Garden Railway Forum

Out of curiosity, is it possible to have radio control for the larger scales and gauges, say 3.5" and 5" gauge (either modelling standard or narrow gauge)? My thoughts are that it is virtually unheard of but surely if you have large enough servos, it is entirely possible...

EDIT: Just thought that I should mention that I am thinking in terms of live steam here.

I haven't heard of larger scales being remote controlled, however I suspect that may be down to the fact that lets say for 5 inch gauge that normally the "driver" sits behind the loco and actually drives/fires the loco as you would a full scale one, so remote controlling the loco to me would remove the appeal of going for the larger scales which allows you to interact a lot more with the loco.

I'm a firm believer in radio control for our 16mm/ft ish scales but it is easy to take your eye off the task in hand when driving. The implications of human error for the larger more massive trains, many of which carry 12"/ft passengers, could be a bit scary.

Looking at some of the projects acheived by members of this forum, I can't imagine it would be too difficult from the technical perspective.

I don't know about steam, but radio control of battery electric locos in 5 inch gauge certainly isn't unknown, the railway I run my 5 inch gauge loco has one, but it's not in running condition and never has been whilst I've been going there, although it was changed from 40mhz to 2.4Ghz before it broke

I asked the same question a year or so ago, and forum member "Bessytractor" answered that indeed there are a few larger-scale live steamer with radio controls. He is very involved with large scale live steam in some way and works/volunteers at a railway that runs the big ones.

Personally I think that while the large scale engines must be a lot of fun to run, for everybody else the engine looks kind of silly with a great big person perched atop it. I think if I had one I would contrive to equip it with conventional controls, but perhaps try to build a removable armature of some kind that could hold servos in line with the controls so I could watch it chuff around "by itself" with a scale train sometimes. It would probably be nice to watch a train in that scale without seeing people riding on it like a bear riding a bicycle at the circus.

When I last did it, a highlight of the steam-hauled tour of Scunthorpe Steelworks was the shed visit, with a demonstration of radio control on the standard gauge 90-ton Hunslet BoBo, before handing the transmitter to a junior passenger and inviting him to have a go!

http://www.afrps.co.uk/