Garden Railway Forum

Loco number four has arrived to join the RWLR (I always remember thinking I would only have one live steamer in the beginning!).

I seem to have bad luck with getting a good Baguley as the first one I bought years ago (plastic chassis version) was second hand and failed within weeks of running. Fortunately, the dealer gave me a full refund although I still wonder if it was tested properly before being sold to me.

This time around I bought a brand new one, however, when I opened the box the body was damaged (bent grab rail, paint work scratched and a crack in the bodywork). Most of the windows have been glued in poorly as well:


There are also scuff marks on the chassis but I have accepted those as I plan to weather it.

After contacting the dealer to get Accucraft to send me a new body I thought I should test the running of the loco. I had a right job adjusting the wheels as the grub screws were done up very tight. The wheels also didn't want to move along the axles to adjust the gauge without using dismantling lubricant! I am being sent replacement grub screws as well as one is rounded off (before I even touched it).

First run was using track power but the pickups on the middle set of wheels were shorting out against the metal chassis. I did fix this but as I am going to be converting the loco to RC I have now removed all the wheel pickups.

So the good news is after testing with power being fed directly to the motor the chassis works well and is a massive improvement over the plastic version. It can happily push and pull my Roundhouse Silver Lady at just below 6 volts but I am planning to run her at 12v:



The motor creates a fair bit of electrical interference (it was suggested to me to listen to a radio while running it) so I will be trying various ceramic capacitors with the motor to try and reduce this.

I plan to install sound and possibly a smoke generator to mimic clag at startup and running cold. I have various ideas for this and options to try but whether it becomes a reality we shall see.

And it will need a name which is still under consideration...

That's a good shunting performance Tom. Those ultrasonic smoking devices look good.

dewintondave wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 6:04 am Those ultrasonic smoking devices look good.

I was mesmerised when after hours of searching online and looking at the the usual G scale units I found examples of home built ultrasonic smoke generators created by RC tankers (I can't find a commercial offering).

It's one of the ideas I am looking into although space is limited.

Shame about the damage but I'm sure you'll end up with a lovely diesel. Do you get much gear noise or motor whine and is it a consistent runner both forwards and backwards?

steamgeorge wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 2:00 pm Do you get much gear noise or motor whine and is it a consistent runner both forwards and backwards?

Very quiet surprisingly as the motor doesn't look to be particularly special, just a standard DC motor.

Running performance is good both ways as you can see in the video and the motor noise is the same. When the body is on and sound card running you won't hear it at all.

If you need a comparison to the noise level I would say it sounds like a DC OO gauge loco motor (a motor from the last 10 years or so).

Tom, If you are looking for a name for the loco - the obvious one missing from the Virgin set was "Sherbet" - Lady Penelope's Pug (sometimes callers "Sherbert" too)!

On a less trivial note, are the centre wheels flanged or not? Also, have you decided on a control system?

Dasher wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 10:23 pm On a less trivial note, are the centre wheels flanged or not? Also, have you decided on a control system?

The centre wheels are not flanged which is good for me as I have tight radius curves on my railway. I believe previous batches of Baguley's had flanged centre wheels...

RC wise I am sticking with Deltang for the 'Selecta' functionality and the size of the Rx (having an integrated ESC on the Rx65 saves on space inside the loco). I use one of these in my Brandbright Circket and it's been flawless while providing very smooth control.

Thanks - Yes I need the flangeless centre wheels on the Harlech Castle to negotiate my curves too! Good to know that the B-D has then now. I'm still contemplating whether to spring for one or not. I'm finding that Diesel Power (or battery power to be precise) is definitely valuable in the winter months!

Glad to hear Accucraft sorted out the iffy bits.

Odd about the interference with the radio. I don't think any of my engines have suppressors fitted and I have not had a problem for years. It used to be a major point of argument when running a 00 train set on the carpet when the rest of the family were watching TV.

I now have the replacement body, it isn't perfect (looks like it's been stored for ages as it was filthy with marks on the body) but hey ho time to move on with more exciting stuff like smoke units!



I drilled out the exhaust on the body and set up the smoke unit to test, no issues with air flow as you can see.

Brilliant

Does putting black food colouring in the water make black smoke?

dewintondave wrote: Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:08 pm Does putting black food colouring in the water make black smoke?

I wondered this but not seen any RC tanker do this with success (even the maker of the TARR unit in the video says it makes no difference). The smoke fluid is water based so it evaporates when heated.

The only way to colour it would be to use lights I guess.

The smoker produces what I want as it is similar colour and clag to the video I am basing my ideal smoke effect on (Class 04 start up):

My loco makes white smoke too