Garden Railway Forum

I need to make a decision - this forum is a good place to ask advice.
My Mamod Quarry is just about unmanageable as a manual loco on the FeckHallBahn - give it enough regulator to get up the inclines and it does an excellent impression of Mallard on the flat bits with inevitable off roading on the R1 bends and facing points or a reasonably acceptable speed on the flats (≈ 60mph…) and it can’t climb anything and stalls on the curves.
It’s pretty gutless as well with even a one vehicle load.
My choices are, I think, to:-
1) Sell it for about £700
2) Swap it for a Brunel or something similar
3) Persevere with it, running it in tandem with my Boulton to give it some brakes although buffer lock is an issue
4) Chuck some more money at it and get one channel RC on the regulator.
It goes really well when it goes!



What do you reckon?

Nice looking loco but I reckon Option One, sell it for £700, then - instead of spending money on R/C - put the extra towards a lovely geared Regner: https://www.gardenrailways.co.uk/regner ... ncent.html.

I love my Regner - super reliable, and barely notices gradients (up or down), just purrs along happily chucking out LOADS of exhaust in the process...

The one thing you don't mention - how much running in has it had?

In your place, I'd be tempted by (2). I don't know the Brunel, but I have a couple of geared Regner locos, and they will run on just about any line. One started out as manual and to be honest it was fine like that (I just like to be able to blow the whistle from a distance). They don't mind inclines, they don't mind sharp curves, and if you like slow running, I think a geared loco would do great on your line. I even found myself doing some shunting...

My other loco is a Roundhouse Milly. It runs beautifully too, but it needed a bit of running in at the start, hence my initial question. It remains manual, and setting the regulator is a bit of an art as the tight radii slow it down, but I want it as sedate as possible on the straight sections without it stalling (too often!) on the curves.

EDIT: Crossed posts with Andrew also praising the Regners!
EDIT 2: Here's a video of my Konrad showing how it ran more or less straight out of the box:

Thank you loads.

I am definitely leaning towards a geared loco although my Billy, Leader and Caradoc are all fine.
It’s had 3 hours of running time on the rails and 40 minutes on blocks. It’s covered just over 1,000 yards actually moving.