What About The Bee

SWMBO has promised her traditional FIGGY PUDDING, complete with hard sauce. Mmmmm delicious! Bee

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Mikey, Tiger is a reasonably good representation of a goods locomotive in the later LMR period. The "coal wagons" it comes with are actually utility wagons used at the Rainhill Trials, in the construction of the railway and for maintenance of way ballast trains. The marketing dept at Hornby just named these little wagons the wrong thing. Coal was transported, but mostly in chaldrons. The collieries provided their own locomotives and rolling stock (chaldrons), paying a fee for use of the rails. There was a brief period during which the LMR offered to transport coal in intermodal wagons, but the collieries weren't having it. Bee

Hiya Mikey Ha! Not the Longmoor Military Railway. Liverpool and Manchester Railway! Or, per their own acronym LPMRW (Liver Pool Manchester Rail Way), as shown on their tarpaulins. Bee

Since there appears to be some confusion about my remarks, I will assume I communicated poorly. When I said "If I was in this position, I would simply get a more powerful controller. Determine your stall current. Size your controller from that." I was attempting to say..."the controller might need more grunt" and that the new controller might need a few more amps. I did not indicate that the stall current would be indicative of a change in magnetic field. Yet it would! When the magnetic field of a motor is changed, the Kt or torque constant of the motor is changed. That is, there is a direct relationship between the current input and the torque output. You may find the Kt of most commercial rotary motors. For linear motors, the Kt is linear thrust per unit of current. Now let us examine how stall current is determined. We measure the resistance of the motor and the current when the motor just begins to move and calculate the stall current. For motor manufacturers, this is followed by a destructive test to remove uncertainty, but this is unnecessary for our purposes. The motor will just begin to move when the stiction and friction are overcome by the torque. The torque produced is a function of the Kt. Voila! The stall current will be indicative of a changed magnetic field. (Old stall current) / (new stall current) not = 1 I do hope this clarifies my remarks. Bee ÷÷ Postscript for Simon. A motor spun by external means is a generator. It generates electricity as a function of its spin. The polarity of the voltage generated is inverse to the voltage required to make the motor spin. That is, as the motor spins under voltage, the motor generates an opposing voltage which must be overcome by the amplifier in your controller.

Hello 81F Here is my understanding. The resistance of a motor is a function of the windings. The current a motor draws is a function of that resistance and the voltage. Now the interesting bit is the back emf. This is the voltage generated by the motor as the windings pass through the magnetic field. There is a relationship between the back emf, the velocity of rotation and the strength of the magnetic field. As the motor generates back emf, it works in opposition to the applied voltage. As such, it changes the voltage to the motor itself. With the change in voltage, comes a change in current. This is because resistance remains constant, but the change in voltage means change in current. You asked "Will this reduce my current?" Answer: as the back emf is a function of magnetic field strength, the correct answer is "I dunno". How did you change the magnetic field? Just changing to a different magnet type does not tell us if the field increases or decreases. The geometry of the rotor and stator is inverse square related. So you may change to magnet that has a higher field strength, in general, but the specific geometry of the magnet coil relationship may be that the magnetic field is actually reduced. Or increased. It is the gap between the coils (and laminations) to the magnets which most directly affect the magnetic field. If I was in this position, I would simply get a more powerful controller. Determine your stall current. Size your controller from that. Bee

Yes, full size paper templates do exist for OO. I've found them handy for determining polarity of specific rails in complex points like double slips, by coloring individual rails in specific colors. Most informative (for me anyway). What I find interesting about the comment, in general, is that the process you describe is exactly that of track planning software. You take templates of the pointwork and work out a track plan. Specific radii, precise lengths and etc are laid into the baseboard you define. Then you buy the trackwork. The track planning software offers up precision not possible with pieces of paper, yet in the end, it is the same process. Bee

Hi Aussie Fred "Perfect is the enemy of good" - Voltaire The issue with using smaller cattle is that the slat sides of the livestock wagon are simply too tall. In analysis of the cattle in the imagery, I determined that the slat side is between 80% to 84% of the height of the cattle. Specifically, individual animals in the foreground permit observation of the hoof and shoulder. The slat side is immediately in front of that animal. By examining pixel addresses, I can determine a ratio. Given the shoulder height of the cattle, I can determine the height of the rail. "So far, so good" - Oliver Hardy The problem of adjusting the rail heights on the slat sides is simply the available room. The bolsters take up a considerable portion, with four rails and three spaces taking up the remainder. I am caught in my own web!! I have just been informed that https://www.wwscenics.com/product/oo-gauge-hand-sculpted-cows/ are 17mm from hoof to shoulder. Inverting the scale, I obtain 51", still 3" short of a nominal cow. "Why are there no OO scaled cows?" Bee

I, for one, hope that Mallard's record remains standing. When Mallard set the record, steam power was the prime mover. The purpose was to put into the public's mind that this or that railway system was the fastest. If you wanted to get to your destination fastest, you took XYZ railways. Breaking the record had reason and purpose. Setting a new record for a steam powered locomotive now is solely to break the record, it has no purpose. Kind of like breaking the land speed record for a piston powered car (463mph) when ThrustSSC achieved 762 mph. Super nice that a piston powered car can go that fast, but irrelevant. The Japanese have the record for any train at 374.6 mph. Steam will not break this record. Steam is, for the most part, not even utilized now, being primarily a heritage system. Mallard did it when it counted. Leave it there. Bee

Hi SeaCommander Permit me to say what a fantastic job you have done. The DP1 looks very nice indeed and the transfers on the nose are decidedly awesome Well done! Bee

Hornby Customer Care has confirmed the height of the R7121 Cows at 1.3 cm (13 mm). A quick bit of maths converts this to a cow 39" tall. For those who have actually encountered a cow or bull in real life, you will know this is a ridiculously short animal. Perhaps a calf, or maybe for forced perspective, but for a cattle load on the LMR, they are entirely too diminutive. I have been looking at an eBay seller, who offers HO cows. Picking the two animals which indicate shoulder height (not tail, head, horns, etc), I see 16mm and 16.8 mm. When inverse scaled back to prototype via HO, they are 54" and 58" tall at the shoulder, which is correct. When scaled at OO, they scale to 48" and 50½", a pinch on the short side. Prepainted, direct from China. I think these will do. Launch the human figures directly into the bin. Bee

Steven "DCC ready" is a buzz phrase for "works on analogue" or DC. It can be converted to DCC, but is not DCC Bee

Atom Do you have the restaurant car with the lighted tables? That looked particularly fetching in video reviews. Also, to confirm for Red Sea Eagle, no switching, just on. Bee

Hello Tony57 My limited research presented cattle (at shoulder height) ranging from 53" to 65", breed dependent. Fairly broad range. Yet a cow is a cow. An HO cow is likely close enough to pass muster for a OO cow. I'm having enough difficulty with geometric shapes. I will be unlikely to design and print my own cattle. I will be left with commercially produced cattle, may as well be OO, may as well be Hornby. I do have control over the height of the top rail of the slat sides. So given the shoulder height of the commercially produced cattle, I can adjust the design to match this appearance. Still hopeful someone has Hornby cattle R7131 and can help me out. Failing that, one more request to Customer Care will be in order Bee

Hi Simon Those two carriages do appear to be the same. Some of the finer artifice is missing, possibly scavenged by souvenir hunters. I do find it odd that a royal carriage would not have been preserved inside, out of the elements. The LBR used Bury locomotives in the 1840s. 1840s Bury locomotives have that distinctive firebox shape. Queen Victoria's Saloon would have been pulled by a Bury 2-2-0. Not by Lion, Tiger or Rocket; Hornby's current array of era 1 locomotives. Hornby do not have a Bury locomotive in the catalog. I have a suspicion that Hornby would model Bury's Copperknob 0-4-0, instead of a generic Bury 2-2-0; Copperknob being a survivor. This entire discussion will apply to Queen Adelaide's Saloon, a detail I will ignore in my acquisition of R40357. I pre-ordered R40357 within minutes of Range Release, patiently awaiting any update. No photographs have emerged of engineering or pre production samples. Bee

Hello 81F I do think Red Sea Eagle is referring to the current Coronation Scott carriages R4005x, where x=1,2,3,4 etc. In the catalog now. Online reviews of these carriages show them lighted. A beautiful bit of kit, if you ask me. But one reviewer said "constant on" and another demonstrated the lights coming on when track power was applied under DCC and then, switching over, on DC. No reviewer spoke of any type of control. The lights came on and stayed on. Bee

When I self review a design, I must have a gap between when I design and when I review. It is always a good idea for me to let something simmer and think about what doesn't sit right. Here goes: Dependent on breed, a cow has 4'6" shoulder height, roughly speaking. When I observe the cattle in the Ackermann long prints, the cattle shoulders are well above the top rail. First change, therefore, is to lower the top of the top rail to 45½ scale inches. That is ~9 scale inches below OO Scale cattle shoulders. I would greatly appreciate a measurement of shoulder height from someone who has Hornby OO cattle. R7121 I noticed when looking at the wagons that Ackermann shows 4 rails on the slat sides. The cattle leg may be seen standing on the floor, right by the pink arrow. The 4 rails above the floor are enumerated. Since my previous drawing only had 3 rails, this has been corrected. Ackermann does not show how the slat sides are put together, leaving that detail up to the imagination. I imagine that there would be slender rods hammered over into rivet heads on either end. They would be staggered, to prevent a heavy slat side from acting like scissors when handled. As such, I added the fine detail of the rivets protruding. I will likely touch these with black permanent marker after painting, to emphasize the rivets. The last change is a technical one. I intend these printed at Shapeways. There are minimum print dimensions for certain features. The bolsters needed a tweak, which bears mention. So after these changes, the livestock wagon looks like this Scroll back up to see how it appears vs the earlier design. Slightly shorter, 4 rails on slat sides and rivets. The bolsters are different, but it simply isn't obvious. Bee

Hello Simon The image you present has an RGB color code of 61, 73, 85. This is far, far away from the other photograph. Matt's referenced photo is from 1987; yours from 1988, per the captions. The captions indicated wrecks, implying repaint. I have no illusions about which color is correct or appropriate. This isn't the railway of my interest, nor of its details. I simply was trying to get MattR to see a way forward for his image and color choices. Professionals use color codes. Color codes can be extracted, albeit with some variation as it is sampled. The best approach would be to get the color code from the records, as it was painted. Failing that, sample the locomotive directly, if is available in the livery of interest, noting that colors fade over time. Failing that, a color image will do. Etc. Each, in turn, will provide less fidelity. But unless absolute precision is demanded (example, a new advertisement requiring the specific corporate shades) a photo will be fairly close enough. Perfect? Probably not. And I do not think you "failed". You added valuable input to getting us closer to Matt's image and color. Even another photograph, albeit probably a repaint. Thank you! Bee

Hello DRC How do you intend to run the railway? By that, I mean standing up or sitting down. One channel I follow insisted that the baseboards be at his shoulder height, such that the height of eye was perfect for immersion as he follows the locomotive around the layout. Less backdrop will be required to fill the field of view, as the eye will be closer to it. Some layouts are run while sitting down. The control panel is there and so is the operator. The backdrop should be larger, in an attempt to fill the field of view. In the end, there will always be the hard edge between the real and layout world. Inescapable. I also utilize my loft, albeit not for a layout. The affect of a sloping eve is a hard limit on utility when standing. Whilst I very much commend you for forward thinking (the 6 P's of Engineering), the 100 mm delta in height of backdrop is a smaller affect when the delta in height of eye is considered. Respectfully presented for consideration Bee

Simon's recommendation, color sampled. Closer yet! Instead of color sampling swatches, Railmaster probably has a color code associated with these paints. May I strongly recommend you find that. Secondly, if there are a few images of 47522, they should be sampled as well. The more we have, the better the result. Simon is correct, 1 image is subject to all kinds of subtle influences. Interestingly, if I sample the roof near the top, instead of the previous locations, I get a near match for Simon's recommendation! Bee

Hello MattR Rather than an opinion, I will use science. An image may be color sampled, and the color codes extracted. I prefer to work in RGB, but other codes are presented. I sampled the photo in 4 places to determine the roof color. Note that some small variation is present, but I get an average RGB of 224, 215, 200. The location of each sample is shown, and the associated color codes. I then pulled up your two colors and sampled them, as I could not immediately find the color code. Railmatch silver grey is closest at RGB 206,208,195. Railmatch diesel roof grey further away at RGB 169,168, 150 Be aware that colors presented on the web may not precisely match true colors. Further, for a best match, we should sample the roof in many places and then take the color code to a store to dial in the color directly. Bee

Hi Atom Ignore aerodynamic drag at your own peril. Mallards steam locomotive record will stand. Bee

Hello Son of Triangman Since the purpose of your motorisation project is automated motion, may I request a link to a video? When you are ready, of course! Thank you Bee

Keep it coming RT. The Lancashire Witch is quite the notable locomotive. The very first locomotive ordered by the board of the LMR, for the LMR. Some on the board opposed George ordering from his son Robert (nepotism) and hence a possible reason why Lancashire Witch was transfered to the Bolton and Leigh. The Lancashire Witch did perform ballast duty with Twin Sisters, in the construction of the LMR. Lancashire Witch did work the LMR, yet never in a revenue generating sense. The valve gear may not be so evident, and is presented here. The oscillating handles present on Rocket and Planet are here as well, green arrow. The handles, as you may recall, permit the engineman to manually control the slide valve and admission of steam. Notice where they are, indicative of the tiny size of the boiler. Bee

Hello Jon It is very difficult to provide specific help to a question without specificity in the request. What is needed is the model number, example Rxxxxx. From this, we can hopefully get to a service sheet. As it stands now, we do not have a lot to go on Bee