Why Didn't Live Steam Take Off?

[Pandora]

1 hour ago, Talltim said:

Has anyone done radio controlled brakes in the larger scales?

If I were to tackle such a braking system ,  i would not invent a  friction clasp brakes system, I would use rheostatic brakes, basically a motor being turned by  the axle ie the motor is acting as a  generator, the output being fed into a resistive load to brake the model .

[The Johnster]

9 hours ago, Pandora said:

To achieve the style of running  you ably describe we may  need to replace  the fixed ratio gearbox drive train with a continuously variable  wide range (CVT) gearbox. the highly regarded Toyota Prius Synergy CVT (at least by engineers and not that Top Gear chappie) may be our inspiration

Then roll on someone doing it. 

[PatB]

I know nothing about the Toyota CVT system, but one arrangement which I can see being, at least, possible in the model scales is that adopted by the GWK car company in the early C20th. 

 

Basically, the motor drives a large, smooth faced flywheel. A shaft running at right angles across the flywheel carries a wheel with a high friction rim. This bears against the face of the flywheel and so is driven. If you move this wheel across the face of the flywheel you can vary the effective gear ratio between the motor shaft and the driven shaft. With the driven wheel near the centre of the flywheel you get a low (numerically high) ratio, rising as you move the driven wheel towards the flywheel's rim. 

 

Very simple in principle, efficient (no belt losses) and doubles as a right-angle drive, which most models need to incorporate anyway. I don't know if it could be made compact enough to be useful, but it doesn't feel impossible. 

[cheesysmith]

A simpler system my be to use magnetic eddy current clutch/flywheels and bevel gears. Lot simpler than using a CVT type transmission. 

[Pete the Elaner]

3 hours ago, PatB said:

I know nothing about the Toyota CVT system, but one arrangement which I can see being, at least, possible in the model scales is that adopted by the GWK car company in the early C20th. 

 

Basically, the motor drives a large, smooth faced flywheel. A shaft running at right angles across the flywheel carries a wheel with a high friction rim. This bears against the face of the flywheel and so is driven. If you move this wheel across the face of the flywheel you can vary the effective gear ratio between the motor shaft and the driven shaft. With the driven wheel near the centre of the flywheel you get a low (numerically high) ratio, rising as you move the driven wheel towards the flywheel's rim. 

 

Very simple in principle, efficient (no belt losses) and doubles as a right-angle drive, which most models need to incorporate anyway. I don't know if it could be made compact enough to be useful, but it doesn't feel impossible. 

There was a system in the early 90s which worked as you described, marketed as 'Dyna-drive'.

It used a centrifugal clutch to drive a flywheel which was conencted to gears in 1 bogie.

Due to its configuration, I believe it was only available for Diesels & Electrics.

It disappeared around the same time DCC became popular. I don't think that was a coincidence.

[Pete the Elaner]

On 02/11/2019 at 16:18, wasdavetheroad said:

I change my batteries every time I use the loco!. On track charging is coming, 

I think you are missing the point.

Rechargeable batteries deteriorate after a few years & it is this which forces a battery change, not the fact they are discharged.

 

& that brings us back onto topic.

 

Live steam models suffer the same problems as their full size counterparts, except their components are more delicate.

About 80% of a steam loco is boiler. This needs replacement/rebuilding at regular intervals due to corrosion & build-up of deposits from impurities. It also uses heat to work, which causes it to warp.

I doubt a 1/76 boiler would last anywhere near 10 years. It would need replacement after a certain amount of use. Just like the real thing, this is a major component.

 

An electric motor is a much smaller component. Replacing this is a simple task compared to a boiler.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On ‎02‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 22:24, loickebros said:

...The thread is about live steam and not batteries!...

No, the OP asked why live steam didn't catch on. Whether it was expense for a unique system, batteries, DCC or magic moonbeams that caused this, it is highly relevant to why it didn't catch on.

 

Strictly it is your enthusing for live steam which is the real thread drift...

 

 

[billbedford]

 

 

 

 

On 02/11/2019 at 17:58, The Johnster said:

In the 1980s when I was thinking about this, my standard was that the system needed to be capable of being installed aboard an Airfix 14xx, in those days my smallest loco, and completely housed within the loco including the battery leaving the cab space clear for me to put detail in, and the loco had to be able to haul a prototypical load. 

 

This was a big ask in the 1980s and I doubt it could be done today in 4mm, but is probably possible in 7mm.  It fulfils the requirement that only one control system is used for all locos on the layout, and has the advantage that it is fully compatible with conventional wiring and DC control.  It requires 'proper' driving as a loco can proceed under battery power out of control, and approaches to termini, or shunting, have to be done with a degree of skill and caution, so this is realistic and challenging, but means that untrained drivers can cause a lot of expensive damage...

 

Scroll down to the middle of the page to see how radio control fits into a 14xx

 

 

[Colin_McLeod]

1 hour ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

No, the OP asked why live steam didn't catch on. Whether it was expense for a unique system, batteries, DCC or magic moonbeams that caused this, it is highly relevant to why it didn't catch on.

 

Strictly it is your enthusing for live steam which is the real thread drift...

 

 

 

If that was true then DC and DCC should not have caught on either.

 

The battery brigade never miss a chance to raise the issue in a thread.  However the title of this thread includes "live steam" so I don't understand your comment that live steam is the real thread drift.

[billbedford]

Try again....

 

 

Scroll down to the middle of the page to see how radio control fits into a 14xx

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

18 minutes ago, Colin_McLeod said:

...However the title of this thread includes "live steam" so I don't understand your comment that live steam is the real thread drift.

Context. The title is why live steam didn't catch on.  The advantages of the alternative offering which did catch on big time are entirely germane. Live steam - however much it pleases a few - simply wasn't good enough overall in terms of what was on offer to sweep the pool, little point extolling the annihilated anatidae.

 

24 minutes ago, Colin_McLeod said:

...The battery brigade never miss a chance to raise the issue in a thread...

Dead ducks need all the help they can get. This is another one at present. Conceptually it has the potential to be a real contender, but present offerings are still way behind what DCC offers for OO/HO models. I have suggested in threads various what is required for it to fly, but the present protagonists push 'practically perfect already'.

[billbedford]

8 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Dead ducks need all the help they can get. This is another one at present. Conceptually it has the potential to be a real contender, but present offerings are still way behind what DCC offers for OO/HO models. I have suggested in threads various what is required for it to fly, but the present protagonists push 'practically perfect already'.

 

It will be like DCC, and not really take off until the major manufacturers incorporate it into their ranges.

[wasdavetheroad]

13 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

Context. The title is why live steam didn't catch on.  The advantages of the alternative offering which did catch on big time are entirely germane. Live steam - however much it pleases a few - simply wasn't good enough overall in terms of what was on offer to sweep the pool, little point extolling the annihilated anatidae.

 

Dead ducks need all the help they can get. This is another one at present. Conceptually it has the potential to be a real contender, but present offerings are still way behind what DCC offers for OO/HO models. I have suggested in threads various what is required for it to fly, but the present protagonists push 'practically perfect already'.

Well this protagonist does not!

 

My vision of the future is a system that can work on track or battery power and seamlessly switches between them. Charging the battery from the track should be included which means the battery can be considered a large stay alive with unlimited capacity. This would allow for considerably simpler wiring as there would be no need to wire the fiddly bits of the layout.  Track/battery switching has already been demonstrated in BlueRails first board which was too large for most OO locos. There next board should be  a lot smaller with more features.

 

What we will end up with is a system that allows you to run your locos on track power, either DC or DCC, battery or a combination of them. Radio control will be the norm and it already demonstrates the capability to have hundreds of locos on your layout if you wish. It might well be using DCC command protocols as well but that does not matter as it is under the hood. As for batteries eventually needing replacements, model railways have running costs like many other things.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

2 minutes ago, wasdavetheroad said:

...What we will end up with is a system that allows you to run your locos on track power, either DC or DCC, battery or a combination of them. Radio control will be the norm and it already demonstrates the capability to have hundreds of locos on your layout if you wish. It might well be using DCC command protocols as well but that does not matter as it is under the hood. As for batteries eventually needing replacements, model railways have running costs like many other things.

That's the page I am on. Flexible and fully integrated with the existing dominant means of power and control is the way ahead; and per Bill Bedford above, that's what the RTR manufacturers will require. Change to a system that is significantly incompatible is a non-starter.

 

I would adopt r/c battery tomorrow, if I could drive it seamlessly on my DCC handset by calling up the loco number, and the kit was small enough to fit inside a small 0-6-0T like Hornby's new Peckett: so that it can run off the 'maintained track' and shunt on a siding with completely rusted over rails. Any lesser capability need not apply. (It is achievable by DIY, but there's too much else ahead of it in the queue: so a commercial plug and play offering or nothing.)

[phil-b259]

On 02/11/2019 at 23:00, Nearholmer said:

Out of interest, what current do they draw?

 

Someone "up thread" said 40A, which seems a heck of a lot to me; might he have meant that they have a power of 40W, which seems more feasible?

 

 

No they didn't - they said 40Volts (at 5A) for the Hornby system. This does give a rather high 200W power consumption so 16V @ 2.5A = 40W might be the correct rating.

 

Certainly Hornby made it very clear that live steam and conventional DC controlled locos must NEVER be used on the same electrical supply as the supply to the former would seriously damage the latter!

[Sir TophamHatt]

I didn't realise there was any other makers of Live Steam, apart from Hornby.

 

I thought in the beginning, people said Sound wouldn't catch on, but lo and behold it's now more popular than ever.  In this same vein, I wondered about live steam options, and a potential for diesel I suppose too.

 

I guess it's been answered with a combination of it needing specialised track / controllers (didn't know that either!), and Hornby suggesting the financial crash helped erode it away.

 

I suppose this leads on to whether it'll be revisited again as it seems to be a next step for model railways.

 

Some good thoughts and insights to this topic in this thread, some not so good.

[phil-b259]

All this talk of batteries and radio control is very interesting - but as with the 'Live steam' product you start to tun into problems of where to put the kit in 00!

 

Yes large tender locos will potentially have space in the tender (although possibly not if you fit them with a speaker and DCC sound), but what about smaller tender or tank engines? They would have to drag round a dedicated 'power car' which rather ruins the ability to model small branch lines or shunting operations.

 

The battery / radio control solution is a better fit with diesels - the have a large body in which to put the gubbins (and potentially easy access from underneath if the battery needs changing / fiddling with), but as manufactures will still want to sell them with DC / DCC functionality all the extra expense just to satisfy a small section of the market isn't worth it.

[Titan]

4 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

.

I doubt a 1/76 boiler would last anywhere near 10 years. It would need replacement after a certain amount of use. Just like the real thing, this is a major component.

 

Quite the contrary. As model steam boilers in this size are usually brass or copper, they don't deteriorate anywhere near as quickly as their full size steel counterparts.  Plenty of 80 year old+ steam toys still happily running on their original unrepaired boilers, and the Hornby live steamers are likely to be much better engineered than those to boot!

Edited November 4, 2019 by Titan

[Steamport Southport]

My two penn'orth about the Hornby system.

 

I only saw it in use once on the Hornby layout they used to take to exhibitions and it was very impressive, large locomotives pulling realistic sized trains. But you could clearly see the limitations.

 

You needed separate tracks for the system as it wasn't compatible with anything else. Even if you could have dedicated tracks on a layout you could then only run those tracks with A3s and A4s as nothing else was available. If more was available such as other company and freight/mixed traffic locomotives then I reckon it could have been a success. But it would have cost a lot of money in investment.

 

 

 

Jason

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, billbedford said:

 

It will be like DCC, and not really take off until the major manufacturers incorporate it into their ranges.

For battery control, there needs to be an agreed set of basic standards, then the whole industry can share a common set of standards and therefore interchangeable.

Without that, it will be like the early days of command control, being incompatible such as Zero-1, the Airfix system and several others.

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

No they didn't - they said 40Volts (at 5A) for the Hornby system. This does give a rather high 200W power consumption so 16V @ 2.5A = 40W might be the correct rating.

 

Certainly Hornby made it very clear that live steam and conventional DC controlled locos must NEVER be used on the same electrical supply as the supply to the former would seriously damage the latter!

Agreed, but that is probably that you need a high powered source to get a loco into steam. However I'd have thought once you'd got the water to steaming levels, a lower powered source ought to be able to maintain pressure and to control the loco better.

 

A Google search suggests that the secondary of the power supply is 17 Volts @ 7.3 Amps or approx 125 Watts. That is a decent size power supply, whether DC, DCC or the supplied special one.

 

But what if you had an isolated section of track, to bring the loco up to boil, then switched the track to standard DCC, with a 5 Amp power supply to control. Would that keep the loco running?

 

Note, I have never owned, or even handled a Hornby LS loco, just basing this on the above discussion. Perhaps I'm talking through my hat (or worse)!

[phil-b259]

18 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

 

But what if you had an isolated section of track, to bring the loco up to boil, then switched the track to standard DCC, with a 5 Amp power supply to control. Would that keep the loco running?

 

 

Probably not - the boiler itself is tun and has limited ability to store steam relies on a continuous supply being created.

 

It has been said many times liquids don't scale well (hence real water never looks quite right on a model) and the same with gasses or anything else governed by the rules of science.

[Hitchin Junction]

2 hours ago, wasdavetheroad said:

Well this protagonist does not!

 

My vision of the future is a system that can work on track or battery power and seamlessly switches between them. Charging the battery from the track should be included which means the battery can be considered a large stay alive with unlimited capacity. This would allow for considerably simpler wiring as there would be no need to wire the fiddly bits of the layout.  Track/battery switching has already been demonstrated in BlueRails first board which was too large for most OO locos. There next board should be  a lot smaller with more features.

 

What we will end up with is a system that allows you to run your locos on track power, either DC or DCC, battery or a combination of them. Radio control will be the norm and it already demonstrates the capability to have hundreds of locos on your layout if you wish. It might well be using DCC command protocols as well but that does not matter as it is under the hood. As for batteries eventually needing replacements, model railways have running costs like many other things.

 

The "running costs" of regularly replacing batteries for hundreds of locos would be well beyond my budget or even most people' sensible consideration. And that extra cost will always be greater than for a track powered loco, no matter what the manufacturing quantities are. I'm OK with using wireless for control, if it becomes as cheap as DCC, but exhibiting that at Warley would be interesting. Who gets to decide and assign which of the thousands of RC addresses your locos will use, to avoid duplication and multiple layouts reacting to the same commands?  

 

BTW, a land-line phone handset is still way cheaper than that an iPhone, and their manufacturing quantities are in the millions.

 

Tim

[The Johnster]

10 hours ago, PatB said:

Basically, the motor drives a large, smooth faced flywheel

Then I'm sorry it's not really going to be much use in a small prototype 4mm steam loco, an essential requirement for my purposes.  Flywheels are a very good idea, but are most effective when they are least required and least effective when they are most required in the model railway sense of improving low speed smoothness and performance.  In DC, low speed is when the voltage is low, so pickup is most likely to be compromised, and the mechanical effect of anything but an unrealistically massive flywheel is also at it's lowest.  You need a flywheel made of unobtainium, or stuff from Black Holes...

 

Where flywheels are extremely effective in 4mm is in 'modulating' acceleration and deceleration from and to rest from high speeds.  Back in the day when I was playing around with ideas of this sort, I considered a toy friction drive mechanism with a conventional motor driving the flywheel, small enough to squeeze into a 56xx or prairie and giving very good gear ratio,  Perhaps it's just as well I never built it. Another mad scheme was a sort of DC stayalive, capacitors and diodes.  

 

The basic problem cannot be resolved; it is that small 4mm scale steam outline locos are the hardest to get to run smoothly.  They are light in weight, have fewer wheels to pick current up, and have smaller motors so the effects of friction at the pickups and in the gearbox are more pronounced.  The pickup issue can be resolved with an on board power supply, so one's mind is drawn to live steam or battery, but the size issue immediately reappears; batteries in vehicles permanently coupled to the loco are not acceptable except for tender locos.

 

What about compressed air instead of steam.  If it was damp, you might even get steam effects from the chimney.  Discuss...

[Steamport Southport]

26 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

Probably not - the boiler itself is tun and has limited ability to store steam relies on a continuous supply being created.

 

It has been said many times liquids don't scale well (hence real water never looks quite right on a model) and the same with gasses or anything else governed by the rules of science.

 

Did you see the Hornby version?

 

Looked pretty good to me.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5vgSnVHYSk

 

And next time anyone complains that their RTR model can't pull realistic length trains, bear this in mind.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9jvfSR8vhU

 

 

 

Jason