My railway's been in such a mess for the last few years that all passenger services have been suspended. With long overdue track work finally bringing it back up to scratch, my thoughts are turning to passenger carriages again.
My WHR Summer Car left the works a couple of years, but was almost immediately withdrawn from traffic because it couldn't survive a trip up the line without being dragged over sideways by the "bowstring effect" on the sharper curves. This weekend I've set about trying to cure that, starting with moving the bogies further towards the end of the vehicle to reduce the swing on the couplings. Then I added some weight underneath in the form of this 6" long, err, thing:
- Summer Car 2.jpg (156.14 KiB) Viewed 6622 times
I don't know what it was attached to, where I found it, or who "Woods" were, but the carriage was made in Bristol (my version that is, not the Mancunian original), so it seemed appropriate.
Here it is on test an hour or two ago:
- Summer Car 1.jpg (382.5 KiB) Viewed 6622 times
I added some wagons to the back of the carriage and trundled it round a couple of curves, and it's looking good so far, no bowstring, although a full rake of carriages at a slightly higher speed might be a stiffer test. It still needs its couplings lowering, they're a little on the high side, but that's probably going to mess up the ends of the carriage, so if I can I'll enjoy running it for a while before undertaking that work.
Testing revealed a further problem with derailment, most unusual for my stock with Big Big Train running gear, such as this one. The cause turned out to be a non-standard wheelset which had been switched for one of the originals before I acquired the donor (BR Mk2) carriage. That's been cured for now by swapping it with one from the Gladstone Car, but I'll need to get hold of another. Fortunately, they crop up fairly frequently on eBay, even if they are horribly over-priced.
That's all for now. Still too hot in the garden, so I might crack on with some strapping for my WHR wagons...
Cheers,
Andrew.