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Cool. Those are HO scale, right?

Quote from: Ray Dunakin on March 06, 2013, 07:24:09 PM
Cool. Those are HO scale, right?

Yes they are Ray...infact HOe, 9mm I think.

Finally I got my hands of filming these little critters in action. We borrowed N scale  rails from a friend and found a DC supply unit to test them vigorously.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlrBE5NEwD4

My honest opinion is, although they are nice kits I have my doubts of how they will perform in exhibition environments....its their endurance coefficient that bothers me.
Will they be able to take the stress of running continuously is my question...pulling those tippers?

If instead of relying on a rubber thingy contact with the motor to turn the wheels it would've been better to use a kind of a gear mechanism....anyway that's my opinion......now on to weathering them...

Erkut

Erkut,

please let me give you the same advice given before by Christian: Try the Busch Feldbahn system. It is running slowly on Z gauge 6.5 mm which is much closer to 600 mm gauge at the widespread prototype. Of course I don't know which gauge there was at the place. A magnet at the locos and metal plates in the rails provide good driving quality. A friend of mine has one and I was amazed how convincing it worked. Disadvantage: It runs at one speed only. Obviously you may even let it run on different speeds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKOsL5wdYQo.

Volker

Hi Volker,

I'm about to weather these critters and loosing confidence in them day by day. Its the driving mechanism that bothers me:



If the motor doesn't sit tight it turns idle, if too tight doesn't turn the rubber wheel. Too much precision...not good for exhibition environments.

I've checked the Busch system and it looks Ok apart from the loco which appears toy like honestly. But with a bit of weathering I believe we can overcome that. Abd & Aykut are travelling to Dortmund Fair in a couple of days so they will have plenty of time to check out  the Busch system.

Erkut

Hi Erkut,

Perhaps you can even track the drives of the bushveld use for your brass models.
There are the Busch 12199 Feldbahn drive unit to be rebuilt.

With a Heißwolf SFR 300 throttles the web then you can also glide smoothly.
But there will also be a DCC module of Busch as throttle for 5 sections.

Or build a new chassis.

Have fun with your project

Dear Erkut,

sorry to hear you are having trouble getting your loco to run well. I have built 4 of these for clients and they all run really well. Looking at your photograph you have removed the motor tensioning etch and not built the rear motor mount correctly. Note that the chassis should look like this...



When built thus the motor cannot move longitudinally and you have a spring that can be used to tension the motor against the O ring friction drive. A simple solution would be to mount the motor in a tube that is soldered at the back end of the motor and maybe some elastic to tension it against the friction wheel at the front. A rubber band around the whole chassis would probably suffice.

Hope this helps. Also Nigel is very good at post sales support should you need it

Kind regards

James

Hey Guys,

Its been a while that we haven't posted anything regarding MADEN. We were I guess far too busy in our daily lifes, however here is the latest update;

The critters are finished;







there is now a new player in town, Abd's diesel electric DE 20000 series brass loco;



The team traveled to MADEN for research purposes and photographed the area, and would you believe, in a cab of a DE 22000 (dead Jeolous);















The now deserted mine entrance;





..the mine cars



...and the tipper



prepare yourselves for a wild ride in the wilderness;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNB213NHfmQ

the tipper still works after all these years;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bLUhfWV-Fk

Erkut

Looks like it was a terrific trip. Nice photos, too. Thanks! -- Russ

What a wonderful place Maden looks to be. I can see now where you get your inspiration from.

Great pics! That little mine loco is an amazing piece of work. It's hardly bigger than an insect!

The Maden depot is beautiful.

QuoteMy honest opinion is, although they are nice kits I have my doubts of how they will perform in exhibition environments....its their endurance coefficient that bothers me.
Will they be able to take the stress of running continuously is my question...pulling those tippers?

On my H0 Dreimühlentalbahn, the narrowgauge locs gave a lot of problems. in the workshop they ran alright at slow speed, but under exhibition circumstances mostly contact problems occured approx 1 to 1,5 hours after opening time. In these small loco's minidecoders ( Lenz and Kuhn) were fitted. because of the contact problems these decoders did not last long. So it became a static feature.


Jacq

As much as I like these little critters I  agree with you Jacq and thats why we are shifting towards Busch's feldbahn system.

Erkut

Are those minuscule critters incomplete; will they receive more detail and finish? Or do I understand from the above comments that you will replace them with something that better exemplifies your talent? -- Russ

They work alright Russ, no problem there.Check out the above film.Its that they are too delicate to perform in exhibition environments. You need something more robust that will not let you down while spectators are watching. I do not want to use the hand of god during the show if something goes wrong. 3 of these will be working on the layout continuously....we simply do not want to take that chance.They will be static models next to the mine entrance.

Shows are different. I know better then anybody else. During the first day at Dortmund show something horrendous happened to me. I was controlling the loco's with our handheld radio controller. Suddenly a steamer started to move out of my control increasing its speed...then the diesel...as if someone else was controlling them...total mayhem ....people are watching....someone took the photo of that incident...me trying to control the freaked out loco's;



lesson learned never use radio controllers in exhibitions that have a lot of radio interference! We brought the main controller upfront and carried on.....so I won't take my chances on these critters.

Erkut

No worries - things can-not get any worse - or can they ? just keep taking the tablets .
Barney