TheGunslinger

1950's US is fun because there was a lot of overlap on diesel and steam power. The revered Kadee coupler is in its element and makes shunting layouts a breeze. 40ft boxcars are the US equivalent of PO 5/7 plank open wagons, with even less restriction on the weird and wonderful places they may turn up. There are exceptions, but things like Swifts Meats ice reefers went everywhere. The Americans had their share of tiny shunting locomotives. I'm a sucker for the 44 Ton diesel switcher, and the 0-4-0ST shunter is miniscule as well. Narrow gauge has plenty of support, and provides the opportunity for some really interesting prototypes like Climax and Shay locomotives.

I think the elephant in the room is the common problem: "Help! I've bought a bunch of PO coal wagons because they looked nice but they're all for completely unrelated collieries all over the country! What do I do now?!" Obvious answer is "Rule 1", but are there ways to have a complete hodge-podge assortment of PO wagons that is prototypical? My own solution is a fairly large coal merchant that services a number of small industries (none large enough to justify their own spur) with differing requirements in coal. A 3-pack of PO wagons from Parkend gives a more unifying location (somewhere in the vicinity of the Forest of Dean) and a supplier that handles the bulk of coal orders, but discerning customers may order coke derived from the north coalfields and thus "return to LMS" coke wagons are not unusual.

I might just leave it as part of this thread. With that in mind, Update #1! I've gotten my hands on some 2mm brass L-section (I know 1.3mm is more scale accurate but 2mm is a little stronger and was readily available at a local hobby shop) to replace the underframe truss. I also acquired two frets of Mk1 Sprat & Winkle couplings for a bargain on Ebay, which are perfect for coaching stock since they will rarely be shunted. I'm also collating my notes to make a big order of bits from Wizard, among which will be some underframe castings and etches from Comet, and some 18" sprung buffer heads. While waiting on detail parts I plan to make a start on painting the interior and adding a few passengers.

Are these the same bones they've re-re-re-examined and can never conclusively decide if they belong to a male or female?

Taking bets it's Gosturd looking to divide the lot up and charge 30 quid an item.

Description updated 8 March "fleischmann train and carriages" I mean, that's at least something.

As far as I know they are from his stash.

I have been looking forever for a viable alternative since every article mentioning lamp irons is outdated and uses the Frogmore etch, which seem to be perpetually out of stock. THANK YOU!

Huge shout out to Timbo for his help, I am now the proud owner of a quartet of Toplight kits. These kits are truly magnificent and even better than I expected!

I'll never forget Bachmann running a truly tiny 44T switcher with BlueRail and as many super capacitors they could fit into the body, with a short 1' segment of powered track it regularly passed over to recharge the caps. That there seems like the future of model railroading, at least until we can further increase the energy density of conventional batteries.

You should clarify, were you using the iphone speakers on their own or inside their black plastic enclosure? Because yes, on their own they sound like junk.

Here's a big round-up of various speakers on an identical decoder. From my experience an iPhone 4 speaker in its enclosure is comparable to the TCS 28mm; it's quieter but it trades raw noise for greater fidelity, especially on the bass. The real downside is the enclosure is large; it takes up the entire bottom region of a mobile phone. This can be a blessing in disguise as the long, thin shape fits nicely inside boilers, tenders and larger locomotive tanks.

I mean, we've gone from spitballing separate clutch and torque limiter ideas to a potential design for a flywheel with its own clutch, which could then be up-geared on even a small 2:1 gearbox for some pretty impressive amounts of momentum, without destroying your driveline and valve gear if something comes to a dead stop...

If I recall correctly when I did a forum dive on possible motor swaps, it was found all CD tray motors weren't created equal and quite a few were inferior even to the model loco products

Substantially longer, but they'd be overkill for such a small shunter. They'll happily power a 5600 class and provide prototypical pulling power. It was more an example of the kind of power density in a similar volume that I can personally vouch for. I can't remember the exact specifications for the Mashima motors, but if I remember correctly they used carbon brushes and ceramic type magnets, which means there's still room for improvement on Mr Mashima's exacting standards.

All I can say is if you're going to bother with an iPhone loudspeaker, leave the enclosure on! Apple must have spent a fair amount of coin on tuning and porting that little bit of plastic, because the sound quality and fidelity are night and day compared to just the speaker itself. Bass is pretty remarkable and makes the railroad hobby "high bass" speakers look like a bit of a joke. I'll get some recordings of my TCS WOW decoder running with an iPhone 4 loudspeaker.

Oh sorry, I didn't see your previous post! Mabuchi SF-266SA, there are several people selling them on Ebay. Mabuchi make a huge variety of consumer grade electric motors, and most of them are quite good, even their basic RF-300 motors are quite good and a cheap and easy replacement for Lima pancake motors (as opposed to tearing CD drives apart as some members on here are wont to do, you can just buy the motors guys!). And a handy guide for decoding their part numbers: https://www.mabuchi-motor.com/product/knowledge/classification/designations.html

I have to legitimately wonder where they find these pinheads to staff government facilities. The morons running the tips over here in Australia are exactly the same. Cut from the same cloth, I'd dare say.

You could just make this assembly your giant flywheel. If it tries to torque the driveline too hard it slips, simple. You might actually be better off with a grub screw (perhaps with a rubber cap on the end that engages the drive shaft) since that will give you finer control of precisely what point the flywheel slips.

"Ok smartass how would you fit your fancy claptrap in my tiny loco?" "Uh, maybe use a smaller motor for starters? It's a bit overkill for shunting speed." "Motor size has nothing to do with how fast the locomotive moves! Oh btw I put a 90:1 gear ratio on this thing." K then. If you wanted an echo chamber of agreeing opinions you could just put that in the thread title. Then why are you here? FYI those fancy motors cost $2.50AUD each.

I don't think that's a handwheel, it looks like a hoist ring for the saddle tank.

Reminds me of a radio segment I stumbled across some years ago (I have absolutely no CLUE the context) of a heavily-accented American farmer discussing his favorite breeds of chicken, and that the Chantecler Chicken was a standout to him. He insisted on saying Chantecler Chicken every time he referred to the bird and his accent made the whole thing rather amusing.

Because in the case of DC electric motors, the diameter of the armature directly correlates with the RPM produced under load. Considering I'm running a brass USRA 0-8-0 off a motor 2/3 that size (10mm diameter 15mm long cylindrical body), yeah, it's pretty big for what you need it to do. The problem is OO scale modellers are living in the dark ages thinking the carbon brushed, rubberized "fridge magnet", 3-pole electric motors in their RTR locomotives are the pinnacle of technology when somebody bothers to make them coreless or skew wound. In such a tiny shunter a motor for a large N scale diesel would work just fine. I bought some Mabuchi electric motors with 6 poles and rare earth magnets that are about the same size as your shunter's motor, and they are monstrously powerful.

For starters, this why I don't like chassis where the gearbox is on the front drivers. You've got open space in the nose which is going unused. Perfect if you want to slip a DCC chip in there though. That is quite a large motor in there, which may be overkill if you're only using this as a shunter; it isn't meant to go fast, and even lots of torque may just cause wheelslip. Does the current flywheel help with power loss?

Depends on the loco. Most of my ideas are based around upgrading an existing flywheel.