Charlie Strong Metals (and Watery Lane Sidings)

[5050]

My first company car was an Allegro.  A sort of baby-poo mustard colour.  Ate front wheel bearings for breakfast (and not inna bun!).  Mind you, with front wheel drive it would go where Cortinas feared to tread.  Got me home from Manchester in late'79/early '80 (?) when the M62 shut with snow.  Passing Cortinas etc. as they lay dying in ditches...................

[Northmoor]

6 minutes ago, Ruston said:

My dad had one, a W-reg 1750. I used to drive it whenever he wanted a lift anywhere and it could go like the clappers, with a 20-year old lunatic behind the wheel! I don't think he ever knew how much I thrashed it when on my own. I'm not sure he ever found out where 5th gear was.

Ironically, my Dad couldn't find 5th for a while; as well as a notoriously notchy and stiff gearchange, the gearbox had some inherent faults.  We twice got stuck in reverse, one time we had first to fourth and drove it like that for a week (reversing into spaces with a push) until we could get home to the local garage.  Another time Dad was stuck in 5th, 60 miles from home, but got back to the garage OK including dropping a colleague off (who helped push for the rolling start) and round some normally second gear corners.  There can't be too many cars with an engine as flexible as the Maxi.

[mike morley]

I recall several times seeing Maxi's lying dead at the roadside with one of the front wheels aiming in an odd direction, its hub having snapped off.

[Barclay]

12 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Ironically, my Dad couldn't find 5th for a while; 

Neither could mine on one particular journey - all the way back from London in 4th.

 

Then there was the trip where the harmonic vibration caused the tailgate to unlatch itself...  After 6 months of this kind of misery, Dad went back to Fords and never strayed again !

[jollysmart]

3 hours ago, Barclay said:

Neither could mine on one particular journey - all the way back from London in 4th.

 

Then there was the trip where the harmonic vibration caused the tailgate to unlatch itself...  After 6 months of this kind of misery, Dad went back to Fords and never strayed again !

 

On a fifth  gear track, we got given base Sierra estates with 1600 engines and 4 speed gearboxes as work cars. We droned around in them for months until one guy inadvertently changed up to fifth forgetting he wasn't in his own car and there it was, fifth gear. Turns out they all had 5 speed boxes but the gear knob was only marked as a 4 speed. Those were the days. 

[Ben B]

We had a Maxi when I was little, in a fetching beige-yellow; I'd guess that was to blend-in any time we were car-sick on it in some layby when we were kids. I can very vaguely remember it breaking down just after leaving Harlech after a family holiday, and my Dad somehow nursed it all the way home to Langley Green near Brum on what must have been a nightmare of a journey.  How the hell he got it to go up Cross Foxes Pass in the state it was in I still have no idea...

[Ruston]

One of the Shelby Group's heavy haulage lorries was sent to fetch a loco, bought from a wagon repair works for scrap.

 

I started building this Nonneminstre whitemetal kit several months ago but the motor bogie kit that i bought to power it was a complete disaster and I ended up having to use a Tenshodo. It's on DCC, with stay alive so at least it runs and can do so quite slowly but the crappy motors in those Tenshodos mean that it runs jerkily at low speeds.

It has sound, too, with the sound of a Dorman diesel. Because of all the DCC gear inside I haven't been able to add any more weight and despite being sightly heavier than a Hornby 48DS, it slips easier and with a smaller load.

 

To finish it I need to paint the lamps and glaze the front windows.

 

 

[Corbs]

I found Tenshodos differed in performance a lot. I have a short wheelbase one that runs really well, and a long one that runs like you describe. Luck of the draw maybe?

[Ruston]

27 minutes ago, Corbs said:

I found Tenshodos differed in performance a lot. I have a short wheelbase one that runs really well, and a long one that runs like you describe. Luck of the draw maybe?

I think it's just down to it being a 3-pole motor, with a very high gear ratio. They're only 18:1, or something like that, which to me is very high as I'm used to High Level gearboxes at 90 or even 120:1, When it gets a bit of speed up it runs better but it does at least run slow on DCC. I tested it on DC to make sure it wasn't a dud and it was like a rocket sled on rails.

[decauville1126]

56 minutes ago, Ruston said:

I think it's just down to it being a 3-pole motor, with a very high gear ratio. They're only 18:1, or something like that, which to me is very high as I'm used to High Level gearboxes at 90 or even 120:1, When it gets a bit of speed up it runs better but it does at least run slow on DCC. I tested it on DC to make sure it wasn't a dud and it was like a rocket sled on rails.

They're 14:1. I've found that when used under a whitemetal body and using a Gaugemaster HH feedback controller they can run very slowly without too much cogging but can get a tad hot if used for long periods resulting in siftening and warping of the delrin casing. But there is a finite lowest-crawl speed that ic locos can do before stalling. I've yet to find a satisfactory alternative for the SPUD and wonder what your first choice was that didn't work out right?

 

Love the weathering! 

[Michael Edge]

11 hours ago, Corbs said:

I found Tenshodos differed in performance a lot. I have a short wheelbase one that runs really well, and a long one that runs like you describe. Luck of the draw maybe?

I have a Tenshodo power bogie in one of my LOR sets on Herculaneum Dock (the others have Black Beetles), normally it runs just as well but running all day at an exhibition it gets "tired" and has to be parked in the car shed for an hour or so. After that it runs perfectly well again, we did have the same problem with the Leeds tram layout but never really explained it.

The gears in the Tenshodo unit are the biggest problem if overloaded, I have two in a Scunthorpe Hunslet Bo-Bo which is weighted up to do its fairly arduous job on Cwmafon but it has suffered repeatedly from split gear wheels.

In general they run far too fast but can be controlled down well enough.

[mike morley]

Branchlines do brass replacement gears for Tenshodos.

[Ruston]

41 minutes ago, mike morley said:

Branchlines do brass replacement gears for Tenshodos.

Do you have one, or know anything about them, what the gear ratio is and how they are driven? I bought a Mark Clark power bogie kit and built it up but the motor ran extremely hot after a few seconds and locked up. I sent the motor back and received a replacement but the rubber band drive just slipped on that one and it wouldn't even move itself. I gave up on it. It's a rubbish design because there is no way of replacing the band. You have to solder the thing together, with the drive shaft and band in place and unless you literally pull the wheels off the axles and unsolder the entire thing, the band can't be replaced. A complete waste of money! I don't want anything that has a rubber band drive.

 

A short film of the Hibberd in action.

 

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by Ruston

[mike morley]

Whoops!  Now I've dug the set I've got out I discover only the worm is brass, the gearwheel being plastc -hopefully of a more durable type than Tenshodo use.  14:1 ratio, same as original Tenshodo.

[Michael Edge]

It's the gearwheel which splits, at the bottom between two teeth. I don't think it's the fault of the material, just poor design with not enough material down there.

[PeckettChap]

If it helps, I have a pack of the small Branchlines all-metal gears which are very similar to the old Tenshodo ones, and the following information is taken from the packet label:-

 

15:1 Worm Gearset, 1.5mm worm bore, 2.0mm gear bore, 0.3 Modulus, 3.55mm between gear centres.

 

The worm is steel and the gear wheel is brass.

 

(I haven't checked recently whether these are still available.)

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by PeckettChap
Typo.

[Ruston]

Changing the gears and worms for brass and steel items won't make any difference at all to how it performs at low speed at all. You can't polish a turd.

 

I've got spare gears if one does split.

 

I glazed the last two windows and so it is now finished. With brass kits I cut the thin clear plastic from Wills sheet boxes, or PECO point packets and simply glue it to the insides of the walls but with the whitemetal cab walls being so thick that would have left a deep window ledge and so I cut windows to fit exactly the aperture. I used an Oxford diecast car box to make the windows.

 

[Regularity]

4 hours ago, Ruston said:

You can't polish a turd.

You can roll it in glitter and hope no one notices, though...

[Enterprisingwestern]

On 18/12/2020 at 10:23, Ruston said:

Do you have one, or know anything about them, what the gear ratio is and how they are driven? I bought a Mark Clark power bogie kit and built it up but the motor ran extremely hot after a few seconds and locked up. I sent the motor back and received a replacement but the rubber band drive just slipped on that one and it wouldn't even move itself. I gave up on it. It's a rubbish design because there is no way of replacing the band. You have to solder the thing together, with the drive shaft and band in place and unless you literally pull the wheels off the axles and unsolder the entire thing, the band can't be replaced. A complete waste of money! I don't want anything that has a rubber band drive.

 

A short film of the Hibberd in action.

 

 

 

Sounds like a knight in armour falling down a steel fire escape!

 

Mike.

[Ruston]

[Ruston]

Coming soon to a model railway magazine near you.

 

[AY Mod]

29 minutes ago, Ruston said:

Coming soon to a model railway magazine near you.

 

Thanks Dave for creating the article and pics, you've done a grand job. Love a bit of industrial filth for the pages.

[Ruston]

21 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

Thanks Dave for creating the article and pics, you've done a grand job. Love a bit of industrial filth for the pages.

Psstt.. Filth, eh? Do you want to see some dirty Pecketts? This one'll even let you see her blast pipe for ten bob.

[AY Mod]

Size of the dumb buffers on that! Phwoar!

[37114]

This has to be one of my fave layouts on RMweb at the moment,  I keep looking at your scrapyard,  seeing how fantastic it is and so damn realistic, it certainly spurs me on to try harder with mine, great job with this Dave..