34theletterbetweenB&D

I would add the thought that there are traps for the unwary in OO product, relating to mechanism quality with the resultant effect on running, and ease or otherwise of fitting a sound decoder. Mechanisms, there are still OO products on sale with mechanism designs long extinct in RTR HO, and consequent less than stellar running performance. Almost all current RTR OO is made in the same Chinese factories as North American HO, and with the same mechanism designs, but these will be the higher priced items. The physical size of UK protoype is small, and thus there is space constraint in many OO models. Not a real problem if your interest is diesel and electric traction; but things get very 'interesting' if you want small steam locos to have sound. There's real competition between enough weight for traction and good pick up, and a decent size motor and multistage gear train for smooth performance, and the voids required to install a decoder and loudspeaker. Most recently introduced tender loco models make use of the tender for both decoder and loud speaker as a result.

I was told by a retailer not long after the correctly scaled Bachmann mineral wagons (steel and wooden bodied) emerged, that there had been considerable nervousness over their production. Would there be a market for wagons that looked (correctly!) different from what was then running on RTR based layouts? Judging by the way successive batches flew off the shelves, such that if you didn't make a purchase within a week of delivery to a retailer they were gone, I think we know the answer. It does puzzle me that successive manufacturers seemingly were blind to this opportunity. Less common wagons of various types got accurate toolings up to sixty years ago, such that with a paint job and current standard wheels they are still useable in a scale context. (H-D Prestwin, Triang brick wagon, Airfix GMR Lowmac, Mainline 20T mineral) yet the staple item of the steam railway had to be mangled dimensionally for the 'one size fits all' chassis.

The product of a nation of determined individualists! This had been recognised within the UK during WWI, and the 'standard' locomotives that emerged at that time were in one case scrapped very early on the LMS (ROD), and in the other case only really utilised on the originating company's lines (N class). The ARLE project to deliver standardised designs was quickly buried when the war ended, and glorious diversity once again flowered.

Did you get anywhere with this? It is a regular problem well known to those who model lines which featured many locos with carrying wheels both leading and trailing the driven wheels. The model needs to be arranged such that most of the weight (80 - 90%) bears on the driven wheels at all times, and there is minimal drag from the carrying wheels. Quick test of whether the loco is heavy enough for the traction required on the layout. Take the carrying wheels off, test the loco for traction with the maximum load it has to move on the most problematic location of the layout. If it slips anywhere, add weight until it doesn't. If that's good then (doubtless documented earlier in this thread) there are three main aspects to look at: The carrying wheels should all spin freely, easy to test while off the loco. Any springing on the carrying wheels should be soft, and only sufficient for track holding, no more. Check that the flanges do not foul on the body work underside, may be necessary to cut arches for clearance or fit wheelsets with finer flanges or of below scale diameter. (This can be difficult on small locos with large diameter carrying wheels that barely clear under low footplating, a regular feature of Victorian era designs.)

Is it a surprise? Everyone is against the idea: except for a few folks of questionable sanity, and no interest whatsoever in discussing alternatives. We may have significant differences of opinion and emphases on causes and possible remedies, but there will be general sympathy arising from our uniform convergence of interest. All rather different from what should be done on our home turf, where there is wide ranging disagreement on a very large number of issues: which range from the simple and trivial yet capable of inspiring passionate feeling, to the exceedingly important which very few can be bothered to study in the depth required to support credibly informed opinion. It's very rare that we converge to any extent here!

What is preserved in an industrial artefact - such as a locomotive - is the realisation of the design. These things were operated commercially in an almost wholly utilitarian fashion, all parts would be replaced as required when worn, broken, corroded or otherwise unfit for purpose, and assemblies at overhaul would use the functional parts to hand without concern for maintaining the original relationships of the components that first emerged from works. As an example, any Kylchap d/c A4 assembly can have the 'Mallard' plates and speed record plaques on it, and would be just as 'authentic' as the one that currently has that kit hung on it.

Loving all the ideas in forced perspective by clever use of scale. Slightly off the question asked, if there is to be a station it will need the proper carriage porch provision so that Maestros, Divas, Batonwaggers, and other assorted creatives can be transported as unruffled as possible from Pullman car to performance venue... The extremely successful Kingsway concert hall in London was right over the Aldwych tube line, and many recordings made there are graced by the subterranean bass accompaniment this provided! Given that many operatic subjects relate to at least one protagonist ending up in the hot place it might be quite appropriate?

... J39, J50, K3, O7. At least you will be home and dry on the N7s, unless Oxford decide to concentrate solely on Hatfield's allocation.

Just imagine if they achieved that overall standard of appearance on a model of the Wainwright D 'Coppertop' 4-4-0. (Quite why no-one has got around to a RTR model of this class as yet baffles me, preserved specimen, elegance second only to the Stirling single, good performers with a very long and successful service history.)

Since a circle of track - or better a small oval - for test purposes can go on a sheet of hardboard and be stored standing vertically, the space limitation is easily overcome. Track with curvature provides an immediate benefit over the rolling road, apart from cheapness, in that it exercises the mechanism in the lateral movements required for operation on anything other than straight plain track. I have never had the slightest difficulty examining a moving mechanism by applying power to the motor directly, so regard the rolling road as a luxury purchase; would rather spend the money on a model or two.

http://mthtrains.com/news/037 Says you can use programme track to change address, I'd give that a whirl first.

The mechanism from any UK model will lose the effect of the bar frames, just will not have all that airspace under the boiler. The most suitable mechanism for an OO model of the S160, is to use the mechanism from an HO model of the USRA light mikado (or one of its post WWI relatives), which has 5'3" drivers. Those drivers in HO come out around 18mm diameter, for a near enough scale wheel diameter and coupled wheelbase in OO on which to place a kit S160 body. But that is very rarefied territory nowadays, few indeed up for the cutting and adapting such a project would entail.

Press C (=clear) then zero twice to get 00, and press enter. That sets to the analogue 00 address. (Alternatively you could press clear and then cycle through the entire address list using '+', and enter when you find 00, but that's likely to be many more keystrokes.) The rest as you describe, loadsa 4's, then two minute power off.

The swinging component 'at the top' is the expansion link, and the drive that makes it swing comes from the now bent 'eccentric rod'. As already observed the eccentric crank is now well out of position, may well have been moved to that incorrect position once the expansion link was jammed up under the footplate and the eccentric rod started bending. If you want to try repositioning the eccentric crank as 'toboldlygo' suggests, then the eccentric rod needs to completely straightened as well. This is because any bend will effectively shorten it, and that means that the expansion link can be pulled further back than it should be, which may result in a repeat incident. You may well find that the locating hole in the eccentric crank has been so much rounded off by its displacement that it will not properly locate any longer on the flats on the crankpin and just flops about, if so best to return to vendor.

Stepping away from Dapol's investment for a moment There's going to be cross-subsidy within any given range. It is perfectly true that a model tooled up and on sale 'before the price rises' that has fully recovered its research and tooling investment and made a profit, could then be sold at a much lower price than a newly tooled model introduction with equivalent content, that has to be sold at a price to first achieve investment recovery and then turn a profit. But instead of that, what you do is apply a pricing model that 'spreads the pain' over the entire range. The most dramatic price rises are on the smaller and cheaper items like wagons; especially the small four wheeled types tooled over fifteen years ago and which have sold in wheelbarrow-load quantities since then. There's a one piece moulded body, running gear assembly of circa twenty-five parts onto a moulded plastic frame, maybe three paint stages, two part packaging, done. Not too much hand assembly content in short. Which brings us to what Dapol might just take on. They already have some good legacy steam era wagon tooling covering types not otherwise available, and sell the bodies only for a small price at present. The running gear has been the weakness. Upgrade that aspect, and between relatively little of the expensive hand assembly that such product requires, and the much increased prices on Chinese production of equivalent items, there might be an opportunity. Wait and see...

The turnbuckles for your Quin set will be for the truss rod bracing, four per vehicle body. Cannot name a current source for suitable brass lost wax castings, but someone here is bound to know.

Considerations of whether it is on a plane surface apart... This has come up before, but cannot quickly find my way to any postings on here referring to it. The example I had that showed this effect, it was the seating of the front driving axle bearings in the block that was the problem, they were not going all the way home. (Tool wear reducing the size of the locations for the bearings? But why not equally affecting all the axles?) So the loco was supported on the front and rear drivers. A little material removed within the front bearing locations, and all straight and level, all tyres in rail contact.

Actually I feel that's adequately described as a cab forward, oil fired, double boiler Fairlie articulated, if it is all simple expansion as the cylinder sizes imply. A double boiler Fairlie doesn't need 'Garratt' added to the name, and if you take off the outer engine units that make the illustrated scheme more 'articulated' than the pair of Fairlie bogies that make it a Fairlie, that's clearly what you have, a double boiler Fairlie. Think that's fairly clear. Then if it is a compound, we might come to 'cab forward, oil fired, double boiler Fairlie-Mallet'. (Most North American so called 'Mallet' locos are no such thing as 'Mallet' requires compounding - the N&W Y6 types for example were true Mallet types - and are simply 'articulated' locomotives, as no specific designer name ever got attached to this scheme AFAIK.) Wonderful fun whatever it is named. You might want to put your name to it as designer, for a more compact title...

Something that has been very helpful and has undoubtedly prevented much mishap over the years in other industries with safety critical operations, is the practise of providing a secure anonymous error reporting facility. Would that already be in place in rail operations generally, and if not, why not?

Me too. The really, really, yellow brick of Kings Cross station and much early GNR construction is very difficult to make a convincing job of, as per other posts here. The trouble it seems to me is that it is just so improbable. There's that fresh mustard yellow base colour, and then all the other brick colours imaginable, here, there and everywhere, mainly thanks to the very crude 'clamp' firing: you can even find blue-purple fused patches. I have in the past gone down the route of mustard yellow, coated all over with a dark grey-brown filth, which isn't really quite right but doesn't offend the eye overmuch. It needs a sensitive artist's eye for colour palette, which I have not got...

LMR's 46237 City of Bristol, was operated on WR in spring 1955 to provide comparison data for the King class modifications to enable the Cornish Riviera to be acclerated to a 4 hour schedule.

Won't know until we see the release, because the livery sample may well be based on earlier tooling. I still see cast chassis block with socking great eye-catching shiny spinning gear shaft end, in a location where there should be daylight under the boiler, on the sample in the photographs. Expectations have moved on rather since this mechanism layout was introduced, and the other eight coupled freight heavies in their range are all significantly more refined in this respect. 'Could use improvement', wait and see if Hornby have acted. Tender underframe: for modelling purposes the 4,000 gallon Stanier tender underframe is constant, whether the nine ton or ten ton bunker bodywork sits on top. So if the new underframe without spurious valance and thus having correctly proportioned spring and axlebox detail is fitted beneath a 9 ton bunker body, that will be a step forward.

It is the first truly successful steam express design in the UK, and the foundation for all that followed. The format of a leading bogie, cylinders between the bogie wheels, makes for a stable fast loco, and not significantly improved upon thereafter to the end of steam. All the subsequent UK single and 4-4-0 designs are more or less copies of this format, which then progresses along several lines of devlopment into 4-4-2, 4-6-0 and 4-6-2 types.

I think not. An EP is undertaken to show where the fits need work. The running plate is a tad high relative to both the cylinder head and top slide bar, Get that footplate snugged down on these components and the gap between smokebox fairing and cylinder closes up too. It was the socking great crankpin that jabbed me in the eye, but I am sure that's just a 'fit together' component rather than representative of the final appearance. Go back to the underside photo, (a couple of pages back) and the bogie splashers are positioned 'outboard' for the negotiation of our tight model curves. If I understood the text correctly, the splashers are to be poseable, inboard for correct appearance but the model then confined to near straight track, outboard to get around curves. Good solution for what is otherwise 'impossible'.

Wait and see on that front. I'd guess the flanged wheelset is being provided for 'showcase' purposes, and only useable for any modeller in the happy possession of 4' and up radii on the layout; that is if the past pacific releases I own are anything to go by. The recent MN has a fixed truck and unflanged wheelset in the photos I have seen: does it come with a flanged display wheelset included in the packaging for the owner to install?. It is no legend. There's film of the NYC Niagara (400 ton 4-8-4 and seven axle tender ensemble) with roller bearings everywhere including on the rods, being kept rolling - very slowly - by two men. What with physics being the same both sides of the Atlantic... the brakes had to be properly off, cylinder cocks open and track level. This is the secret of the iron road, very little energy is absorbed in rolling friction, starting from a hard and elastic tyre on a hard and elastic rail. (Elastic in the sense used in physics.)