Garden Railway Forum

A few photos of the current state of my Quarry Hunslet loco project. This started out as what was meant to be a quick build using one of the Garden Railway Specialist body kits. I had already decided I would make my own chassis rather than using the GRS one. When I compared the body kit to drawings of the prototype I then realised how compromised its dimensions were, so started designing my own parts. In the end I have used none of the GRS parts, it’s all to my own design using 3D printed parts for the main body components, 3mm Perspex sheet cut on my CNC milling machine for the footplate & buffer beams and some plasticard.

The chassis is milled from 25mm aluminium angle extrusion with 55mm PCB board brass standoffs used as frame spacers. Wheels and cranks are from Essel Engineering and the gearbox is MSC with the original Mashima motor swapped for a much more powerful 2225 coreless motor. Slidebars and crossheads are from an LGB Stainz with milled aluminium con rods and coupling rods. Although overscale, they work well and look ok, I will shorten the slidebars and make a more prototypical motion bracket to improve the look.

Power will be from a 1000mAh 3s lipo sat under the saddle tank with the tank removable to provide access for charging. Control via RC using a Micron MR603 with onboard ESC.

That does look good. I'm sure that mechanism will been a lot smoother and more powerful than the GRS version.

Rik

Rather more robustly engineered than mine, (https://gardenrails.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14820) but I did get a feeling of deja vu looking at your pictures! Mine also has a removable saddle to be able to get at batteries, Rx, etc.
Please keep us up to speed as you go along, with plenty of pics.

Very nice, well engineered and tidy build. Watching with interest.

Its looking really good already, if you ever need reference photos I volunteer at the Bala Lake Railway and can always get inside the shed when we're doing any workshop jobs

philipy wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 8:09 am Rather more robustly engineered than mine,

Yours is rather more detailed than mine!

tommygander1941 wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 6:38 pm Its looking really good already, if you ever need reference photos I volunteer at the Bala Lake Railway and can always get inside the shed when we're doing any workshop jobs

That is very kind of you. Any shots of the backhead fittings, safety valve and cab area in general would be very helpful.

Durley wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 8:57 pm

philipy wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 8:09 am Rather more robustly engineered than mine,

Yours is rather more detailed than mine!

Mutual admiration society!

A bit more detail added and a test run using a Hornby HM7000 DCC sound decoder run from Bluetooth and power from an onboard battery. I am right at the limit of the current capacity of the DCC chip (1.5A) with the motor I am using, so will switch back to RC control for this one, but it proves it works and is a cheap way to add sound to smaller battery powered locos.

That does sound good. The brake squeal is especially well done, though only just within my hearing range .....

Rik

Ah I didn't realise you ran on 45mm gauge, anything over probably 2ft 4" and a QH would have to be inside framed, of which I've only found two places that had such examples. There was Penmaenmawr granite quarry which had four of 3ft gauge and Mancetter Quarry, which had two of 2ft 8" gauge.

Thanks Tommy, yes this one is all wrong below the footplate! It was intended as a quick build so I had something British to run in place a an LGB Stainz, but I’ve got carried away trying to make it a bit more prototypical than the GRS kit I stared with and have ended up using nothing from the kit. I do have a plan to build another at about 24mm/ft so my 45mm gauge scales correctly to Dinorwic’s 1’10 3/4” track.