Garden Railway Forum

I should imagine that your years of experience in making electronic controls with Picaxe contributed slightly to your success
It looks great now you've done all the detailing. Even more satisfying knowing it works as well. Have you had a chance to run it with a train?

Rik

philipy wrote: ↑Wed Feb 23, 2022 5:23 am All looking good now and congrats on getting it all to work first go. That is always satisfying!

Thanks Philip.
I haven't had a chance to run it outside yet - 8" of rain here in the last 3 days.

I have been searching for videos of Heislers to try and determine how many chuffs per wheel revolution. But I cannot find a video where I can see the wheels and hear some good chuffs at the same time. Still, as you can't see the wheels on my loco, I guess it's a bit academic.

I did manage to get a run between rain showers at a mate's place where his track is above 'flood level'.

So here's the link.


I measured the chuff rate and found it is only chuffing two and a half times for each wheel revolution. Which in theory is way too slow - should be maybe 8 times. But it sounds OK to me. What do you think? Maybe increase the rate a bit?
BTW it is traveling at 15kph in the video.

I do like that and it looks OK for sound and steam sync to me, but I have no idea what a Heisler sounds like, so I'm no real judge! I don't think it would hurt to increase the chuff rate a little, but 8 sounds like it would be a bit much.

Well having watched a video of a Heisler, I would agree that the beats should be faster, but can you do that whilst keeping the same pitch? Anyway, it's a lovely looking working engine

Way too slow.

See here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSaAjtFu-Ow

At 4:55 on the gradient you can count the beats per revolution.

Scrat wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 6:27 pm Way too slow.

See here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSaAjtFu-Ow

At 4:55 on the gradient you can count the beats per revolution.

Looks to me like 8 beats per rev

Rik

gregh wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 5:09 am I measured the chuff rate and found it is only chuffing two and a half times for each wheel revolution. Which in theory is way too slow - should be maybe 8 times. But it sounds OK to me. What do you think? Maybe increase the rate a bit?
BTW it is traveling at 15kph in the video.

Heislers had the reputation of being the fastest of the US geared loco designs, so presumably they have a lower gear ratio than the other designs. Apparently why the Kiwis used them in preference to Shays.........

Did a search, but couldn't find a definite answer to the gear ratio on a Heisler. It was at least 2:1 I think. So 8 chuffs per rev of the wheels would be reasonable.

The exhaust of geared locos at anything but a crawl is more of a continuous roar than definite beats. Especially a 3 cylinder Shay with 3:1 gearing, which has 18 beats per rev of the wheels.

Regards,
Graeme

Scrat wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 6:27 pm Way too slow.
See here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSaAjtFu-Ow
At 4:55 on the gradient you can count the beats per revolution.

Thanks for finding that link. It sure looks like 8 chuffs per rev.
But as GTB says you'll never hear any chuffs at that rate except at very low speed. I will have a play around with the program and report back.

After much experimentation on the floor (too wet outside) I found that using 8 chuffs/ wheel revolution at anything above about 15 kph scale speed, just sounds horrible with my sound circuit.

And I guess it’s the same with a ‘normal loco – you can’t hear individual chuffs above maybe 40kph. So with that and the fact that a mate said that it’s an old loco so goes slower , I decided to do the following in the sound program.
At ‘just starting speed’ which I measured at 4kph, it chuffs at the correct 8/rev. As the speed increases the chuff rate reduces, so that at 15kph (about half throttle, and the fastest I’ll ever run) it’s chuffing at 5/rev and at the unrealistic top speed of 30kph, it chuffs at 3.5/rev.

I know – not prototypical, but it’s my loco and it sounds good to me. And you can’t see the wheels anyhow.

When (if) it stops raining I’ll get a video to demonstrate.

Hi Greg,
I know what you mean..
When installing decoders, I tended to set them to two chuffs per revolution. - Wrong, but to my mind, it sounded more realistic.
Let's face it, a wheel revolution, is a matter of inches, so if you set the correct number of chuffs, at anything other than a crawl, you are not able to discern the individual chuffs anyway..
It just sounds a mess.

Phil.P

Agreed.
My father has a gauge 1 loco that sounds like a machine gun when running at maximum scale speed.

I decided it needed a rear headlight. After a couple of attempts, I settled on a simple circular type made from a bit of 20mm electrical conduit. For the ‘kerosene’ lamp I took one of the tea-lights I bought long a go – it has a yellow, flickering LED with a flame shaped, frosted surround sleeve. So I took the LED out and glued it into the circular tube.
I didn’t even make a ‘glass’ front for it – I’m claiming it is just a reflector box for a removable lamp that the fireman puts in for night running.


and you can see a video of it running, over on the Videos topic …
https://gardenrails.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 73#p167773

When I saw the lamp in the video, I thought it looked just like a hurricane lamp. Clever!

Rik

The lamp looks good.
I've used some of those flickering candles in the past but they never seem to last very long before they pack up.

philipy wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 9:44 am The lamp looks good.
I've used some of those flickering candles in the past but they never seem to last very long before they pack up.

The problem is that in these cheap candles they do not have a resistor.
I have put one of them in an old tinplate level crossing that was intended to be lit by a candle.
With the correct resistor the LED has been working for several years now.

That's really effective Greg, and as Rik said, it makes for a convincing hurricane lamp!

Just to continue the hurricane lamp theme.

While browsing in a craft shop with my wife many years ago, I noticed some tear drop shaped beads that looked just the right size for the glass chimney of a hurricane lamp.

So I made a whole bunch of them – one with the elec leads coming in from the base, for a lamp standing on a table, and one where the leads are be at the top for a hanging lamp.. Here’s the process.
I ground the tops and bottom off the beads and drilled a hole in the base to take a LED.

Then I superglued some round tube on the top and bottom. For the top lead version, I bent the LED leads out and up.
For the table type, the leads come out the bottom and 2 pieces of wire form the ‘handles’.

Here’s the final result with a warm white LED running at 2mA.

I plan to put one of them in the cab of the Heisler, ‘soon’. Since the cab lifts off I have to figure out a plug system for the connections.

Another change of plan.
I had planned to hang the hurricane lamp from the cab roof, and since the cab lifts off for access to batteries, I would have needed a plug/socket.
But with a bit of lateral thinking I decided to attach the lamp to a ‘pipe’ in the cab floor. At window height the pipe is not visible. So no plug needed.
Here it is without the cab. (I will paint the brass pipe black).
And with the cab in place and lamp ON. It is on all the time and takes 4mA.
The fireman now also has an axe!

Looks really bright on 4mA...

Rik