Deliberately Old-Fashioned 0 Scale - Chapter 1

[Nearholmer]

There was a continual battle of brain-cells to find ways of making clockwork both long-running enough and controllable to create Really Useful Engines.

 

Most of the attempts involved some form of centrifugally acting brake as a governor, or simply and adjustable brake, but this one was really good: The Walker-Fenn, which uses a gramophone governor. Mr Walker was the ‘W’ in W&H, and Mr Fenn seems to have been the craftsman who perfected and built them.

 

 

 

After WW2, John Van Riemsdijk got involved, and this loco was sold as a Walker-Riemsdijk. It has a simpler and much light speed control, a brake, but acting very cleverly where it wastes the least possible energy. I think the mechanism is all Riemsdijk’s ideas, with W selling them.

 

 

Last version, pure van Riemsdijk from the early 1950s, similar mechanism to the above. All very fine and light.

 

All far too late to beat electricity, but I find them fascinating.

[Donw]

I dont know if any of you watch the 'Repair Shop '  on tv. One of the skilled repaires if a clock expert but also loves working on clockwork toys including some model locos. He will  wind a new spring if needed. 

apologies fo the dive into italics I am doing this sat at the outsdie table and seeing the screen is not easy in the sunshine.

Don

[F-UnitMad]

9 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

All far too late to beat electricity, but I find them fascinating.

They'll come in handy if you ever have a power cut.

[Nearholmer]

I've often thought about combining my indoor and outdoor hobbies, by rigging a dynamo and some lead-acid cells (a car battery would do) to a bike "up on blocks", but have never been able to find a dynamo of about the right size at a reasonable price. I've got a tiny little had-cranked dynamo, and have tried running a model loco from it, but its stunningly inefficient so won't shift even a modern motor.

[Simond]

Maybe the alternator from a motorbike?  Definitely an alternator.

[Nearholmer]

Not a bad idea; I should have thought "automotive". A car alternator, rectifier and voltage regulator would definitely work, or a starter motor, and they're the sort of thing that can be got cheaply from scrap-yards.

 

I have seen someone demonstrate the efficiency of their model loco drives by pushing a loco along the track and the voltage generated being used to drive another loco on the same track. Tedious way to operate a model railway though.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Nearholmer

[runs as required]

Something like this ?

 

Bravo Vous Avez Dépensé 2000 Calories - YouTube
https://images.app.goo.gl/D18HdAb9czAtzyZ97

Happy to help Deliberately Old Fashioned Bicyclists

[Simond]

Not a starter motor, it won’t work as a generator as it would need a current to energise the field coils.

 

definitely an alternator!  Most of them, nay, all of them nowadays, have built-in rectification & regulation, but you will need a battery of some sort, even a little motorbike battery, otherwise the reg will burn out.

 

Before I went dcc (so about 22 years ago) my first two locos were fitted with portescap motors.  You could indeed make one go by pushing the other.  They are super-high-efficiency, both in motor and gearbox terms, at least by comparison with what was available in those days, but the damn things are horribly whiny, and they will both have their motors replaced in the near future.  Probably not your bag, but if you do need a decent motor gearbox, Premier have a nice two-stage, and a perfectly normal 30:1 single stage, using Canon motors.  They’re my go-to nowadays.

 

atb

Simon

 

 

[Nearholmer]

RaR

 

Precisement.

 

You can buy them from a firm in East London, but they aren't cheap. I looked into it as away of helping children understand electricity generation, but ended-up with the hand-cranked dynamo because it was cheaper, and actually better, because the coils and magnets are visible, which makes it easier to explain.

 

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

9 minutes ago, Simond said:

Not a starter motor, it won’t work as a generator as it would need a current to energise the field coils.

 

Aren't they just series motors?

 

According to Wikipedia some are even permanent magnet:

 

"The modern starter motor is either a permanent-magnet or a series-parallel wound direct current electric motor"

 

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Simond]

Well, I can’t argue, but all the ones I’ve seen are wound field.  And to be fair, I haven’t played with them for years so things may have changed, (look at the advances in brushless motors, everything has them now) but I’d expect, bang for buck, an alternator from the scrapyard to be the way forward.

 

atb

Simon

[ian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I have seen someone demonstrate the efficiency of their model loco drives by pushing a loco along the track and the voltage generated being used to drive another loco on the same track. Tedious way to operate a model railway though.

 

Hmm, gives a new meaning to 'digital control'.

[Northroader]

Here’s a link which you might already have?

http://www.wiltshireatwar.org.uk/story/how-military-camps-saved-some-wiltshire-villages-from-extinction/

[bruce palmer]

Re Kevin's Southern Brake van ....the source is a Leeds Repro we make . You don't see many of them as the original Leeds lithos were lost in the factory fire in 1930 and never reprinted so flat unused sheets to copy arnt available .

 

By chance we found unused bits from 3 different sources so could copy a complete set ...an original was borrowed as a master to make the assembled bodies and all the rest is standard Leeds fittings other than the special roof with an offset chimney .

 

Anyone fancies building one ..and the body comes ready assembled , get in touch   bpalmer498@btinternet.com

 

 

 

Bruce

[bruce palmer]

Getting up to date on this thread ..and this time Milk by Rail ...well I spent my career in what you would call *logistics planning * with the Milk Marketing Board ....I was the person who sold the last milk trains for scrap ! So its an interest of mine ..I'm just laying sidings on my layout to accommodate the Dairy from the *Sherwood Section * I was given .

 

 

Buckingham Dairy was Nestles I think ..and was still marked on our maps although manufacture must have  ceased a long time ago . it was used as a bulking up depot for the remaining churn supplies , that finished in 1979..that was one of my projects too !

 

 

The condensed milk side of Nestles moved to Ashbourne in an equally old factory ...it borehole is where *Ashbourne Water * comes from .  Bruce

[Nearholmer]

Hello Bruce, honoured to have you visit. Kevin

[bruce palmer]

Not sure how to take that ! But the thread has thrown up even more interesting topics .

 

latest lockdown project on Tuesday was sandblasting rusty tinplate track out of the junk box . Even then is a dirty tedious job .However once cleaned up and varnished the result can be quite encouraging. As well as grotty pre war Hornby there were Munro pieces ..Australia 1950s  ..which are flat sleepered copies . How these appeared in a junk box at a 16mm group meet I cant think ....the rest of the stuff was Marklin etc so I suspect they came over to the UK 60 years ago at least .

 

Anyway they are going to form the Dairy siding .  Bruce

[Nearholmer]

Ah, you have a dairy with a siding to build, while I have a siding with a dairy to build.

 

Any resemblance between Birlstone Model Dairies current structure and a couple of plywood boxes and children’s toy bricks is entirely coincidental!

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Back to Buckingham milk factory for a moment: it started as the premises of the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company, and seems to have gone through various hands to end-up with United Dairies before being turned into what it is now (like everything else in the town!) part of the university.

 

I think that deadly rivals Anglo-Swiss and Nestle amalgamated in 1905, so it was probably Nestles for a period, although by 1915 a directory shows it as belonging to Messrs Thew, Hooker & Gilbey*, with Nestle & Anglo-Swiss only at the much larger former Anglo-Swiss factory in Aylesbury.

 

*Makers of Bivouac tinned cocoa and milk, as supplied in tuck boxes and WW1 ration packs, which seems to have been some sort of "just add hot water" stuff in gloopy form, probably condensed milk with chocolate powder mixed-in. Nestle-AS made some similar gloop called "Cafe au Lait". I hadn't realised that "instant" hot drinks went back that far.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Metropolitan H]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Ah, you have a dairy with a siding to build, while I have a siding with a dairy to build.

 

Any resemblance between Birlstone Model Dairies current structure and a couple of plywood boxes and children’s toy bricks is entirely coincidental!

 

 

 

Wasn't that corner originally to be the "Hug-tite" glue factory - or will the building become dual purpose - depending on era?

 

Still a rail connected dairy seems a good idea.

 

Regards

Chris H

[Nearholmer]

One layout, two private sidings, one at each terminus, four premises to represent: The Metropolitan Pyramid Company's works; The Hugtight (The World's Stickiest Glue) factory; Birlstone Model Dairies creamery in the country; and, Birlstone Model Dairies bottling plant in town.

 

Some doubling-up, hopefully without cross-contamination, is inevitable!

 

 

[Keith Addenbrooke]

Although the conversation has moved from this, a couple of pages back:

 

On 16/06/2020 at 18:05, Nearholmer said:

There's an awful lot of talk among some RMWeb members at the moment about "closed system" model railways, scenic fiddle-yard-junction and similar stuff, which has put back into my mind a possibility that I thought about a while ago: an alteration to my layout that might make it "feel better" from a conceptual viewpoint.

 

The track alteration would be from this:

 

To this:

 

 

 

I need to treble-check, but I think it could be made to fit.

 

Why bother, especially since it doesn’t actually alter the running significantly? Well, it would, mentally at least, turn Birlstone into one of those termini that has two lines into it, one from Elsewhere and the other a branch that serves some sort of hinterland. My layout would then be the branch serving the hinterland. There is a passing loop in the fiddle-zone, which is the passing station on the branch, and the hatched section of track would be deemed not to exist (although it would actually be used for circulation thereby prolonging the run to the passing place. Paltry Circus probably wouldn't be in London any longer, but its already temporarily moved to Northampton and seems happy to wander about the map.

 

Assuming it could actually be made to fit, what do people think?

 

K

 

PS: One day, if I bashed a hole through the wall, Elsewhere could be out in the garden, but I'm not sure I'd get away with that.

 

the thought remained in my head for some reason - probably this reason:

 

On 20/06/2020 at 12:50, Nearholmer said:

The trouble with lock-down, even in its now partial form, is that it increases opportunities to dream-up layouts,

 

I'm not familiar with O-Scale Coarse trackwork, but I was thinking about it again today and it is possible to achieve a terminus to terminus closed system with a continuous run in some scales with just a one point junction - as long as that point is a Single Slip.  

 

If I look at Atlas 3-Rail O-Scale track on Anyrail, the simplest equivalent (using 8" of flextrack and a 60 degree crossing with a right and a left hand point), looks like this:

 

(Sorry, photo no longer available)

 

I don't know if that's a track system you can (or would) use, but it doesn't look like it takes up too much space.  Just a thought.

Edited September 30, 2022 by Keith Addenbrooke
Edited for text only as photo no longer available

[Nearholmer]

As you say, perfectly do-able, if you want both termini on the outside of the circuit.

 

When I was trying to decide which track system to use, I ended-up plumping for Maldon, because I couldn’t get my brain past the US look of Atlas, and I’m fairly certain it could be done using Maldon. 

[Keith Addenbrooke]

On 27/06/2020 at 17:41, Nearholmer said:

As you say, perfectly do-able, if you want both termini on the outside of the circuit.

 

When I was trying to decide which track system to use, I ended-up plumping for Maldon, because I couldn’t get my brain past the US look of Atlas, and I’m fairly certain it could be done using Maldon. 

 

For an outside to inside, the simplest way is with back to back curved points - avoids S curves if you want to.  I'm not familiar with Maldon track, but I think they have a curved point kit?

 

In other words, from a layout design point of view - if you want this kind of operation, it's almost a "why not?"

Edited October 7, 2022 by Keith Addenbrooke
Edited for text only as photo no longer available

[Nearholmer]

Milk tanks again .......

 

All of the far too many that I’ve got are in pre-WW2 liveries, so when the modern-tinplate purveyors announced a post-WW2 steam era one I danced a little jig.

 

It arrived today and is seen being attached to the branch train while passengers wait patiently (as only cast metal passengers welded to surfboards can).

 

Most tanks were plain silver during the 1950s and early 1960s, but a few tanks painted in the late 1940s kept this blue IMS livery right into the early 1970s, under layers of filth. https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/gwrbrmilktanks

 

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by Nearholmer