Le Corbusier wrote:
I got the impression that because different people have different strengths and weaknesses (so different issues arise) there were just a plethora of options to try in order to determine what works for you?
Here I think, we have the nub of the issue. Peoples abilities vary considerably. Give half a dozen people a pair of wheels and a BB gauge and I suspect that the settings they achieve will vary slightly, we are not all engineers. The P4 standards are the P4 standards, as Martin states, anything else cannot be, by definition.
The P4 standards have been proved to work by 100s of working layouts built successfully over the years, but a degree of Quality Control and self discipline is required to achieve perfect running, which may be beyond some to achieve. This is not to denigrate these people, but accept the reality. Many years ago, I tried to make a loco with a sprung chassis. It derailed with monotonous regularity. I took out the springs and put equalising beams in and it ran perfectly. That does not mean that springing does not work, just that I couldn't get it to. Some of the smoothest running coaching stock I have seen run was sprung.
Perhaps some of the derailments witnessed have been wrongly ascribed to incorrect BB setting. I have witnessed occasions where a train will complete a circuit several times and then something derails. Replaced on the track everything runs OK until the same item derails again. A thorough investigation reveals no obvious cause therefore adjust the BB. This may not be the underlying cause, but that is deemed the answer. I have used the phrase before but we are dealing with an envelope of probabilities and just occasionally a limit is exceeded. Understanding this may not be easy and rectifying it even harder, but it should be possible.
Why did I choose to work to S4 standards? It was not because I thought that P4 wouldn't work, it was because I preferred the exact scale dimensions given in the original Protofour table but not adopted for commercial use. I can understand exactly why the MRSG did this given the leap of faith that was required at the time. Perhaps if they had had the courage of their convictions and gone the whole hog, we would not be having this discussion now.
Regards
Tony.
Inspiration from the past. Dreams for the future.