Sprung/Compensated bogies

[doktorstamp]

There are on the market a number of the above;
Brassmasters
MJT
Comet (Springing pack extra)
Bill Bedford
to list but a few off the top of my head, no doubt there are others. My question really is which, and more importantly, do members prefer to use, and why.

Brassmasters, and I confess to having a personal preference here, is largely due to the simplicity of design.

I look forward to reading and learning from the replies.

mfG

Nigel

[Tim V]

Don't bother!

I use the original plastic bogies with success!

[jim s-w]

Um, is it wrong if I vote for the brassmasters ones?

Jim

[Will L]

Don't bother!

I use the original plastic bogies with success!

And if you model a railway/period when original plastic bodies don't exist? But then I suppose this is a concept GWR modellers aren't familiar with.

Will

[David B]

I have settled on the Masokit bogie.

First and foremost, I want consistency throughout my stock so anything I build with a bogie (other than a loco) will have a Masokit underneath. Springing may not be everyone's idea but it is mine and I like the thought that should there be any imperfections in track it runs on (not mine, of course), the springing will help it stay where it is meant to be for longer!

Secondly, the Masokit bogie kit is not for a fixed wheelbase, so I can make up whatever is required then, with cosmetic sides added, I have whatever bogie I need. I like them and have found that they go together really nicely.

David

[Andy W]

I like the idea of sprung bogies - but I've never had much success. They also take a while to set up. The Brassmasters are quick and do the job.

[David Thorpe]

RTR coaches, eg Bachmann Mk1s - I just use the bogies as supplied, replacing the 00 wheelsets with P4 ones. Sometimes it is necessary to carve away a bit of plastic on the inside faces of the bogies. These "conversions" all run well.

Where I've actually had to construct bogies, I've recently been using the Brasmasters ones which, as Ealing says, go together fairly quickly and work well, although setting the ride height can involve a lttle bit of trial and error.

DT

[Rod Cameron]

I've used MJTs and Bedfords quite a bit, and have a few Brassmasters to try out. I'll also be doing a few conversions by just replacing the wheelsets as DT has done and thinning the sideframes a bit, probably with pinpoint bearings also. I did one Bachmann Mk1 with Masokits bogies but it seemed over-complicated compared with the Bedfords, especially when you couldn't attach the bogies with the original Bachmann screw.

Somewhere I have a Mitchell/Pendlenton bogie kit which I'm too scared to take out of the packet!

[Jol Wilkinson]

I used to fit mainly MJTs but a rare failure of the torsion bar/sideframe joint (difficult to repair) and "notchy" rotation of the bogie press stud has made me look elsewhere. The latter can be fixed with careful filing of the male part of the stud but is a PITA. That's a shame as the ease of fitting to different carriage underframes was an advantage.

These two difficulties prompted Dick Tarporley to design an adaptor etch for the MJTs that replaced the single torsion bar with a pair of wires and substituted a nut/bolt fixing for the press stud. This was shown in a posting on the activities of the CAG in Jan 2011 viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1213 but I don't think that they have yet been put into production.

I've tried Mitchell/Pendlenton, Masokit and Bill Bedford sprung bogies. As has already been pointed out, these generally require careful setting up as well as being fiddly to assemble. I am not yet convinced that they give sufficiently superior performance to warrant the time spent on them, although I realise that I will be branded by some as a heretic for saying this. However, the 12 wheel LNWR diner I have just built does seem to ride very smoothly on the Masokits inside bearing 6 wheel bogies, so I may try a Masokits outside bearing bogie on one of the heavy carriage kits that I have in stock. Although Mike Clark's instructions are a bit daunting when you first look at them, in my experience his products are always well thought out.

For those of us that build carriage kits, fitting the cosmetic side frames without having to hack them about too much is also a benefit, something that was also a bit of a problem with MJTs and LNWR sideframes, as the location for the torsion bar requires that you have to hack off the cosmetic spring for the bogie cross beam/bolster and have to find a way to re-fit it. That is something that the Brassmasters design has addressed, so they are now my preferred option. Or at least until someone re-invents the wheel.

Jol

[jim s-w]

RTR coaches, eg Bachmann Mk1s - I just use the bogies as supplied, replacing the 00 wheelsets with P4 ones. Sometimes it is necessary to carve away a bit of plastic on the inside faces of the bogies. These "conversions" all run well.
DT

They do indeed, at first. If you run them a lot they get increasingly sloppy and the performance drops. This doesn't apply to other makes though in my experience.

Cheers

Jim

[Will L]

I used to fit mainly MJTs but a rare failure of the torsion bar/sideframe joint (difficult to repair) and "notchy" rotation of the bogie press stud has made me look elsewhere. The latter can be fixed with careful filing of the male part of the stud but is a PITA. That's a shame as the ease of fitting to different carriage underframes was an advantage.

These two difficulties prompted Dick Tarporley

actually Dick Petter

to design an adaptor etch for the MJTs that replaced the single torsion bar with a pair of wires and substituted a nut/bolt fixing for the press stud. This was shown in a posting on the activities of the CAG in Jan 2011 viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1213 but I don't think that they have yet been put into production.

True but I can put anybody who interested in contact with Dick, he isn't on the Forum, and he would be happy to help. I believe he has fully developed etches for both modifying existing MTJ's and for a complete new bogie.

Will

[grovenor-2685]

Somewhere I have a Mitchell/Pendlenton bogie kit which I'm too scared to take out of the packet!

The bogie as such is very simple, similar to a Bedford. The problem is the bearing carriers and springs where you need to solder the spring wire. Bill B did (does) adapter bearing carriers that allow fitting CSB springs to these bogies and is a big improvement.

True but I can put anybody who interested in contact with Dick, he isn't on the Forum, and he would be happy to help. I believe he has fully developed etches for both modifying existing MTJ's and for a complete new bogie.

As I understand it the JSW/Brassmasters bogie is essentially the same idea.
Regards
Keith

[Jol Wilkinson]

I used to fit mainly MJTs but a rare failure of the torsion bar/sideframe joint (difficult to repair) and "notchy" rotation of the bogie press stud has made me look elsewhere. The latter can be fixed with careful filing of the male part of the stud but is a PITA. That's a shame as the ease of fitting to different carriage underframes was an advantage.

These two difficulties prompted Dick Tarporley

actually Dick Petter

to design an adaptor etch for the MJTs that replaced the single torsion bar with a pair of wires and substituted a nut/bolt fixing for the press stud. This was shown in a posting on the activities of the CAG in Jan 2011 viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1213 but I don't think that they have yet been put into production.

True but I can put anybody who interested in contact with Dick, he isn't on the Forum, and he would be happy to help. I believe he has fully developed etches for both modifying existing MTJ's and for a complete new bogie.

Will

Apologies to Dick for getting his surname wrong.

He gave me an etch at S4N to try out, which I started on only to discover it was for a 9' MJT bogie and I was trying to fit it to an 8'. So it's in the box until I take apart what I've done so far and get out a 9' version to chop up.

So far it looks as though the Brassmasters will be easier to assemble, but the modified MJT appears more robust.

Jol

[jjnewitt]

Somewhere I have a Mitchell/Pendlenton bogie kit which I'm too scared to take out of the packet!

The bogie as such is very simple, similar to a Bedford. The problem is the bearing carriers and springs where you need to solder the spring wire. Bill B did (does) adapter bearing carriers that allow fitting CSB springs to these bogies and is a big improvement.
Regards
Keith

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the arrangement of the primary suspension on the Mitchell/Pendleton coach bogies. Soldering the spring wire to the bearing carrier is a perfectly valid way of using a leaf spring. I have used that method very sucessfully in several aplications. The bogies do not need CSBs to get them to work properly, indeed CSBs will work no better than individual leaf springs. It's a good idea though to use wire that hasn't been curled up tightly and so is straight to start with. The problem I have with the M/P bogies is the arrangement of the secondary suspension which is way too skittish for my liking. It's a combination of how far inboard on the bogie they are positioned (I know this is a compromise to accomodate OO wheels) and the length/gauge of the springs. They would work much better if the springs were as wide on the bogie as possible, they were shorter in length and were made of a lighter gauge of wire. Indeed placing the springs as wide as possible is always a good thing. I've experimented in trying to get the secondary suspension to work more to my liking by using a clip to splay the springs and tension them even more. This has improved matters a lot but they're still a little bit wobbly. Perhaps I might try coil springs at some point.

Coach Bogies 2.JPG

The pinpoint Masokits bogies are good and are quite straightforward to put together but they lack secondary suspension. I've added some to mine using 0.010" guitar wire and 10BA bolt 'bolsters' and find that they work really well. The body doesn't wobble on top which it had a tendency to do without them. Given a proper flat bearing area for the top of the bogie they should work ok as intended but it's not always easy to achieve and I like having a proper secondary stage. Don't be put off by Mr Clarke's instructions, they are very comprehensive but easy to follow. Just because the instructions to something are shorter doesn't mean there's less work involved!

Coach Bogies 1.JPG

[grovenor-2685]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the arrangement of the primary suspension on the Mitchell/Pendleton coach bogies. Soldering the spring wire to the bearing carrier is a perfectly valid way of using a leaf spring.

I had quite a lot of these but I don't find soldering the primary spring easy or convenient, I could make a better jig no doubt. But the advent of Bill's three fingered hangers got rid of the issue and I would not want to go back to soldering them. I agree that using a CSB wire makes no real difference, but with Bill's hangers its trivial to install two wires rather than four. With soldering it would be another tricky task to get the bearings spaced accurately on the wire so using 4 seperate wires is easier.
Personally I found no advantage from the secondary springs and the design was tricky to set up for height, so I have left them out in all mine, whether Masokits, Bill Bs or Pendlentons.
Regards
Keith

[Will L]

True but I can put anybody who interested in contact with Dick, he isn't on the Forum, and he would be happy to help. I believe he has fully developed etches for both modifying existing MTJ's and for a complete new bogie.

As I understand it the JSW/Brassmasters bogie is essentially the same idea.

It is true that both the Brassmaster bogie and Dicks feature rigid sides connected by two torsion bars. But how/where the torsion bares are located and the way the two side are articulate are different. So same basic idea possibly, but the realisation is significantly different. About as equivalent as the Bill Bedford's and Masokits items.

Will

[Ian Everett]

I'm intrigued that Bill Bedford has gone from designing complex sprung bogies with lots of fiddly parts to 3D printing of whole underframes, printed in one piece - absolutely no bits to add - with one piece bogies shells - see http://www.mousa.biz/fourmm/coach/coach_parts/lms4.html They can hardly be called kits, they look so simple to build.

Has anybody tried these yet?

Ian

[jjnewitt]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the arrangement of the primary suspension on the Mitchell/Pendleton coach bogies. Soldering the spring wire to the bearing carrier is a perfectly valid way of using a leaf spring.

I had quite a lot of these but I don't find soldering the primary spring easy or convenient, I could make a better jig no doubt. But the advent of Bill's three fingered hangers got rid of the issue and I would not want to go back to soldering them. I agree that using a CSB wire makes no real difference, but with Bill's hangers its trivial to install two wires rather than four. With soldering it would be another tricky task to get the bearings spaced accurately on the wire so using 4 seperate wires is easier.

Ah I see. Sorry Keith I thought you meant that the principal was flawed in some way. Yes a good jig helps no end soldering the springs square to the carriers. I've had experience with Bill's three fingered hangers on some of his W-Iron frets, it's a nice idea and worked well. It was just a shame that the carriers themselves were too short!

[Hardwicke]

I dislike the torsion bar idea as the flexing on a soldered joint leads inevitably to a failure. Virtually all my MJT's have failed in this way or the set up has been out of true (my fault). I have a few of the Mitchell/Pendleton bogies and found them easy, though having just brought two out of storage, (and a temperature range of -13 + 30 ) I see some rusting on the steel wire. I also adapted the Scalefour MK3? bogies to a version of springing and they have been excellent.

[jim s-w]

I Agree

Thats why I removed it from my design.

Cheers

Jim

[grovenor-2685]

It was just a shame that the carriers themselves were too short!

He has done quite a variety of lengths, i don't recall actually getting the wrong length in any of the sets I've used but it probably happened, knowing Bill. The ones done for Pendlenton bogies were a special etch of bearing carriers for just that purpose.

Thats why I removed it from my design.

The torsion bar was not essential to the MJT design, I assembled most of mine with a simple pivot rather than a torsion bar, then there was no risk of them being soldered up out of square and no stress on the soldered joints. (both of which problems I had with trying the torsion bar idea). Using the bar as a simple pivot fixed that, but then the next problem was the press studs. Early models seemed to work very well, but something changed in the press stud supply so later ones could be very stiff and frustrating to fix. Only 2 or 3 sets of my stock remain in service, the rest have been replaced by Bill's or Pendlentons.
Regards
Keith

[Will L]

I dislike the torsion bar idea as the flexing on a soldered joint leads inevitably to a failure.

A very real objection to the MTJ design, which is exactly why Dick came up with a new design where the bogie side are no longer effectively pivoting about the torsion bar. So the solder joint are not subject to anything like so much stress, and design ensures the joint can be effectively reinforced, which was not possible with the MTJ design.

but then the next problem was the press studs. Early models seemed to work very well, but something changed in the press stud supply so later ones could be very stiff and frustrating to fix.

Yes the MTJ use of press studs was a nice idea. Unfortunately the dressmaking industry don't seems to have an interoperability requirements on press studs, nor any need to specify the design to the sort of tolerances required for the job the MTJ put them. A failing that became clear when the original source of press studs dried up. So Dick went back to nuts and bolts.

Will

[grovenor-2685]

Masokits review here http://www.norgrove.me.uk/bogie.html
Keith

[doktorstamp]

A big thank you to all who responded. The general consensus would appear to support my own preference.

Comet never even had a mention, and from those I didn't list, the Phoenix "Adjustaride" bogies, and those provided by Roxey Mouldings weren't brought into the discussion. I do hope to learn more, likewise I think the manufacturers should sit up and take notice, note to self,"begin talking and dribbling to the wall".

mfG

Nigel

[grovenor-2685]

I do have a pair of Comet bogies, not used, they are neither equalised nor sprung so offered no advantage over the RTR bogies.
It looks to be the same as the one pictured on the Comet website.
The others you mention I have not tried.
Regards
Keith