Garden Railway Forum

From an engineering point of view one should never put a flywheel at the end of a shaft, particularly with a single cylinder engine. you are going to get torsional vibrations at some revs or other. Worm gears are always less than 50% efficient, typically less than 25%, just saying. Thank you for th...

Lovely job Richard.

Best wishes,
Dave.

when you do eventually get round to encasing the engine you will probably need to consider forced cooling. The engine was originally designed to be forced cooled by an airplane propeller or in an RC car you generally need to keep moving to prevent overheating. I have been thinking of a fan cooling ...

These two videos show the effectiveness of the new silencer: First run on the track: https://youtu.be/VAau9DXbA4A New silencer: https://youtu.be/8rOLsg2fSXk I have bought one of these non-contact IR laser point infrared digital thermometer temp guns from our friends at ebay.  Excellent service, post...

I thought I'd try a massive secondary flywheel in a handy empty spot at the rear of the loco. It wasn't a success, it slowed the motor down a bit - needed more throttle, and always came loose. When still clamped securely it didn't improve running much. I've taken it off now. These are the latest pho...

If anyone is looking for a headstart in a desel-electric homebuild then take a look at this link. These are partial kits for the tried and tested system by Hyde-out Mountain.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 1027183060

Best wishes,
Dave.

It's taken two weeks to make a silencer for the engine. I did a bit of research into automotive silencers. First I had to order a strange metric die to cut a M9 x 0.75 thread to fit the cylinder head. The outer shell was rolled from 0.5 mm brass sheet and silver soldered, then a central baffle plate...

Hi Dave I am very interested in this build, as im not sure if you are aware or not, but I am also playing around with live diesel, and I currently have 2 locomotives, and im working on my third. The third loco has an os 4S 40 engine, but unlike yours and Davids, mine are all diesel electric, as opp...

It is better to have the worm gear reduction in the final stage of the reduction gearing. It will wear rapidly in its current position. Hmmm, we'll have to see. But, this is a test chassis, built to test the required gear ratio. I may omit the worm gear reduction in the end and switch to all spur g...

Here's a couple of videos. The first showing the very first starting of the engine. This video ended in catastrophe as the rear universal coupling broke as I blipped the throttle. They both have covers on them now so they can't break-out. https://youtu.be/w6kgll3PU5s The second video is of the first...

Stuvon:80459 wrote:I'm assuming that is a car spec OS 20 or 26 Four Stroke?

That's right.

Do you have any issues with vibration?

It certainlly vibrates enough No fastener has come loose yet.

Best wishes,
David.

Dear All, I'm a 45 mm gauge man. I've moved up from 16mm scale. My first foray into a larger scale was my 24 mm scale George Henry DeWinton. Now I've decided to go the whole hog and switch to 12th scale. I had thought about resurrecting Gauge 2 (2 inch gauge), but I don't mind being a little under g...

I found some early digital camera video footage of Albus, Jack, and Rubeus from wayback in 2006 and 2007. Watch Albus with his strange exhaust set-up running on our first line laid on the patio. Next hear Jack's delightful whistle before departing with a short train. Then experience a trip behind Ru...

I recently found this footage from late autumn last year. Excellent steam effects from the exhaust bypass valve in the still early morning air. No steam is visible from the funnel as the loco is meths fired. In this kind of weather there are visible wisps of steam from the safety valve and from the ...

tom_tom_go:78391 wrote:Looks like your loco has its only personality

Steamers have lots of personality.

Dave.

Whilst preparing for a "largest train" haulage test, this happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgegJmB9GqA

All in all it wasn't the most sucessful run.

Merry Christmas,
Dave.

I install and sometimes even scratch build make my own whistles on my steam boats. The problem with locomotives is the lack of space and one is greatly limited by cosmetic variations from the originals. here is an example of one of my boats with a servo controlled whistle That is a very nice model....

I'd recommend making your own whistle and whistle valve. It would be an excellent lead-in to loco building and is enormously satisfying.

... exhausting directly through the meths flames.

Here we are middle-engine testing a heavier train of about 2.5 m of LGB stock. We came in at a scale 10.8 mph.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq4MbCBAF6Y

Best wishes,

Dave.

INJIN:71450 wrote:The yellow engine was completed just before the AGM, only got round to steaming it very recently................

That's an excellent loco on a wonderful garden railway. I'm glad it worked out so well.

Best wishes,
Dave.