Wright writes.....

[t-b-g]

6 minutes ago, Barry Ten said:

 

 

I still don't get it, sorry. It looks to me like you've engineered a very nice swinging truck arrangement, and then negated its functionality by using flangeless wheels.

 

 

I had the same thoughts but it makes sense to me if the set up is rigidly bolted to the bottom of the frames, rather than mounted on a pivot, so it has vertical springing but no side to side movement.

[grob1234]

But if it works....

[cctransuk]

48 minutes ago, grob1234 said:

But if it works....

 

'Works' is subjective - can flangeless wheels where there should be flanged ones ever be said to 'work'?

 

Clockwork, four-wheeled 'Pacifics' 'worked' in their time - but wouldn't pass muster as scale models nowadays!

 

CJI.

[Chamby]

Some stunning photographs of Retford on today’s virtual exhibition, thank you, Tony.

 

In one of Andy’s photo’s I spotted 60993 en passant, a certain Mr Thompson would not approve, I think!   Is there a bit of a story to be told there?   

[richard i]

My confession

forgive me father I have sinned.

the first sin is these are not ECML in BR era. 
the second is they have no lamps

the third I have not completed them as accurate to the prototype as possible.

but most of all in order to get two large lumps of brass to join I used two part epoxy, not solder. 
in my defense I tried to solder them but the iron was too weedy. They acted as such large heat sinks that I think even a Saturn 5 main rocket would not have provided enough heat. 
Tony will recognize these, but for others, these were involved in a car crash and Tony thought I might like the challenge of making them look like they did before they went bump. For example the single’s tender was in in 12 bits. Not all where the kit originally thought they should be. Some filler, filling and fudging has got them sort of back to how they might have looked before the crash.

they will stay this way for a while but might end up in the improvement line eventually. Can’t have too much distraction from the GCR otherwise all the stock I need will never get built.

richard

 

[Denbridge]

2 hours ago, Barry Ten said:

 

 

I still don't get it, sorry. It looks to me like you've engineered a very nice swinging truck arrangement, and then negated its functionality by using flangeless wheels.

 

It could be argued that the flangeless truck wheels are the nearest to scale compared to typical OO wheelsets 

[Denbridge]

36 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

'Works' is subjective - can flangeless wheels where there should be flanged ones ever be said to 'work'?

 

Clockwork, four-wheeled 'Pacifics' 'worked' in their time - but wouldn't pass muster as scale models nowadays!

 

CJI.

Do typical OO flanges pass as scale models though? 

[cctransuk]

4 minutes ago, Denbridge said:

Do typical OO flanges pass as scale models though? 

 

For most of us - yes.

 

It's the absence of flanges which is a step too far for me, and for a good many others.

 

CJI.

[Bernard Lamb]

13 minutes ago, Denbridge said:

Do typical OO flanges pass as scale models though? 

Yes. Given the understanding that you cannot scale either mass or tolerances.

Before the P4 people jump on me, I accept that they do have a point, but only in controlled situations.

Bernard

[30368]

Just had a look at the video of the late Roy Jackson's Retford, now saved by Sandra. I can recall following its construction in the modelling press over the decades so I am really pleased it has been saved.

 

I really enjoyed the panned shots of the A4, it reminded me of the excellent BTF film of 60017 hauling The Elizabethan. Coincidently I watched the film yet again yesterday. What an excellent work of railway and social history is captured on that film? As I watched the truly wonderful panned shots of Silver Fox I was struck by how effective the A4 front end was at clearing smoke and steam from the streamlined casing. What a truly great piece of engineering was created in the short 6 months or so that Gresley had to develop the A4.

 

So thanks to Roy for building it, Sanda for saving the layout and to Tony, who I Know spent a lot of effort in making the save happen.

 

Kind regards,

 

Richard B

[Jol Wilkinson]

2 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Yes. Given the understanding that you cannot scale either mass or tolerances.

Before the P4 people jump on me, I accept that they do have a point, but only in controlled situations.

Bernard

Bernard,

 

I agree that you can't scale Mass but surely tolerances, which are a dimension, can be scaled. However, some tolerances are so small that they become negligible and so aren't useable/worth worrying about. In this hobby we tend to use definitive figures, 16.5mm, 18.2mm, etc. but don't consider a tolerance for them. IThat would make life even more interesting.

 

Jol

[zr2498]

1 hour ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Bernard,

 

I agree that you can't scale Mass but surely tolerances, which are a dimension, can be scaled. However, some tolerances are so small that they become negligible and so aren't useable/worth worrying about. In this hobby we tend to use definitive figures, 16.5mm, 18.2mm, etc. but don't consider a tolerance for them. IThat would make life even more interesting.

 

Jol

Clearances which would equate the differential of dimensional tolerances would be even more interesting. On 1:1 scale typical clearance of running parts are in the order of thousands of an inch. Imagine scaling that to OO or P4 gauge. Generally clearances are more likely to be inversely proportional to scale.

 

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Bernard,

 

I agree that you can't scale Mass but surely tolerances, which are a dimension, can be scaled. However, some tolerances are so small that they become negligible and so aren't useable/worth worrying about. In this hobby we tend to use definitive figures, 16.5mm, 18.2mm, etc. but don't consider a tolerance for them. IThat would make life even more interesting.

 

Jol

Jol

Up to a point one can modify tolerances. I write from a background of working in QA and QC in a manufacturing environment. It is difficult to give a short answer and as usual somebody will come along and want to expand the discussion. In some cases as with you from a point of a person with experience but often from a person with none. At work we allowed no minus tolerance on a hole however large and 3 thou plus if something had to fit into it. That gives very little room to move. Certainly a reduction of  X 76 will give a friction fit. The same applies to bearings with even less scope to reduce the tolerance. We, meaning railway modellers, probably got in wrong in the first place when we set out figures without any explanation. Let us take 18.83. To me that means without any qualifier a figure between 18.825 and 18.835. Any gauge to check that dimension would need to actually allow a smaller range as any tolerance applied to the manufacture of the checking gauge would need to be included and therefore subtracted from the overall tolerance. Then of course any automated production system would stop and correct the production at around 60% of the tolerance having been reached.

The easiest way to remember if a tolerance should be applied evenly or all plus or all minus is to think of a window, The frame must always be bigger than the glass.

As you say to change now would be interesting, but if things had started from an engineering/drawing office basis it would have been easier. 

Bernard

[Jol Wilkinson]

44 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

Jol

Up to a point one can modify tolerances. I write from a background of working in QA and QC in a manufacturing environment. It is difficult to give a short answer and as usual somebody will come along and want to expand the discussion. In some cases as with you from a point of a person with experience but often from a person with none. At work we allowed no minus tolerance on a hole however large and 3 thou plus if something had to fit into it. That gives very little room to move. Certainly a reduction of  X 76 will give a friction fit. The same applies to bearings with even less scope to reduce the tolerance. We, meaning railway modellers, probably got in wrong in the first place when we set out figures without any explanation. Let us take 18.83. To me that means without any qualifier a figure between 18.825 and 18.835. Any gauge to check that dimension would need to actually allow a smaller range as any tolerance applied to the manufacture of the checking gauge would need to be included and therefore subtracted from the overall tolerance. Then of course any automated production system would stop and correct the production at around 60% of the tolerance having been reached.

The easiest way to remember if a tolerance should be applied evenly or all plus or all minus is to think of a window, The frame must always be bigger than the glass.

As you say to change now would be interesting, but if things had started from an engineering/drawing office basis it would have been easier. 

Bernard

 

Bernard,

 

my comment was meant to be rather more generalised. I trained as a engineer in the automobile industry but soon moved into the manufacturer/dealer/customer aftermarket  "interface". There I learned a different meaning of tolerance.

 

Jol

[DenysW]

My understanding of the design reason for flanges on  (virtually) all of the full-scale railway wheels is to cope with the combinations of speed and track curvature are too much for the cone-shape (20-degrees?) machined into the tyres. So if the same simply isn't true scaled down to 1:87, 1:76, whatever, and you can't (mostly) rely on cone-shaped tyres, then you may be forced to have out-of-scale flanges. They are just doing a necessary job achieved differently full-scale..

 

Oh, and I've recently retired from the water industry where civil engineering accuracy was written into contracts as +/- 5mm, which is pretty impressive in a 30 m diameter tank, and pretty unimpressive in  the 100 mm throat of a measuring flume. I suspect that Victorian technology wasn't actually much different from this. The main technology change recently is satelite-sourced levels, and vastly more data points, not particularly more accurate ones.

Edited December 5, 2021 by DenysW

[Denbridge]

I remember Tony saying that the great Roy Jackson often left the trailing wheels off completely and most people never noticed.

[Northmoor]

48 minutes ago, DenysW said:

My understanding of the design reason for flanges on  (virtually) all of the full-scale railway wheels is to cope with the combinations of speed and track curvature are too much for the cone-shape (20-degrees?) machined into the tyres. So if the same simply isn't true scaled down to 1:87, 1:76, whatever, and you can't (mostly) rely on cone-shaped tyres, then you may be forced to have out-of-scale flanges. They are just doing a necessary job achieved differently full-scale..

 

Oh, and I've recently retired from the water industry where civil engineering accuracy was written into contracts as +/- 5mm, which is pretty impressive in a 30 m diameter tank, and pretty unimpressive in  the 100 mm throat of a measuring flume. I suspect that Victorian technology wasn't actually much different from this. The main technology change recently is satelite-sourced levels, and vastly more data points, not particularly more accurate ones.

Two particular examples of tolerances that I always remember, which quash the "Aerospace Engineering = Advanced, Railway Engineering = Victorian" myth.  

The "Networker" series of diesel and electric units, were build on a floor based on interlocked, extruded aluminium sections.  These were cut to length with an accuracy of 1mm in 23m (so 1 in 23000).

The RAF Nimrod MRA4 programme, which was finally cancelled by the MoD about ten years ago, was beset by many issues, but one of the challenges to integrating the new equipment in to the airframes, was that no two were the same, in fact the differences in some major dimensions were measured in inches (accurate to at best, 1 in 1000).

[Barry Ten]

2 hours ago, Denbridge said:

I remember Tony saying that the great Roy Jackson often left the trailing wheels off completely and most people never noticed.

 

Judging by the photos, Retford looks to be set quite low so I imagine you could get away with that. It definitely wouldn't work on my layout where the track is set at close to (standing) eye level.

[sandra]

9 hours ago, Barry Ten said:

 

Judging by the photos, Retford looks to be set quite low so I imagine you could get away with that. It definitely wouldn't work on my layout where the track is set at close to (standing) eye level.

Retford is set at about 3’ 6” in height, any higher and large parts would be totally inaccessible, parts are inaccessible at the present height.
 

I have now fitted nearly all the Pacifics with trailing wheels. There’s only one more to do, 60500 Edward Thompson and as I have found trailing wheels for that one I’ll soon fit them soon. However the Britannia on Retford is a Hornby one with the flangeless trailing wheels still set to OO gauge. I must get round to fitting the correct wheels.

[landscapes]

9 minutes ago, sandra said:

Retford is set at about 3’ 6” in height, any higher and large parts would be totally inaccessible, parts are inaccessible at the present height.
 

I have now fitted nearly all the Pacifics with trailing wheels. There’s only one more to do, 60500 Edward Thompson and as I have found trailing wheels for that one I’ll soon fit them soon. However the Britannia on Retford is a Hornby one with the flangeless trailing wheels still set to OO gauge. I must get round to fitting the correct wheels.

Hi

 

I recently saw the video of Retford uploaded I believe by Tony.

 

This is the first time I have seen your layout in action, absolutely stunning.

 

thank you 

 

David

[gr.king]

20 hours ago, richard i said:

My confession

forgive me father I have sinned.

 

 

 

I'm not so sure that you have. There are some surprisingly useful parts in a Kitmaster Stirling single. They just need a certain amount of refinement.

[Dr Gerbil-Fritters]

13 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Two particular examples of tolerances that I always remember, which quash the "Aerospace Engineering = Advanced, Railway Engineering = Victorian" myth.  

The "Networker" series of diesel and electric units, were build on a floor based on interlocked, extruded aluminium sections.  These were cut to length with an accuracy of 1mm in 23m (so 1 in 23000).

The RAF Nimrod MRA4 programme, which was finally cancelled by the MoD about ten years ago, was beset by many issues, but one of the challenges to integrating the new equipment in to the airframes, was that no two were the same, in fact the differences in some major dimensions were measured in inches (accurate to at best, 1 in 1000).

 

To be fair, the Nimrod was based on the Comet 4C airframe dating from the late 50s early 60s.  In fact, the first two were based on unfinished 4C airframes.  UK aerospace was, at that time, notoriously set up as a number of small manufacturers almost like cottage industries utilising extensive hand building and finishing.  This was a peculiarity of the UK aerospace industry, and caused no end of problems.  It was certainly no match for the precision and mass-production of the US industry at the time. 

 

If you would like to know more about just how poor the UK aerospace industry was in the post-war years, I can highly recommend 'Empire of the Clouds', by James Hamilton-Paterson, a very good corrective for the disease of Spitfire Induced English Exceptionalism...

[Hollar]

On 03/12/2021 at 10:07, Dylan Sanderson said:

All this talk of the W1 and, more accurately 60700 has got me thinking!

 

During her 1958 36A days, did she ever work North of York? I can only find concrete evidence of her working expresses to 'the cross' from York and Leeds.

 

Thanks in advanced,

 

Dylan

All this talk of W1s has revived a memory of the late Roy Jackson when he was duty Truculence demonstrator at Railex some years ago.  On his table was an exquisite P2, with the Bugatti nose and resplendent brunswick green livery.  There purely as a wind-up of course, but it looked absolutely wonderful . 

 

There and then I decided there and then that if I should ever have a mainline railway a BR P2 would be well above any wretched Thompson pacific on my priority list. Thereby proving, perhaps, that I shared more than a surname with Roy.

 

Tony

[LNER4479]

17 minutes ago, Hollar said:

All this talk of W1s has revived a memory of the late Roy Jackson when he was duty Truculence demonstrator at Railex some years ago.  On his table was an exquisite P2, with the Bugatti nose and resplendent brunswick green livery.  There purely as a wind-up of course, but it looked absolutely wonderful . 

That made me chuckle ... even before I Googled 'truculence'. I'd pretty much worked out what it meant already from your post, having spent a limited time in Roy's company before he became seriously ill. Nice one

[railroadbill]

Excellent video of yours on motor/gearbox combinations on the virtual show yesterday, Tony. Very informative, also to see locos with the different set ups actually running.  A question that arises, what different gear ratios for say pacifics, heavy freights and small locos did you use to get the excellent running you showed?