Jump to content
 

Clockwork in 4mm scale?


Haggerleases
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hi all. 

 

Aside from children's toys, did clockwork or 'spring drive' ever move down as far as 4mm? I have heard of plenty of 7mm stuff, including some of the most famous layouts that ever existed, but not 4mm. Any examples? I imagine a fine scale 4mm steam era loco would look great with the right mechanism, but is it practical? obviously it would need a governor to stop it whizzing round in a non-scale manner. 

Just a thought. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

I had the N7. I think that it was Tri-ang, not HD. That was a wind-up and let whizz - no speed control as far as I can remember. Before that I had dad's Bing sets which were tin-plate OO gauge, but hardly scale models.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold
24 minutes ago, Pebbles said:

There was a range way back in the 1920s. I think it may have been German

Bing that Phil mentioned, made for Bassett Lowke, and it celebrates 100years next year in 2022 as it hit the shops in December 1922

323A9D06-1530-4459-AD02-9A263F89C49A.jpeg.ce0cdbe34811a749ddfa8f9224c33048.jpeg

 

C5AE4026-B662-4CD6-AC65-A56C76733FBB.jpeg.0cab9df180cfb0c609ed93fcac53fea6.jpeg

Edited by PaulRhB
Link to post
Share on other sites

Hornby Dublo

When Hornby Dublo first went on sale there were clockwork locos, and a version of the 3 rail track without the centre rail - it's not 2 rail a such as the running rails are mounted on the metal base and so are not insulated from each other. There were clockwork powered versions of the 0-6-2 tank, and the A4 'Sir Nigel Gresley. That is why the early Dublo electric sets sets all have part numbers starting with the letter "E" meaning 3 rail electric 12 volts DC to distinguish them form the clockwork versions which used the same part number but without the "E" prefix.   

 

Triang Railways & Triang Hornby

Triang made various clockwork locos over the years, mainly for cheaper starter sets. Their first clockwork loco, R.51 was  part of the tooling bought in from Pyramid toys and it was sold in sets and as a solo model. It was never sold with an electric motor, and was withdrawn from the range in 1956.

 

There were clockwork versions of:

  • the R.153 saddle tank in BR livery as R.151 and as a Primary Series loco R.255;
  • the R.152 Class 08 style diesel shunter was available in BR black as R.154, and as a Primary Series loco in maroon R.256;
  • the "North British" R.559 0-4-0 diesel loco was initially sold as a clockwork loco R.557 in blue, and as R.756; and,
  • the R.659 "top Tank" loco had a clockwork version  R.657 and an even lower cost version R.660 and R.854, and a "Wild West" version with a "spark arrester style funnel and cowcatcher in red, R.873, that was only sold in sets.

In the 1950s the clockwork locos and sets were sold alongside the electric versions. That's why in the catalogues of the period all locos and sets are described as "Electric" or "Clockwork", even locos such as the R.156 EMU and R.157 DMU which were never made with a clockwork mechanism.

 

The sets with the clockwork locos used normal Triang track, but there was one clockwork set that used plastic track with wheels modified accordingly.

Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Pebbles said:

There was a range way back in the 1920s.

 

PaulRhB has beaten me with the attribution, but its perhaps worth adding that the design was partly Henry Greenly's, so a genuinely Anglo-German product.

 

I've got a feeling that there were odd small scale products, not complete systems, from other German makers pre-WW1, but I'd need to check.

 

On 18/03/2021 at 16:36, mossdp said:

Van Riemsdijk made two different clockwork locos in 00. 

 

Are the 00 ones governed? I've got two VR 0 gauge locos, and they have a neat and effective governor (its a brake really, but not one that wastes piles of energy).

 

More generally, the problem with scaling-down clockwork is physics, and even at 0 scale the amount of energy that can be stored in a spring within the envelope of a half-believable loco is pretty unimpressive - it is no coincidence that the best 0 gauge clockwork locos have very fat "boilers" and/or are blatantly over-scale. In any scale, something like a Deltic or a Class 66 might be the best candidate for a clockwork drive, although big streamlined steamers aren't a bad choice ........ maybe a Merchant Navy in original form?

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

There were various other miniature gauges, Carette, Märklin and others by Bing but the start of OO was the Table Railway in 1922 according to Brighton Toy Museum’s site , Jeff Carpenter and Peter Berg’s books. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

The Riemsdyk mechanisms were used on this layout, taken from the Model Railway News (approx 1956?  Can't remember!).  The owner says he set them to the slowest speed and then removed the control lever so they only ran at the slowest speed and controlled them with the reversing lever.  Did it have a 'centre off' position?

 

I've always like this little layout,  tempted to try a P4 version someday.........

 

621038347_PotwellMineralRlwy.1.jpg.9b20d101c7d0e524cd4ce0316a5d567f.jpg

  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

The issue with spring drive model rilway seems to be the way the spring takes up progressively more and more space as it unwinds.  I have been stripping down old clocks for bits and pieces, using the frames for loco frames and spacers etc to turn in the lathe or drill chuck for all sorts of unlikely objects and the springs in the clocks work inside barrels so don't expand when run down.

I don't see why this wouldn't work with locos.  Nor do I see any reason why more than one spring could not be used,  one heck of an engineering challenge admittedly, certainly not cheap.   Minimising friction would be the challenge, maybe ball races on the driving axles.  There is something very satisfying about the way spring drive locos start, I have thought about introducing a spring in a barrel between the electric motor and final drive on a OO Pacific to get a "Softer" start and get that degree of uncontrollability that Mr ********** managed to built in to his locos

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

c10 years ago, Marc Horowitz and others in the USA made attempts at "next level" clockwork in 0 scale, including a loco with a spring rather as you are describing. The spring was very wide, several inches, and fitted inside a barrel, which then filled the boiler of the loco, so the axis of the spring was along, rather than across the loco. It was pretty impressive in comparison with most "clockers", and probably rammed as much energy storage into the space as is possible using a spring, but the laws of physics still di their stuff, and it still wasn't anything like as much energy as could be stored in the same space by other means.

 

Way back in the 1910s people were at this too, and were building locos with two springs, and/or locos with a mechanism in the tender as well as the loco, so two springs on board. W Smart, who was the first secretary of the first model railway club (The MRC) had a big, complicated clockwork layout based on LBSCR practice and he was one of the people involved - he built IIRC a C2 goods tender engine with two motors.

 

Also, its notable that there are very few "real world" applications of spring energy storage these days - Bayliss's "clockwork radio" is the only one I can think of readily, and that is a very low power application.

 

I'm not a mechanical engineer, and none of the resources that I can find on-line about energy storage in springs deal with roll-springs, so without spending hours/days researching the topic, I can't run any calculations about energy storage densities ......... is there a mechanical engineer here present?

 

Stop Press: this is interesting 

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/bc/44/2f/f14164ea77fac8/US6863435.pdf

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

I suppose you could make an electric/clockwork hybrid where the spring was kept wound by an electric motor. The spring would not have to be very big and it would work like a big flywheel. Of course you could also do this instead.

Link to post
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I'm not a mechanical engineer, and none of the resources that I can find on-line about energy storage in springs deal with roll-springs, so without spending hours/days researching the topic, I can't run any calculations about energy storage densities

 

 

One way is to determine how much energy it takes to wind it up :)  That's a bit simpler to calculate. I don't think there are a lot of losses when putting energy in. But that's not much use if you want to design a clockwork motor from scratch.

 

I think you can get there if you think about the spring as starting as a straight piece of steel and determine the total stress when it's wound up. I'm not sure it's all that different from bending an elastic beam.

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...