Something Different - French Metre-Gauge, 5.5mm Scale and Radio Control

[MickRalph]

I would be grateful if the admins could set up a new Workbench for me (Mick Ralph) and transfer this post to it.

While talking to Nick and Ted about radio control at Scaleforum last Sunday, I was encouraged to use the forum to share my experiences of modelling a little-known prototype, in an unusual scale and using radio control for power.

So here goes – but I am not a fast worker, so progress will be slow. However, starting a workbench thread may give me the impetus to work towards fulfilling my annual resolution to complete the work in progress, of which there is a lot, and to start work on my kit stash. Don’t hold your breath though …..

Firstly, I will give some background to explain my interests and I hope it won’t be too long, or boring.

I have been modelling since I was about 15, joining the Crawley MRS, where there were some fine EM modellers, Gordon Gravett among them. One of the early Railway Modeller magazines that I read included John Charman’s Charford Branch; this and trainspotting trips from Crawley to Woking via Horsham and Guildford to watch the west country expresses passing through led to my love of the ex-LSWR section of the Southern Railway. I started modelling the SR in EM gauge, but university, followed by marriage and children, together with lack of space for a layout, led to a hiatus in modelling activities.

I joined the South Western Circle and an early journal included a full description of the Torrington layout of John Nicholas; set in about 1912, the station was then a terminus, with a 3 foot gauge clay line running into the yard and two clerestory dining cars being stabled overnight before working expresses back to Waterloo in the morning. I was hooked and moved timescale back to 1912 and the LSWR. I continue to build stock for a prospective layout based on Torrington, which is in North Devon.

Later I met Roger Saunders (who I knew from the football club in our village) together with Barry Luck and Terry Bendall, operating Pulborough at an exhibition in Brighton. I changed gauge from EM to P4 and joined the operating team for Pulborough and later layouts, now, of course including Barry’s Plumpton Green.

Approaching retirement, my wife and I bought a house in the Correze department of France, a little south of Limoges. Here we discovered two long-distance road and walking trails following the routes of the metre-gauge Paris Orleans Correze (POC) and Tramways of the Correze (TC). There are several restored stations and some stock, and a large suspension bridge crossing a deep river valley. These were lovely rural railways and I found several books containing period photos and drawings of the stock, stations and features of the lines. I decided to model the TC, but to what scale? I loved Gordon Gravett’s Pempoul layout, which was to 1:50 scale with EM track. Having all the jigs/gauges for P4, I decided to use that gauge and to model in 1:55 (5.5mm) scale, for which there is a small specialist society whose members mostly model Welsh narrow gauge.

At an exhibition I was captivated by the End of the Line layout of Giles Favell, with its radio control of working lorries and cranes. I found his thread on NGRM Online, where he gives detailed descriptions of his construction methods and sources and more recently purchased his book from the Wild Swan collection. This seemed a good way to go for powering the railcars and locos of the TC, perhaps adding RC-controlled lorries and vans passing the trains as they proceed through the main street of a small town.

So there we have it – I am modelling French metre-gauge in 5.5mm scale on P4 track, all powered by RC, while also modelling the LSWR in the 1912 period in P4 gauge. I have also just remembered that I am renovating a 009 layout which I acquired for £10 about 6 years ago at an exhibition.

We are off to France for a month this week, so I may not be able to post much for a while, but I hope to be able to complete the motorisation of two or three railcars. A real challenge will be the operation of the turntable mechanism which the small autorails carried, as shown in some of the attached photos, which hopefully ameliorate the number of words in this first post.

Mick

[Terry Bendall]

All very interesting Mick The advaatge of modelling this field is that no one will be able to tell you when something is wrong because no one else will know anything about it! That viaduct is certainly worth modelling. Something to bring to Scaleforum in the future.

Terry Bendall

[MickRalph]

It's all there in the various books, but you are probably right - no-one whpo sees this or sees the outcome of my work is likely to be an expert. We will have to see how I get on before offering anything to Scaleforum. The viaduct is superb, especially as it is on a very minor line; it was opened by French President Poincaré in 1913. The viaduct would be large, if I made it - it is 170m long and about 92m above the floor of the valley, so about 3m long by 1.6m high. The challenge will be to make it a sensible size and retain its' imposing scale.

Mick

[hughesp87]

Mick,

A wonderful choice of prototype and scale and your initial group of photos shows some very promising progress. I found with my Danish models in P87 that the first thing to do is to set yourself some standards for basics such as coach and wagon wheels, which in turn allows you to design and produce products such as sprung w-irons and brake gear that the P4 modeller can buy "off the shelf".

As for building something that no-one knows about, there will always be an "expert" who tries to prove you wrong, but on the positive side, when you get to exhibitions there's no end of conversational options to enjoy with the interested viewer, as I have often found with my layout Obbekær. We are there to provide entertainment and interest after all, and if that results in an interesting debate with visitors, so much the better!

Good luck with your endeavours and I look forward to seeing more in due course.

Geraint

[pete_mcfarlane]

This looks interesting. I've recently read Bryan Morgan's 'The end of the line' which is full of journeys around France (and the rest of the Continent) on decrepit Autorails, and it all seems very modellable.

[zebedeesknees]

Mick, thanks for coming to see us and stimulate our brains at Scaleforum.

The lift and rotate mechanism has been substantial food for thought!

The lift function should be possible using the servo output from the receiver. We discussed the options for driving the rotation.

One question occurred to me last evening while discussing your post, given the rotation, does the railcar ever need reverse? If not, the rotation driven by the Rx could be bi-directional for the rotation control, and the speed controlled from one of the 'F' outputs, if I understand the Deltang programming instructions correctly. Best check with Andy at Micron anyway..

Another point - the vehicle would need to be well balanced around the rotation centre, like the turntable that it replaces!

Ted.

[JackBlack]

I still think just build the lifting mechanism and then a little man on a clear rod to push the railcar round! I'm sure Modelu could print the little man at the correct scale for you...

man-on-stick.jpg

I think it's a great project Mick, I'm really looking forward to seeing how it progresses. Thanks for sharing!

Cheers, Nick

[Enigma]

My take on a Correze station in HO.

Le Mortier.1.JPG

Never got round to starting a layout - but I was quite keen a few years ago. I would also have used 5.5mm scale with 16.5mm gauge.

[MickRalph]

Many thanks for the responses.

I am sorry for the delay in posting again, but we are in France and have had very limited internet access until today - we previously had satellite broadband, but that broke in the summer and the (English) providers were unable to work out what was wrong, so we decided to move to fibre broadband, which has been installed throughout our department. We booked it in late August for installation at the beginning of October, but we have been let down three times in the last 3 weeks, by having the installation confirmed the day before the due date, but then cancelled in the morning; we then received a text saying at lunchtime saying that that the technician was on his way, but he never arrived, and received an email advising us that the installation wasn't done as it would take longer than expected - how they worked this out without visiting the house I can't think!

Finally, on Monday my wife, who fortunately speaks fluent French, got a promise from the installers that a different technician would definitely attend yesterday to do the work. However, later that evening, customer services from the telecoms company telephoned to say that installation would be on Monday, as the technician would have to use a cherry-picker to work at the top of the telephone pole and they needed to obtain permission from the town hall to block the road. The argument that the other 5 houses in our hamlet had been installed by a man using a ladder cut no ice and they insisted that they would cancel the appointment for Friday. Friday arrived and with it a text from the technician saying he would arrive at 9:30. He duly arrived (with a ladder) and completed the work within 2 hours and the broadband was duly activated. This meant another phone call to customer services this morning to remind them that the visit on Monday with a cherry-picker is no longer required and they confirmed this. However, the client app still shows an appointment for Monday, so we wait to see whether anyone turns up.

The other annoying thing is that many of the communications have been channelled through a neighbour's mobile phone, as the telecoms website won't accept a UK number, which has one more digit than a French one. As we didn't have a French mobile, they insisted that we use a neighbour's phone for the order, saying that we could change thye number if we acquired a French phone. After the first cancelled appointment we purchased a phone (after two 90 mile round trips to the nearest telecoms shop in Limoges) and although the telecoms company changed the numbers on their records, they failed to advise the installers, who continued to call our neighbour, even after we advised them of the new number.

Anyway, all is now well, and we now have broadband internet access, though the delays cost us about £40 in roaming charges. We will try, but I doubt if they will compensate us for these costs. We can't email them, as they don't have an email address! You don't realise how dependent you are on broadband until you don't have access to it.

I hope I haven't bored you with this sorry tale. Anyway thanks for the comments and suggestions.

Geraint - I really enjoyed watch your layout at Scaleforum.

Ted - you are right that the smaller railcars only drive forward, so couyld be operated from a F pad rather than the H pads; I suspect that, being based on bus engines, they did have a reverse gear, but not for use in public service. Also, as you say, the railcars will have to be very carefully balanced about the turntable axis.

Nick - I do intend to use a man on a stick to do the turning, rather than drive the trurntable mechanism with a motor.

I haven't actually done much work on the railcars while I have been here, as I have been working on wiring a control panel for an 009 layout for a visit from the grandchildren shortly after we return home at the end of the week. I have however, started (very cautiously) to add extra wires to some of the P pads on the receivers, including a couple of Rx61, which I will probably use on the larger Billard railcar in case I have to use a voltage booster in this system. The railcar uses a High Level bogie with a 12 volt Mashima motor, so I will have to see whether the motor will run at an appropriate speed on a 1S Lipo battery. I am hoping that the motors supplied with the RC loco kits can be fitted to the gearboxes of the other railcars, though they are all fitted with Mashima motors at the moment.

I hope I will get on faster after we get home at the end of the week.

Mick

[jim s-w]

Interesting stuff.

Can I ask though why 5.5mm scale and not 6mm? Just seems a bit awkward that's all.

Jim

[grovenor-2685]

More to the point, modelling French metre guage with drawings for the prototype dimensioned in mm why bring feet into it at all?
Using P4 track the scale is 1000/18.83 = 1:53.1
If you really must involve mms to the foot it comes to 5.74

Whatever its lovely modelling.

[MickRalph]

Hi Jim. I'm not sure why 5.5mm (1:55) scale should be more "awkward" than 6mm (1:50). In either scale almost everything has to be scratchbuilt.

I know that Gordon Gravett used 6mm scale for Pempoul, but he used EM trackwork; actually in 6mm, P4 is closer to scale, but in 1:55. EM would be closer. I chose 5.5mm as there is a user group, which sells scale figures, and old diecast motor vehicles were produced to that scale by Corgi and others. I am hoping to have some vehicles operated by radio control on the layout I plan to build.

Mick

[jim s-w]

I was thinking like a 4mm modeller. As in 1mm = 3 inches. Obviously in 6mm scale 1mm = 2 inches while in 5.5mm scale 1mm = 2.18 inches. Hence much more awkward.

As Keith says it's a mute point anyway if all your prototype measurements are metric.

[zebedeesknees]

Many thanks for the responses.

I have however, started (very cautiously) to add extra wires to some of the P pads on the receivers, including a couple of Rx61, which I will probably use on the larger Billard railcar in case I have to use a voltage booster in this system.

Note that there are no 'F' pads on the older 6x series of DT receivers like there are on the 4x series and the new Micron 6xx ones. The DT site recommended boosting the output current from a 'P' pad with an FET. An example circuit was shown. The 'H' output will drive the motor of course, but if you want to switch interior lights from the Tx a current booster may be needed.

The railcar uses a High Level bogie with a 12 volt Mashima motor, so I will have to see whether the motor will run at an appropriate speed on a 1S Lipo battery. I am hoping that the motors supplied with the RC loco kits can be fitted to the gearboxes of the other railcars, though they are all fitted with Mashima motors at the moment.
Mick

Looking at your chassis pic, a single worm and gear (?) might be a bit fast. I recently tested a Tenshodo bogie fitted with 10.5mm diameter wheels on a single 1S battery and found it to give an ideal shunting speed, but short of pull. As haulage won't be an issue with a railcar, I would certainly try that motor with a 1S before making any changes. With the motor supplied in the kit, I would go for a High Level MicroMiser horizontal, and the 80:1 gear ratio.

Ted.

[MickRalph]

Thanks for that, Ted.

You are right about the lack of F-pads on the Rx61. I was intending to use one on the Billard railcar, which drives in both directions, so the H pads are right for this railcar. I won't need a servo for this one, as it doesn't need a turntable. It does need front and rear lights for each direction of travel, and I will add interior lighting, so these will be driven by P pads. I am hoping that by using high intensity leds the gurrent draw will be low enough to run the front and rear lights for each direction from P1 and P2 pads which provide automatic directional lighting.

Thanks for the suggestion for the High Level gearbox to run with the Minebea motors in the RC kit; I am certainly planning to test the motor currently fixed to the chassis shown in my picture, which will power one of the single ended railcars.

Mick