What About The Bee

As someone who takes his hand built wooden, personal watercraft into the ocean on a regular basis, I can tell you that @ModelerXYZis correct. ½ the year inside storage, ½ the year, outside and at the ready! Its all about the finishes and maintenance. The wooden bilge is saturated with linseed oil and pine tar. The hull is saturated with linseed oil and Le Tonkinois varnish. Control of faying surfaces with a gap filler, such as Dolfinite, is a must. I've had to freshen up the surfaces occasionally, but the wood is in spectacular shape. That toolbox, properly cared for, will last a very long time indeed. What I find interesting about the 1863 locomotive is that is still passes its boiler certification, 160 years on. It almost definitely has had a boiler rebuild, or two over those decades. Anyone know? Bee

Or most any other manufacturer 🤣 Tis a pity the man is so impoverished! One benefit to specialing on a particular railway is that there is no compulsion to buy every bauble under the sun. As tempting as Flying Scotsman SS is, I can resist. Its not LMR. Put SS in Rocket, and I will incur the wrath of the Admiral. Bee

https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forums/topic/35843-rewind-tri-ang-armatures/?do=findComment&comment=384854 Discussed briefly back in May, yet it wasn't "official". Yet an advertisement by the proprietor certainly is official, Facebook not withstanding. If that was the only proprietor, with over 58 years in business, retirement was long overdue. I wish him a long and happy retirement, puttering around. Bee

Hi LT&SR_NSE This is a fundamental question in manufacturing. Well played! I do not claim to know what Hornby accepts but the tolerance permitted only permits a range around nominal in manufacturing. It does not change the nominal. A specification would be properly written xxx.xx mm +/- y.yy mm. Where xxx.xx is the nominal and y.yy is the tolerance band around nominal. They need not be uniform, thus xxx.xx mm +y.yy mm -z.zz mm. In all my decades in using dimensional specifications, I have yet to see a tolerance of +/- 0.000 mm. It may exist, but will cost a veritable fortune to produce and require a temperature specification as well. As in, what temperature must the object be when measured. The numbers produced by FreeCAD and used in SCARM represent nominal, as shown, because they are the virtual representation. The join line only becomes one when the correct nominal values are used. The nominal dimension is 438.00 mm. Hopefully, this particular discussion clarifies the issue for you Bee

Hello @Gordonvaleand @Going Spare here is the promised SCARM EXPERIMENT and the inescapable result. Controls. I used FreeCAD to obtain arithmetic values. I selected R606 as the curve. R606 has a 22½° angle. I drew two segments of a circle with the same starting point. Both segments were at 22½°. Values All to 1 nanometer. 0.000001 mm. For a radius of 438 mm the endpoints in X,Y are X 167.615343 mm Y 33.340765 mm For a radius of 438.15 mm the endpoints in X,Y are X 167.672746 mm Y 33.352183 mm The distance between the endpoints of the curves is 0.058527 mm SCARM Curves I set an initial start point at X=0 Y=0 and angle A=0. I placed an R606 curve. I then set a start point defined by the geometry for a radius of 438 mm and placed a straight section at that start point. SCARM accepted values to 1 nm. close up Notice that the join between the track segments is one line, indicating a perfect join. I then repeated this, setting the second start point at the geometry defined by a 438.15 mm radius. I placed a straight section at that start point. Notice that the join is TWO lines, indicating that SCARM does not think these tracks join. Conclusion. The delta between endpoints was 0.059 mm (rounded to 1 micron). Scarm noticed this. The delta between 17¼" and 438 mm is 0.150 mm, a larger dimension. The R2 radius that SCARM uses is 438.000 mm, not 438.150 mm. If SCARM did not produce valid set track plans, it would be dispensed with, forthwith. Therefore, Hornby must define R2 as 438.000 mm. There can be no other mathematical solution. Bee

Different strokes for different folks. What appeals to me may not appeal to you and visa versa. There is also a current promotion that is really a raffle. Buy £100 and be entered into a 100,000 point contest. The maths tell me that 100,000 points is worth £1000. But only if I win. Is that an inducement. To some, yes. I think you and I are on the same page. I am induced to buy when I see a product I want AND it has a price that I personally think appropriate. Repeat, what I think appropriate. Not what the carpet boy thinks appropriate. To get back to the original thread, it is the price rise we are discussing. If I see value for a product I want, I will buy it. If I don't, I won't. Bee

Spot on Colin. What appeals to someone else may not appeal to you. If a catalog collector is sitting on the fence about a purchase, perhaps the inducement of a "free" catalog appeals to that person to stop sitting on his wallet. The value of that catalog to me, in the digital age, is zero. The value to the collector? That's another story. My personal view is that Hornby is attempting to generate sales, as they should. Does a price rise induce a buyer? No. But if it is a piece of kit I want, then it will not totally deter me. Then again, I do not need every bauble ever designed Bee

Me too @Peter Stiles

Hi GS I had to resort to trigonometry to get two tracks to "couple" in SCARM. As I recall, it was a very small value but memory is a bad choice for this discussion! I will set up an experiment in SCARM to determine what it thinks the value for R2 is and report back later. I'm in the middle of trying to get OO Twin Sisters to go "round the bend", and it is very tight indeed. The current chassis is just a wee bit too wide, but the motor is inside of the chassis. The motor also has manufacturing tolerances and is a wee bit bigger than claimed (12.06 mm diameter instead of 12.00 mm diameter). A miracle is about to occur! 😄 When in CAD, the tool requires mathematical precision. Its not meaningful or practical, but the numerical computations must resolve themselves or the designer (me) suffers the consequences. My self imposed requirements are to resolve to 1 micron. This is because the volumetric pixel (vixel) was ~0.016³ mm in Shapeways 3D fine plastic prints. That means everything is quantized. As a rule of thumb, design to about an order of magnitude better than the machinery used to create your object, and then place reasonable manufacturing tolerances on it Bee

Hi Going Spare Exactly that. Its not so proprietary, as SCARM and Anyrail, to name a few, can put up precise geometry on screen. SCARM complains about minute misalignment, so it must be using a precise value. A precise value to match what is manufactured. It is just a side interest to understand a bit of the history and public specification Bee

Hi @ColinB This is certainly not a debate over units. It matters not if it is in imperial or metric. The issue is one of standards. You may have heard me muttering about standards before. Some chatter about the barrel size on early tenders, the capacity of chaldrons and about the word "ton" as it relates to mineral waggons. Yet this "standard" is far from that. How can it be a standard if 17¼" is not equal to 438 mm? This standard is far closer to our hobby than some measurememt regarding an actual railway. I would still very much like to know when Hornby dropped imperial units in the spec, and exactly what radius the set track curves really are. Is it 17¼" round to 438 mm but still actually 17¼? Or is it actually 438 mm, precisely? Bee

The panel has that unusual feature as part of the locomotive. If it is to celebrate local history, then presenting the cow catcher seems like a strange choice, unless the local locomotive had one Bee

Hi @nashjuk Welcome Aboard! No one is born knowing how to do this, we all learned how. You can too! To answer your questions The red connector, labeled A B slides in between the sleepers of the track, the copper on top of the red makes contact with the underside of each rail. The battery controller takes TWO 5 volt lantern batteries. The springs on top of the batteries slide into the grooves on the underside of the battery controller. The long rectangular pieces clip on top of the sleepers. These are so you can decouple the locomotive from the cars. But instead of reading about this, why not watch Mr. Snooze show you exactly how! https://youtu.be/hUQBU9FzEq4 Its not the same locomotive, but the controller set up is. When you get tired of buying batteries, you can use a controller powered from mains. We can help with that. The most important thing is to have fun!! Bee

The deeper answer is that all locomotives can be live on track, all the time. You do not need to isolate tracks, like DC. Locomotives only move when you command them to do so, by address

Yes, of course!

Hi @Tim Allen From that description, it sounds like you have definitive knowledge. That the panel is representative of actual regional railway history. Is the locomotive in the panel evocative of the actual locomotives that were utilized there? Do you happen to have an image of a locomotive that "matches" the panel? Presumably with a cow catcher, of course. I think it is terrific that the panel isn't just a piece of art. Bee

Hi @Dave the Busker Move the engine away from the firehouse a bit. Won't be so noticeable. If it is coming back to the firehouse, no lights would be on. Or away, if you do want them on! Bee

Hi @BritInVanCA It was locked because it veered well off topic. The thread shifted to a discussion that attempted to cast a negative light on Hornby marketing practices. If I may be frank, there should have been more than just locking the thread. Use your imagination. Of course, if I am to be frank, I'll need a name change 😁 Bee

Your picture is fine Rana. My ability to see an abstract locomotive isn't so fine. Perhaps this art is better in person. Bee

Ha! I spent many minutes searching in the background for the locomotive Rana was talking about. Was it that smudge, that blob? I just couldn't see the locomotive. Check the text, check the image. Why couldn't I see it???? What is he talking about??? I finally realized, the buffers were right there, in plain view. Very, very sneaky!! Bee