Garden Railway Forum

Does somebody have any idea how to clean this oily engine in one piece? I'm not sure if I can rebuild it when it is in pieces. The loco doesn't look especially oily, so I assume you just want to degrease the areas that need repainting? Since it is an electric model, you need to avoid the usual meth...

I suppose I ought to cobble together some sort of box / cradle / tray / thing — to get it outside and on the rails in one piece. Garratts are a pain in the what he said, when it comes to moving them around away from the track. The bigger the model the bigger the pain...... For just moving one aroun...

I bought the lead free crap at Jaycar - Duratech brand too - I obviously didn't read the label - they must have 2 types. I just assumed solder was solder ! Silly me. Maybe I can use it for weight in a loco :D The labels are slightly different, but as always the important info is only in the fine pr...

So I will have to see if I can buy some real solder from China. You don't have to go to China..... Aust. isn't in the EU and the chattering classes in Canberra haven't yet managed to ban the sale of lead/tin solder here. :roll: You can walk into your nearest Jaycar and buy tin/lead electronics sold...

Thanks Graeme, and dudeface. The video link supplied shows the articulation from an end-on view, something not usually filmed. The usual side views make the tender appear to be a continuation of the cab, but that makes no sense. I understand now how it extends into the cab. With the tighter radius ...

I do have one silly question though.... From the videos I have seen it appears the water tank (at the front) pivots with its chassis, but the rear tender looks to be rigid with the cab. Does the chassis pivot underneath the fixed tender? No, the pivots of a Tassie K class are in the centre of each ...

Thanks for all the info. Immediately ordered my copy! I found both volumes of Locomotive Panorama an interesting read, but the only proposed loco drawing in vol. 2 is the BR Class 8F 2-8-2 which eventually morphed into the 9F 2-10-0. Some of the LMS neverwozzers in Vol.1 may also float your boat......

I’m treading on thin ice here, because (likely obviously) I really don’t understand much of this stuff. If you want to know what a BR Beyer-Garratt would have looked like, there's a drawing of the 1948 proposal for a mixed traffic Garratt, for use on the Highland line, in 'Locomotive Panorama Vol.1...

The Clyde DHI-71 is more my thing, but I didn't have the confidence at the time to attempt building one - hence the Baguley. I had wondered if it might be a Clyde. I've only ever seen one of the Tootle Engineering models and that was years ago. I occasionally have dark thoughts about building a Com...

If it helps, I've noticed that my local electronics shop labels their uF as MF, since the u is really µ, short for 'micro'. Potato, potato. I know the US has never come to grips with the metric system, but....... :shock: A capital 'M' prefix on a metric unit such as a Farad signifies a million and ...

That's what happens when you rely on a memory that's approaching it's use by date....... :oops: I finally found the 'safe' place where I stashed the bag of suppression capacitors and they are 0.1uF ceramic. If you have got a decent Jaycar in town (not an agency) they should have them, as they are in...

Rik, Garden Rail reappeared on Exact Editions a while back, complete with the back issue archive going back to 2006. Costs a bit more for an Exact Editions online subscription than for the Pocket Mags version. Depends on what you think access to 200+ back issues is worth to you....... GAP, if you pr...

This noise was quite evident when powering the un-suppressed Baguley's 12-24V motor: I'm unsure of the value of cap I should be fitting to this and future battery locos. If what you are concerned about is the high pitched hum that can be heard in the video when the speed control is turned on, suppr...

She can move 9 wagons indoors on 2 lengths of rail but I couldn't be bothered to take that many outside, but in the video the knob was only set at about 1/3. She weighs 875g, don't know how that compares with your Thornas? That's pretty impressive for something that light and fitted with plastic dr...

Steady on chaps, you're setting the bar far too high for we mere mortals. Though I have to admit an articulated loco is very tempting. Bendy locos are no more difficult to build than any other type. It's just that they have twice as many bits to make and bolt together. So it takes twice as long to ...

Presumably, as it's atomised water make real steam, it will be even more effective in the garden on a chilly windless day? The 'steam' from these devices is an aerosol and it is generated cold. It can't cool and condense to form a thicker cloud in cold still air, as steam will. Although like the ex...

Now this looks interesting. I wonder if it's achievable without DCC? CVP Products in the US make a DCC based r/c system called Airwire 900 designed for garden railways using onboard batteries and it can drive DCC sound decoders. They make a device they refer to as a converter that picks up the DCC ...

This year's GSSU was held over the weekend just gone, at Gembrook in the Dandenongs, on the outskirts of Melbourne. Graham Fordham has posted a couple of videos of the proceedings online that may be of interest to those unable to attend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93mcGZtZXRE https://www.youtub...

Today was a nice sunny day with light winds and the loco had its first run in steam on its home track. I decided to run it on the big wheel with a light load of three cars and the first photo shows it sitting in the shade on no.2 road ready to go, just as the safety opened. Dylan-l.jpg The second ph...

A bit more progress on this model. After finishing two live steam loco paint jobs, I've moved on to wiring up the Harman so the mechanism can be tested. I was a bit uncertain how well this model would run with just two little N20 gearmotors. Wiring has progressed to the point of track testing and it...