additional weight low down?  It does appear to have spent just about as much time on its side than on the "track".

 

All in all, the engineering solutions have been very good indeed, the truss bridge, trestle bridge, viaduct, and spiral have all been well thought out  and proced to work (so far), and the "operation" of the loco has been somewhat of a curate's egg.

 

A steam loco on the viaduct would have made for good viewing - but it wasn't in the programme.

 

The stuff about the steam loco's high centre of gravity is also interesting - as is the fact that it was shown rolling on its side a number of times. In fact, full sized railways sometimes had problems of this nature - as clearly demonstrated by a fatal accident involving a GWR express, at Loughor in 1904.

 

I don't know all the details of this accident - but I believe a saddle tank (with a high centre of gravity) was assisting another loco on a London bound express. For me, the "express" bit is relevant, as the train was going fast and oscillations were set up as a direct result - which led to the saddle tank rolling onto its side (plus, unfortunately, a number of deaths).

 

 

As for the decision to "sub" a battery loco for some of the journey, there could have been a number of potential reasons for this - and not all of them would have "made the final cut". Certainly, though, using a battery loco for a short while could potentially have offered extra time for servicing the steam loco(s). Whether this time would have been needed is not for me to guess.

 

The stuff about the relative speed of the battery loco is another point - if this were an issue, I'd imagine it might have been possible to change the motor and gearing for alternatives capable of higher speeds. Whether doing so could have caused other problems is another matter.

 

Ultimately, this series is what it is - and a number of people enjoy it for what it is. I would always have expected some sort of "jeopardy" - real or otherwise - as the programme makers would want to keep viewers "glued" to the TV. As far as I'm concerned having Dick Strawbridge fronting this series was a stroke of genius (whether the programme's detractors see this as flawed genius is a matter for them alone).

 

I just hope Channel 4 - and Love Productions - are working on a sequel.

 

 

Huw.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Huw Griffiths

[Chris M]

If they had used 45mm track there are plenty of us with BPRC locos that could have been used. The Silver Lady Does have a higher top speed than most battery powered electric locos. There is only one item I know of that can leave a Roundhouse steamer in the dust.

 

 

Maybe another project could be to run an intensive model railway service over say a 10 mile track using battery powered rc locos on 45mm track.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Chris M

[Reorte]

An advantage of steam for this is that it's easy enough to carry the water and gas along the route. Spare batteries and / or charging would've been more hassle - a rare case where the logistics of a steam loco are rather more practical than an electric.

[Mike Storey]

Quote from selling details for

 

kingscalelivesteam.co.uk/brittania

 

"The fully sprung brass tender contains the re-chargeable gas tank and also carries the water supply for the engine"

 

So it's technically possible.

 

Peter

 

Very interesting - thanks. This is a new development, in my experience anyway. Previous live steam Gauge 3 and Gauge 1 locos I have seen (or operated in one or two cases) have been meths fired, with one or two coal fired (which I see this firm have opted for on their latest Britannia edition). But they appear to have cracked the supply of gas from a tender - I wonder what pressure they have used. But it would also need an improvement to lubrication supply, if long duration running is the aim. At 6,000 sovs, I won't be trying it anytime soon!

Edited January 29, 2018 by Mike Storey

[Pacific231G]

 I do not know of any gas loco which (legally) has a flexible pipe running from a tender placed, extra gas tank to the burners in the loco under pressure. A twisting, turning flexible hose connection between a loco and tender is a rather different proposition from the fixed, stable gas hose link to your BBQ. You would also run out of steam lubricant too, essential to prevent seizure, if you kept going and going. I have managed to keep one of my gas fired locos going for over an hour by topping up with water, gas and lubricant every twenty minutes. Many have kept theirs going for much longer.

 

I know of one and it's certainly not new.

Because there was nowhere on the loco to put it, Hornby's live steam Rocket has its gas tank in the tender connected to the burner by a flexible tube. Admittedly it is within the legal requirements for toy live steam not requiring a boiler certificate (which I believe is a boiler pressure of no more than one bar)  The Rocket's original gas tank was a nightmare as it used the same cigarette lighter nozzle for filling as for delivery and the O ring had a nasty habit of being frozen by any escaping gas so ensuring that all the gas would escape.

 

I've often thought that if certain American rocket engineers had ever owned one of these things the crew of the space shuttle Challenger might have been spared. (It was the great and always inquisitive physicist Richard Feynman who discovered that the true cause of the disaster was a frozen O ring. His comments are worthwhile reading for anyone engaged with safety critical systems https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt.    

Edited January 29, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Mike Storey]

I know of one and it's certainly not new.

Because there was nowhere on the loco to put it, Hornby's live steam Rocket has its gas tank in the tender connected to the burner by a flexible tube. Admittedly it is within the legal requirements for toy live steam not requiring a boiler certificate (which I believe is a boiler pressure of no more than one bar)  The Rocket's original gas tank was a nightmare as it used the same cigarette lighter nozzle for filling as for delivery and the O ring had a nasty habit of being frozen by any escaping gas so ensuring that all the gas would escape.

 

I've often thought that if certain American rocket engineers had ever owned one of these things the crew of the space shuttle Challenger might have been spared. (It was the great and always inquisitive physicist Richard Feynman who discovered that the true cause of the disaster was a frozen O ring).    

 

I had forgotten that. It originally had a plastic gas tank and the connection to the ghastly burner from tender to loco was a push-fit, if I recall correctly? That may have been legal in the 1970's, but I am not so sure now!

[Guest]

Maybe they briefly subbed the steamer for a battery loco to make sure they were catering for the tastes of all viewers. Not all of us get all misty-eyed over steam engines. Just sayin'...