goldfish

It would nice if Hornby offered the cylinders, pistons and connecting rods as spare parts. Fitting an ETS drive unit to a Hornby clockwork body is easy, but the cylinders etc. are often in a terrible condition, if they are present at all.

Most of the tosh is written by people who have never tried it. There is no problem with running fine scale wheels on very tight radii, I do it quite often. Out of the box Dapol 9' wagons can be pulled around 18" radius reverse curves, and with a change of couplings can even be pushed through them. Albeit slowly, and with care. I would not advocate it though because it puts a lot of strain on the plastic. The problem with fine scale wheels arises when you try to run them through course scale points, they just derail.

Hornby are currently showing all 4 available for pre-order. Still tempted?

Sadly no. ETS track uses code 175 flat bottomed rail which would be difficult to mate with Peco track. Oddly ACE ETS trains are not compatible with ETS points. You have to change the wheels for ETS 2-rail wheels to make them compatible. ETS points are compatible with Slaters fine scale wheels though.

All the Hornby clockwork 0-4-0's I have tried will negotiate Lionel 0-36 curves. My Bassett Lowke 4-4-0 Prince Charles will not negotiate Lionel 0-36 curves, but will negotiate Lionel 0-48 curves. I would suggest you increase your real estate to 4' 6" x 6' 3", as that was the size required by the oval of track supplied with the larger Hornby Train sets. It will also conveniently fit on a double bed.

And low, the Children of G0G came to the manger, but when they counted the rivets they were dismayed. For the number of rivets on one side was even, but the number of rivets on the other side was odd. And it came to pass that a mighty schism sundered the Children of G0G that counted on the odd side from those that counted on the even side. But the Children of the third rail were unmoved. For in their innocence they thought the rivets looked more like nails.

627mm radius is the only curve ETS produce, and nobody else does small radius 32mm 2-rail track. I do have a small test track with Lionel 0-36 S bends that a surprising amount of stock will negotiate. My apologises for the image quality.

On my shunting plank I use ETS points track and points. Unfortunately 2-3 rail switchable locomotives and stock will not run through them so I have to change the wheels to 1.5mm or less flanges. The couplings are LMC pattern drop link couplings. The private owner wagons and brake van are the usual swivel type, but the plain grey open wagon and the low sided wagon have LMC pattern couplings with a sprung drawbar as used on normal 3-link couplings. Dapol 7-plank wagons can be pulled through the S bend with the standard couplings, but cannot be pushed through it. Replacing the 3-link couplings with Dapol screw link couplings and glueing the links rigid allows them to be pulled and pushed though the S bend reasonably reliably. The shunting plank is 2400mm x 400mm and currently is an enhanced inglenook with full 5,3,3,3 sidings and 3 wagon head shunt. Using 11 wagons instead of 8 makes an interesting puzzle.

I have no problems with the S bends through the 627mm radius points on my shunting plank, despite the couplings having been changed to reduce the distance between buffers.

Perhaps the problem is that today people coming to steam come with expectations of control based on electric trains rather than those based on clockwork trains. My limited experience with live live steam suggests that it is as adrenaline fueled as running clockwork, and equally rewarding.

Gas firing with RC control is a mature technology that could easily be made to work in 0. A Roundhouse chassis would be the obvious staring point, but I wouldn't like to run one in my loft. An electrically heated one would be much safer. One option would be to connect directly to the mains with a 60 Watt incandescent bulb in series with the track, but even Hornby quickly decided that was a bad idea :-)

In the October 1952 edition of THE MODEL RAILWAY CONSTRUCTOR there is an article by M. Drinkwater about replacing the spirit burner on a BL Mogul with an electrical heating element. The conversion was presumably a success, but unfortunately the PDF I found this in only contains the first page of the article. The author talks of using 24 Volts at 10 Amps, which is not a long way from the 17 Volts and 7 Amps that Hornby used for their 00 live steam locomotives. Does anybody have the complete article, or know if the author was successful with his conversion? It sounds an interesting idea.

The problem with the Terriers is that there are screw heads in the path of the couplings when they move from side to side. Consequently the draw bar has to be bent to give the necessary clearance. The reduction in length of the drawbar on replica LMC couplings makes them too short, and reduces the available range of movement. I have looked again at my Terrier, which is a recent ETS 2-rail example, and found a solution for the front coupling at least. Using a slightly longer screw and a short length of plastic tube as a spacer gives just enough clearance for the drawbar to clear the head of the screw and provide the full range of movement. This doesn't work on the rear coupling because there is a dome headed self tapping screw in the way. You could possibly lose some more length at the rear with a bit of creative bending.

The most expensive items are going to be the wheels, unless you are recycling old ones you have on hand.

Guilty as charged, I'm afraid. The double hole variety available through Mr L. are to my eye a little too long on the Terrier, but still an improvement. The replica LMC couplings available elsewhere are too short on the Terrier and allow very little movement. These couplings will probably be replaced by a coupling with just one hole but retaining the longer length. The cost of replacing couplings very quickly becomes prohibitive because there are no economies of scale with such a small market. If there is sufficient interest Mr L. will be able reduce the cost, but not by very much. I have looked at coupling bars for rakes of wagons but they seem to come with a lot of problems. My alternative to couplings was a hook and eye arrangement, along the lines of Hornby No. 20 wagons, but I never pursued it.

If you will forgive my obsession with couplings. My latest experiments involve replacing the couplings on a couple of ACE Trains 6 wheel Clemenson coaches with LMC pattern couplings, and using LMC pattern couplings as replacements for 3-link couplings. So far there has been no problem with either conversion, and both negotiate 2' reverse curves with no problem. The LMC coupling on the ACE Trains coach sags because there is very little metal left after drilling it out to fit the pin.

Replica LMC pattern single link couplings are available from The Leeds Stedman Trust for £4.50 a pair.

Unfortunately LMC couplings cannot be used as a direct replacement for the original ETS couplings. To fit them would either require a slot cutting in the buffer beam, or somehow modifying the LMC coupling.

Returning to the earlier discussion about which end of a Sentinel shunter is the front, these two images from the November 1925 Meccano Magazine might help. Presumably the text for the captions was provided by Sentinel along with the images.

Great video. That is something I have pondered. With the funnel at the front, and the bunker / water tank at the back, I would say yes it is running forward. I would be interested to know if anybody has the definitive answer to this.

It would be cruel to only have one, the poor thing would get lonely.

Finished replacing the couplings, definitely an improvement (or at least I think it is). A useful bonus of the LMC couplings is that the coupling hook does not protrude beyond the buffers so it is safe to use them with stock fitted with 3-link couplings. Once again, apologies for the terrible photography.

It would appear that the type of replacement coupling I am using was the standard fitting for all Leeds rolling stock from 1920 to 1928. Strange how change is not always real progress.

The arrival of an ETS Sentinel Shunter and another private owner wagon provides an ideal opportunity to illustrate the improvement that can be made by changing the couplings. The replacement single link couplings are from The Leeds Stedman Trust (usual disclaimer). With the replacement couplings the rolling stock will still negotiate 2ft curves and points with no problem. The reduced length of the couplings means that a rake of ten private owner is roughly the length of a a rake of nine unmodified private owner wagons. These things are always subjective, but I think the result is well worth the effort. My apologies for the poor images, photography is not my forte.

The G0G take on universal points is interesting, the 'Swing Nose Crossings' offer an interesting, if over engineered, solution. ( www.gauge0guild.com/manual/02_2_7_Pointwork.pdf )