Garden Railway Forum

I had dismissed a mechanical hacksaw as taking too much room - but I will think about a band saw. Unlike power hacksaws, the 6x4 bandsaws are lighter and have a couple of wheels at the back so can be moved around fairly easily. Mine lives out of the way under the router table when not in use. There...

What I seem incapable of doing is parting off 40mm diameter steel without causing huge chattering. I have followed all of the on line videos - but I still can't do it successfully. So its back to the hack saw. I don't think any of the common model engineering lathes are rigid enough, or powerful en...

The US designed Climax geared locomotives have been in my sights for years, long before moving into garden scale. This is a long story! A handful of Climax locos operated in Aust., made up of seven of the smaller A type, with seven of the larger B type. There were also seven (1 A type and 6 B type) ...

I'm not quite clear as to whether both bogies are powered? Both bogies are powered. Those little motors are powerful for their size, but I don't think only one would haul 2.8kg of loco plus a train as well. There is a plan B if two N20 motors aren't up to the job, but it's messy. just hope your ver...

Well sort of...... This is a model of the Harman locomotive built in Melbourne for the Forests Commission of Victoria (FCV) for use on the 2' 6" gauge Tyers Valley Tramway in Gippsland. The sorry saga of the design, building and subsequent failure of the Harman to perform is documented in an article...

Moving to the Dark Side eh? ..... :twisted: If they have a mail service there, don't forget to send us a postcard now and then. More seriously, in the distant past when I modelled the VR in HO, a friend and I looked into what was involved in converting from HO standard gauge to HO broad gauge. We ca...

Thanks very much for that Phil, From the scant info I found I think you are about right with the dimensions. I will try and mock a bogie up in Tinkercad and see what it looks like. Which of the gauge one scales were you planning on using for this beast? The dimensions Phil.P quoted seemed a bit big...

I can find a 280 and a 385 MFA motor. Just wondered which one you used and which voltage. A 285 would be a 5 pole version of a 280 motor. MFA Como don't sell them, but they do sell a RE280/5, which is the 6v version of their RE280. I assume Steve chose the 6V motor as it would be a tight squeeze to...

I see now that I should have been calculating DP, as Bachmann is a US company; though, probably, I still would have struggled to find an exact match. Bachmann used to be American, but for a long time has been a subsidiary of the Kader group, which is Chinese owned. More importantly the factories an...

I suppose I need to design/build a 'speed-trap' as well? If you like fiddling with electronics go for it...... I just use a cheap timer and a calculator, or a mobile phone could do it. The mainline loop on my track is 120 ft long and if a model takes about 1 min 20 secs to travel back to the starti...

Some more technical info to finish this topic, ie. an overview of what is needed to determine the gears needed and to lay them out........ The sort of gears we use in models are what is called involute gears, which refers to the shape of the teeth. The sides of the teeth follow a particular curve so...

Hmmmm, I wonder? Back in about 1952/3/4-ish I was given a plastic kit for a Fergie ( without knowing it was anything other than 'just a tractor', of course) for Christmas. That far back in the dark ages, your model would have been an Airfix one, which was their first kit. Got a vague idea it came i...

I'll provide the dissenting opinion on building garden railway support structure............ ;) The TVT construction saga is in this thread. It starts with turnout and track construction, so you need to go to page 3 which is where the track support construction starts. https://gardenrails.org/forum/...

Hopefully the last one from this batch. I think it's in Chile. Looks like a photo taken of an old photo in a museum. Any suggestions as to what the locos are? The one on the right looks like an Avonside, but it has been modified. Specifically the sandbox on the boiler and the damper on the chimney....

BTW I've just invested in one of MFA Como's more expensive "Noise Attenuated" gearbox motors. The burb says ...... That's much the same spec. as the larger Pololu motor gearboxes, they must be feeling the competition. The Como LN motors only come in 32mm and 35mm sizes. What are you planning that n...