Garden Railway Forum

Thanks, Tony & Matt - I think there's potentially quite a bit of inter-car wiring on mine (head/tail lamps and carriage lighting) - so will need to think carefully about what's required. Good to have some options on the table.

hussra:64766 wrote:Quite pleased with haulage test this morning (once the frost was off the rails) - it could probably have handled more, but it was jolly cold out.

Tried again later and got up to 6 four-wheelers before the cold drove us back inside. Could have handled more, but at least that confirms that we should have no problems with a couple of trailers.

Looking superb there Richard, look forward to seeing this progress. Must say that cab space is rather generous even by standard gauge standards. I of course approve of that.

Hope to see it running on the CVLR at some point. talking of which we must arrange a date where all the previous suspects can make in may for another steamup this year again.

Pendo Pilot:64840 wrote:Looking superb there Richard, look forward to seeing this progress. Must say that cab space is rather generous even by standard gauge standards. I of course approve of that.  ;)

'tis true, though do note that there are as yet no controls fitted and that will take a certain amount of room. Plus the driver shewn is somewhat underscale being of (hush!) G scale proportions. Cab size a bit constrained by the pre-existing windows.

There is a tale told about the UTA MPD units, some of which had a very small cab next to the gangway connection. It's said that a passenger one day looked quite agitated, walked to the front of the train, pulled open the cab door, stared in, closed the door again and returned to his seat.

Five minutes later he got up again, walked to the front, opened the door, stared at the driver again, slammed the door and returned to his seat.

Two minutes later, he got up again, walked to the front, opened the door, stared at the driver and said "Mister, are you going to be on that toilet all day?"

Pendo Pilot:64840 wrote:Hope to see it running on the CVLR at some point. talking of which we must arrange a date where all the previous suspects can make in may for another steamup this year again.

Would love to, if available...

Busy... so busy...

But the Guard's compartment is filling up nicely with electronics. There is a lower layer under this lot which has the on/off switch, charging socket and fuse (as well as the motor sticking up through the floor); the 5xAA batteries are in a big box under the floor which needs decorating with "engine"-looking bits.



Need to drill a big hole in the front for the headlamp, and also holes at the back for jumper leads, then progress to finishing off & painting the bodywork.

Still room for another layer of gubbins. Must think about sound options.

Right, after proving that the RC carriage lighting circuit works nicely, this car has now been stripped back to the basic body shell for filling and painting, followed by interior fitting-out. (RC carriage lighting might be a bit much - especially with directional headlights to boot - but there's a spare channel with a handy on/off switch on the transmitter, so why not? Will be handy when running in daytime on lines with tunnels.)

And the two other cars (another driving car, which will be finished as a second driving motor car though in fact unpowered, and a buffet trailer) are on their way from TrackShack.

hussra:66620 wrote: And the two other cars (another driving car, which will be finished as a second driving motor car though in fact unpowered, and a buffet trailer) are on their way from TrackShack.

It's been coming along nicely. I look forward to seeing the final result.

Have you chosen a colour scheme yet? New railcars seem to be an excuse for most modern managements to update the corporate image.......

Regards,
Graeme

GTB:66632 wrote:Have you chosen a colour scheme yet? New railcars seem to be an excuse for most modern managements to update the corporate image.......

I think we may well just stick with the EHLR red and cream scheme, which fits nicely with the engraved lines on the bodysides. Boring, but workable.

Very brief update. All three bodyshells have now been assembled, and await filling & painting. But we had a quick test run yesterday:

hussra:67963 wrote:All three bodyshells have now been assembled, and await filling & painting.

That will be impressive to see in action out on the line when finished.

Have you considered recessing the intermediate couplers to reduce the space between cars? There seems to be plenty of clearance on the curves.

Regards,
Graeme

Good idea, but I don't think it's going to be feasible, sadly. The motor bogie, being substantially longer than the now-cosmetic IP sideframes, comes very very close to the inside face of the buffer beam.



I think some more serious haulage trials will be needed before long, to see whether one motor bogie will do or if another would help. The best method is probably to give it a run at Pendo's line

Still intending to consider the possibility of gangway connections, just to make uncoupling trickier.

You could use a bar coupling between cars so there closer coupled?

spooner:67976 wrote:You could use a bar coupling between cars so there closer coupled?

You beat me to it!

May be worth considering, but it would need to be reasonably straightforward to couple and uncouple. (The whole train is 5' 4" over buffers at present, so can't really remain semi-permanently coupled here, never mind when travelling.)

Plus the motor cars will have the exhausts on the inner end and some space is needed for those, and for the jumper leads to adjust to the varying curvature. Leave it with me... time to experiment with gangways, I think. Somewhere here I have a little stash of neodymium magnets...

I'm suddenly inspoired to have a got at either an LNER Sentinal style of things or one of the NER Petrol-Electrics...

Ive the drawings for the latter somewhere.

Love it, its just 'cool'!

FWIW, I think the spacing looks about right.

You'll soon fill up that room with exhausts, gangways, water fillers for loos, mysterious little boxes that formerly held carbide for the gas lighting, vac. butterflies...

hussra:67968 wrote:Good idea, but I don't think it's going to be feasible, sadly.

Hmmmm. I see what you mean....

These aren't the sort of thing one would shunt regularly. If I built something like this, I'd just put a pin on one car and a flat brass plate with a slot in it on the other one. You could even use a curved slot to open up the spacing a bit on curves if needed.

Regards,
Graeme

GTB:68018 wrote:If I built something like this, I'd just put a pin on one car and a flat brass plate with a slot in it on the other one. You could even use a curved slot to open up the spacing a bit on curves if needed.

Aha! - like the coupling between loco and tender on my father's Hornby O gauge clockwork stuff. Will have a think. Loads of great ideas on this thread, thanks all.

How about Bachmann knuckle couplings Richard?
They wouldn't look too unprototypical, would close the gap a bit and wouldn't foul the gangways when uncoupling like the chopper hooks might.