Scalefour Forum

Will and Dave should call their 2-8-0s 'Bumble Bees'... some blinkered theorists say that they can't fly!

Dave Bradwell wrote: I just questioned whether the design was optimum. Ahhh, optimum for what? Current collection, weight distribution, haulage, ease of assembly/adjustment, or something else? Perhaps it just needs another csb for the pickups to get the downward pressures all the same - or simple c...

by Alan Turner » Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:51 am Simon_S wrote: Hi Nick, You might also consider Colin Craig's modern track products. Simon Interesting, all I get with that site is a blue page with a black square in the middle? Me too, solved by installing latest version of Adobe Flash Player. It's a pain...

I can confirm that P87 wheels work fine with S4 track, and therefore probably with P4. I have been using wheels from the now defunct 'Railflyer' source, which look very similar, for some time. The insulating bushes came for 2mm or 1mm axles, and I have used both. Their 40" diameter wheel in P87...

Full springing of all stock really helps; battery powered traction solves the problem.

It would appear that my reasons for going to springy beams on the Finney 8-wheel tender have not been understood by some; Keith is right, the idea has been available to interested modellers for some time. In fact, one of my first P4 locos, an S&D 7F, had this feature and that was just after I jo...

Indeed Guy, and I have an untried idea for neggy rail pickups - a brass drawing pin. The dome shape should work smoothly on ramps, and it can be larger than proto to make sure it stays on the rail as it won't be visible. The pin part could ride in a piece of brass tube with the conductor wire fitted...

The Lanarkshire tender chassis has a slightly different axle spacing; between 1st and 2nd and 3rd and 4th are the same as the A3/4 tenders, but the 2nd - 3rd spacing is 1mm less on the WD tender. Get-away-with-able... The Brassmasters Easi-chas conversion looks like a better bet if you don't want to...

One other thought: would it be worth actually electrifying the conductor rails and picking up from those? Guy, I have tried this with some success... but. The main problem is getting the pickup shoes to behave. On most of the real things, the shoe beams are attached at each end to the wheel bearing...

Not for the faint-hearted, but a pencil can be used for very fine work. 2B or preferably higher. I take about 6-10mm of the wood off the non-pointy end, and wrap the 'lead' - which isn't of course, it's a mixture of graphite and clay, the higher the B the less clay - with foil, and clip over that. T...

We call ourselves scale modellers, right? A bit of the dreaded mathematics:- The real b-b according to the drawings from North British in one of my O.S.Nock books is 4' 5 and 5/8". Or 53.625" for easier calculation. Multiply by 25.4 (Millimeters per inch) equals 1362.075mm. Divide by our s...

I had hoped to get there this year, but after the drive back from Plymouth to London the day before taking 8½ hours rather than the usual 4½, in that heat with a malfunctioning air-con, there was no way I could surface in time! As it turned out, one of the reasons why I felt so shattered was that I...

I had hoped to get there this year, but after the drive back from Plymouth to London the day before taking 8½ hours rather than the usual 4½, in that heat with a malfunctioning air-con, there was no way I could surface in time! Stationary on the fast lanes of the A38, M5, M4, M25, and the slow lane ...

I keep looking at RC, and there is some interesting stuff out there, but until there is an alternative to LiPo batteries I won't try it. If you look seriously at the safety precautions advised by level headed commentators you wont try it, If only because melting those expensively created locos is b...

I don't think there is any problem with our understanding of the basis physics, it just that there are always a lots of other factors which can have an influence on the final result as well. Foe instance, I remember Don Roland telling me the problem's they got onto trying to establish the true weig...

Zebedeesknees I was not trying to persuade anyone to any particular method. Rather, I think Lindsay's gas light analogy is not wholly apposite, and that a closer analogy might be that while gas central heating might suit most houses best, electric oil and even solid fuels still can be equally appro...

One can receive from the CLAG website on the subject the impression that the positions of the fixed anchors and the center of mass, or gravity if you must, is of necessity of a precision that is in fact only desirable. A difference of a couple of mm in the placing of the inner anchors, or 10mm in th...

A few points come to my mind here. Modellers are generally conservative, and the thought of going away from at least one fixed axle, and the ease of driving same, replaced with the complication of a floating motor or gearbox and the need for torque reaction control in a fully sprung system is clearl...

After 15 or 20 years of explaining to you why springing is superior to 'equalisation' you still don't get the point, and I suspect that most people that have tried to help you have just given up. True here.. I have just tested the drawbar pull of a rigid Bachmann 24 with a sprung one. Rigid - 14% o...

With regard to soldering nuts to sheet brass, I keep some chemically blackened screws in my BA boxes for the purpose. Solder is most reluctant to adhere to blackened metal, and this saves the sometimes messy result from using grease.

On LiPo batteries.. The ones on eBay, Gearbest, etc., made in China for quadcopters and drones have a very small internal pcb which controls the charge and discharge rates. A single cell has a nominal 3.7v, and is quickly destroyed if the voltage on the bare cell is pushed to over 4.2v, or discharge...

There are a lot of details.. off the top of my head right now.. I searched 'induction charger' on eBay and the like, and found pairs with small enough coils to fit beween the rails, and small pcbs. The one in the picture is the transmitter coil and circuit board, to which I soldered a Bridge rectifi...

If you work your way round the circuference of almost any pair of wheels, it will likely be the case that there will be spots that are tighter than others. This is often only a slight variation, and with feel the back to back can be set to average out the error. If in any place the gauge can be held...

Successful charging of an on-board LiPo battery can be done this way:-

Perhaps I am posting this electronics stuff to the wrong forum.. I don't agree that 'the whole point' of radio control is just to eliminate wiring and pickups. The holy grail would be to be able to have no traction wiring or pickups, shorts between all wheels, and track circuits like the real thing,...