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Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1


Nearholmer
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I dont know if you get to see the Gauge 0 Gazette or not. One of the featured layouts built by Harold Jones who makes sure all his stock can traverse a 3ft curve. Including 4-6-0 and 4-6-2s. Give one hope.

 

Don

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I shall have to borrow this and read closely, because I keep banging-on about the fact that "finescale 0" can be made to run around tight curves with few compromises. People do seem to get very caught-up on the "fine" part of the designation, and think that the flanges aren't big enough for tight curves, when G0G fine is still very coarse when compared with the real thing.

 

Whether it "gives one hope" I guess depends what one is hoping for. If the hope is a layout with fine scale track in a tight space: very much. If the hope is the ability to build a layout that looks as if it might have been built before 1950, and inter-run ancient and modern r-t-r, which is my hope: interesting, but not directly relevant.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

People do seem to get very caught-up on the "fine" part of the designation, and think that the flanges aren't big enough for tight curves, when G0G fine is still very coarse when compared with the real thing.

I cannot speak for locomotives, but fine scale rolling stock will go around very tight turns. The limiting factor is usually the buffers and couplings.

ETS design all their locomotives to run on their 627mm radius curves, and the range includes an 0-8-0 as well as a 4-6-0, but ETS 2-rail wheels are coarser than G0G fine scale, having 1.5mm flanges. My 2-rail Terrier has 1.5mm flanges on all six wheels and has no difficulty with the tight curves.

The continentals seem to have a much greater tolerance for tight curves, Lenz use a minimum radius of 914mm with 1.05mm flanges. Lenz track is manufactured for them by Peco and is the same as Peco Streamline flat bottomed track, so no compromises there.


It seems a lot of people think that the G0G recommendation of 6' curves is some sort of practical limit, whilst in reality it little more than an ideal. It would be more helpful if the G0G and manufacturers adopted the recommendations in NEM111 which are much more nuanced.

 

On the other point, modern r-t-r now includes offerings from the likes of Dapol, and the up coming 4-wheel coaches are very attractive.

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I agree, 3-links and buffers are likely to be far more of an issue than autocouplers, so we are somewhat constrained by our choices of prototype, and indeed by how closely we wish to represent them.

 

As far as wheels are concerned, the de-facto finescale standard for locos is the Slaters wheel, and the limiting radius is then defined by the wheelbase and the gauge of the track.  It's more effort than I'm inclined to expend to find the limits but here's an engine from my Garratt shown from below on a theoretical 450mm (18") radius to the outside rail

 

image.png.e4041e88945e20aec1d5e3cb7b3689ca.png

 

It's not easy to see but the flanges are not touching the inside rail, so in principle, it might be able to go a bit tighter, though the boiler and bridge frame would not permit the model to do so.

 

You can get an idea of how far the buffers would be from those of another vehicle on a straight tangent track -I guess that highlights the importance of transition curves, again, not something associated with set track of any description, let alone deliberatly old-fashioned track.

 

atb

Simon

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Simon in the article he states he originally used three link and screw couplings  and had little trouble with propelling stock. One thing I do believe is that stock needs to be suitably weighted. Propelling a train of lightweight plastic stock Iwould not be surprised at problems.

 

Don

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A little way back up-thread, we were talking about the relative popularity of various scales/gauges before WW1, so having finished my stint of "working from home" early today, I have done a short piece of deeply non-scientific analysis, by counting reasonable sized articles (not 'snippets' or trade announcements) in MR&L for the first half of 1912.

 

Gauge 0 - 11

Gauge 1 - 5

Gauge 2 - 4

Gauge 3 to 15" - 13 (this is nearly all what we would now call "model engineering" content, plus write-ups of MRGB projects)

Relevant to multiple gauges - 20

Prototype - 8

 

A lot of the "relevant to multiple gauges" material is about electricity, effectively teaching "new technology" to the readers in the way that DCC and wireless were publicised through magazines a few years ago.

 

The editor (Mr Greenly, of course) was clearly having to work hard to get "readers layouts" articles,  especially ones with photos, and was sometimes filling-in with model engineering stuff drawn from what he was up to at the time. A lot of the 0 material is about clockwork loco design.

 

I've got 1909 and 1910 with adverts intact, so will sample-check one of those too when I get time.

 

 

 

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Luck and persistence.

 

Very occasionally single copies come up on ebay, but they are blooming expensive. Very occasionally they come up at auction. Very occasionally a collector thins his stash and passes his set to a known fellow collector.

 

In my case, serious luck on the unbound ones, in that I spotted them in a box under a house-clearance stall in a Saturday street market as I was walking to the barbers. The folly was that I bought just two years worth, when I think there were possibly five years, although not complete, and an hour later when I went back the guy had packed-up and gone, and nobody knew him from Adam. I went back the next week, but the guy never reappeared. 

 

On the bound ones, persistence, because I will trawl any secondhand bookshop looking for interesting stuff, and happened to come across them one day. 

 

 

 

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This thread is drifting a bit.  Any toy train topic invariably turns to wheels (Wheels, turn,:lol_mini:!) Ah well!

We are talking toy trains here, nothing interesting to the scale set.  The more generous the wheels, the less likely the train to fall off the track which most earlier manufacturers figured out early on.  It was a definite plus as speeds tended to be high once Junior had his hand on the throttle. Latterly, more scale inclined modellers  inspired by the more realistic models produced, decided that the wheels needed a better profile which undoubtedly looked better in their eyes, but led to less realistic running, especially on smaller curves but which led to a tendency to derail more easily.  Which is a pity as that's where toy trains came from, a train set with small curves!

      Brian.

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31 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Well I’m afraid my coarse scale live steam adventure has come to an end for personal reasons. Very disappointing. I have been told by higher powers that the engine is to be condemned to its box for the rest of its existence.

 

Oh, go on... you can’t leave it at that! 

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It’s a long time since The Widow Goggins took a trip to the country, mostly because the carriage doors won’t open, but these ones do, so here’s a pigeon’s eye view.
 

75C022DF-401B-4EE1-9500-0E568BE6046F.jpeg.0ac38fd08e2b332ba66fd15dbc650d46.jpeg
 

Empty churns going back too.

 

88E90C3B-0E57-4026-808B-3F05D14A44B1.jpeg.54933632b147c7a371945fd15e5103ae.jpeg

 

Mr Carne ought to approve, given that these are Bing coaches.

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2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

t’s a long time since The Widow Goggins took a trip to the country, mostly because the carriage doors won’t open, but these ones do, so here’s a pigeon’s eye view.

Lovely coaches.

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Tim,

 

I suspect that is a subtly different explosion...  Not that it would have mattered how it happened to any poor passenger who had happened to be on board.  Talk about lucky!

 

This appears to have been ignition of vapours, in the equipment housing, from a relatively slow degradation of a capacitor.  The small ones go bang due to a sudden and extreme build up of pressure within the capacitor itself.  You’ll note that many, if not all, metal cased caps have pre-formed weak lines in the base which will (hopefully) mitigate any such pressure build up.

 

cheers

Simon

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Yes, “The failed capacitor generated hydrocarbon gases which mixed with air in the equipment case, and the mixture then ignited.”

 

My reading of that is that it was an oil-filled capacitor, which isn’t unusual in a high-voltage application.

 

I am no expert on on-train equipment-housing design, but in substation design cabinets often have explosion vents built into them - panels that are designed to ‘blow’ so that explosion products/forces are ducted in the least destructive/dangerous direction to cater for these sorts of very rare events. Some oil-filled gear has two-stage gassing detection as well as the vent, the idea being to first warn, and then automatically de-energise before an explosion can occur.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, Simond said:

To have one exploding capacitor may be regarded as a misfortune, but two looks like carelessness

 

(As O Wilde didn’t say)

Not as uncommon as it should be I'm afraid. There have been at least two examples in recent-ish years in Australia and I experienced it myself in a previous life in South East Asia. There we suffered three things I really don't like on trains - bits falling off, bits catching fire and bits exploding - on the same fleet, fortunately before it had entered passenger service.

 

That fleet wasn't old-fashioned and it wasn't 0 gauge, so let's leave it at that.

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Many many years ago, I spent every Tuesday for a year or so travelling from Merseyside to Golders Green depot to inspect a prototype vehicle that ran in an in-service train, just to make sure such undesirable events didn’t happen!  


(Actually, fire wasn’t an issue that I needed to consider)

 

atb

Simon

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23 hours ago, Simond said:

You don’t see that very often in S7!

 

Which might mean that tinplate has something to teach S7, by which I mean that selective placement of vehicles with doors open, and possibly things about to be loaded or unloaded would add something to the scene. I'm sure it could be done without descending into a frozen action cameos, and would allow the detailologists to get deeply into the interiors of coach and wagon doors and the average size of parcels on the LNWR in 1907.

 

In fact, didn't I see someone on RMWeb creating a parcel van scene like this?

 

This should inspire 

 

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