Came across this today - may be useful for loco power

[shortliner]

 

 

[bike2steam]

At 13 rpm ?, more likely a turntable if you rig it to a controller to cut the revs down more.

[Phil Bullock]

Or a Brush Type 2 perhaps?

 

Runs for cover....

 

Phil

[shortliner]

I was thinking of it more as motive power cure for the shunting engine that is normally on display at exhibitions, that appears to be fitted with a motor from a dodgem car and hurtles around the yard at 45 mph! Or busy causing whiplash injuries to all the passengers on branch line trains with 14G starts and stops!

[royaloak]

Although it would be extremely slow it would be perfect for a (very slow) shunter, I mean how often do shunters get anywhere near their top speed while shunting?

 

Okay when running to and from the depot or working a pick up freight they would get a sprint on but not while shunting.

[DCB]

That sounds like a scale 2 mph to me, a bit fast for most exhibition layouts.  I reckon on 400 revs per mile for 4 ft wheels, 280 ish for 6ft  so it needs gearing back up quite a bit.

 

My usual gripe, from visits to many steam railways is few full size steam locos move much slower than 5 mph except when actually stopping which usually seems to take half a revolution of the wheels  or easing up.  0 to 5 is just about instantaneous.    Likewise Gronks seem to have two speeds something like 5 mph and 15mph or so....

[russ p]

Thing is some exhibition layouts operate too slowly, at my old depot in the 1980s most movements on the shed were done about 10-20 mph even though the limit was 5 as it is now.

I remember when Tinsley got its first southern 09s the trick was to trip the overspeed when going down the yard,just because it had one!

[billbedford]

At 87 mm long you are not going to get this inside a 4 mm loco, and it's going to be problematical in a 7mm loco. The 5 mm output shaft is not going to help.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

The item it had me thinking of, from the orientation of the photo, was a capstan. I have no idea of what speed these things rotated in their goods yard application, but a dozen RPM sounds about right from what I have seen in ship use, when used to handle natural fibre cables when mooring. (The finesse with which the seamen handled the applied force was very impressive, allowing a couple of turns of cable to slip on the rotating drum, until the hauling force was required; and then being able to gradate the winding rate by the applied tension from dead slow to take up slack, to full on, pulling the barky into the quay. The turn rate of the capstan has to be slow enough, that the speed of human movement can slack off the turns on the drum sufficiently to produce this gradation.)