What About The Bee

That you wish to change the subject. You have no analysis to contradict the extensive proof provided against your original assertion. R2 is 438 mm, not 438.15 mm (17¼"), as demonstrated. It may have been this historically, but no more. Further, your diagram could also mean that the design you offered to SCARM is marginal. It can be forced to join, as SCARM will accept track as joined whenever the ends are within tolerance. But if they fall just outside that tolerance, SCARM says they don't join. SCARM does not demand that the ends are in mathematical agreement, just that the ends are "close enough". So depending upon exactly how those pieces are placed can cause your design to be joined or not. Interesting as the design may be, its a deflection with little to do with the definition of a second radius. Bee

Hi LT&SR_NSE What is the current draw of a 1970s locomotive? Here is what @The son of Triangmanhas to say https://community.hornbyhobbies.com/forums/topic/8858-a-helpful-guide-average-current-draw/?do=findComment&comment=122374 So, the answer is: it varies. It could be under, it could be over 500 milli amps. I believe the P9000 is rated at 500 milli amps. @nashjukDo you have a multimeter? We can measure the current draw using the batteries as the supply and insure that the controller you buy is sized to your locomotive Bee

One of the true benefits of being a regular correspondent here on the Forum is the wealth of knowledge present and if that correspondent is paying attention, that knowledge can be absorbed. Plenty of buyers exist who do not have the discernment to know what has value, what does not. They could get some of that discernment right here, but may skip the Forum. I learned that a Hornby "Limited Edition" certificate has little value, right here. So could others. Buyer beware Bee

Is it still a rumor if Hornby says it? An Important Message for Our Loyal Customers As one of our valued customers, we wanted you to be one of the first to know that we are adjusting our prices from 1st September 2024.

https://uk.hornby.com/products/br-class-b175-4-6-0-61670-city-london-era-4-r30137 Listed as "Last Few" Have you checked your account to confirm your pre-order @ChrisBWC? Likely you have, of course. Probably me just being over cautious. Bee

Hi @nashjuk To get you started, here is a link to HORNBY TRACK. Unfortunately, I can not pre-filter it for you. Select the "filter" tab, then "Gauge" and "OO". TT:120 track will not work with your locomotive. Its for a smaller gauge than your locomotive. There's lots of guys doing TT:120. Its a new and exciting scale. Lots of new guys getting on board too. Check out the TT:120 sub forum to see what it is about. You may like it better! Bee

Battery on the right needs to be rotated 180°. Its backwards. Nashjuk, if you like the locomotive, then the price of some track pieces and a DC controller (to get away from the batteries) is going to be far less than a new set, which will include a new locomotive. In other words, the expensive bit of kit is the locomotive, followed by the carriages and wagons. A DC controller and track pieces are much more reasonable, provided you do not go nuts with track. Bee

"Limited Edition" is a phrase Hornby marketing uses to create a sense of rarity and fear of missing out among customers. It has been repeatedly shown that this has little distinguishing value as compared to an item that is not called "limited edition" but it sounds marvelous! 😉 Deem, I get the sense you are trying to decide which locomotives to sell, in your quest for a new controller. If this is one you don't like, for what ever reason, then out the door it goes. Make sure to use the "limited edition" phrase in your title, for the exact same reason that Hornby does. Just make two piles. One pile is keep. The other pile is sell. I know you really want to keep them all, but requirements drive the issue. Bee

The part you have highlighted in red is what I called the lubricator rod. The return crank is on the left, connected to it. This drives the pump rod, connected to the lubricator rod, on the right. Now in real life, the pump rod should just oscillate back and forth, with equal strokes on either side of the pump itself, here a black lump of plastic. The return crank drives the lubricator rod, as a function of wheel rotation. But if the return crank is not well adjusted, there can be too much stroke. Rotate that wheel about 180°. You will see that the return crank and the lubricator rod become almost in line. This is because the return crank is at an angle to the crank that drives the connecting rod. The return crank should go right back over the top of the wheel axle. From your image, I see it does not. It's about 15° out of phase and I suggest that this angle causes the extra stroke that Going Spare speaks of, and the alignment that I suggest may be happening. The return crank needs to be put back in phase Bee

Coming from you Fishy, that's high praise. Thank you Bee

Crank pins can be installed at an angle, not perpendicular to the surface of the wheel. This would cause binding in the rods. Which in turn can cause the motor to apply force without motion and therefore hum. So what Going Spare says could easily be a issue. The position of the return crank is critical. Going Spare notes that the strokes are uneven. They should be even. Ease the screw on the return crank, rotating it slightly, and gently nip up the screw. If the stroke is far enough out of true, you may get to a position where all the rods are in line, and thus, which way it goes is down to chance. How to check? Slowly rotate the wheels by hand. Gently wiggle the lubricator rod to see if it can invert when near straight. Just a thought Bee

Ah, I see the difficulty now. Excellent question. Part 1: A Hornby Engineer The Hornby Engineer will be using a genuine CAD station. It too will have extraordinary levels of precision. Once the design is complete, the next step is the "reduction to practice". The object is extracted from CAD and placed on drawing sheet. It will typically have side, end and plan views. Tiny details and cross sections may be added for clarity. The HE will then consider the machines and techniques that will be used to make the part. The drawing is provided with detailed dimensions, with that consideration in mind. The nominal will be present, but not to a nanometer. For track, I would guess 2 places (tens of microns), but would not be surprised by 3 (one micron). The tolerance band associated with the dimension is also assigned as a function of the machine. The drawing is presented to manufacturing for production The key takeaway is that the production team references the drawing, not the CAD. They understand that the mathematical purity of CAD is not expected, they only need to conform to the drawing. Materials cost money. Sloppy tolerances are wasteful, as is chasing mindless precision. The production of track for the hobby is a commercial practice. A good Engineer squeezes cost out of a design. Dimensional tolerances on the drawing are selected with the machine and commercial practices in mind. Part 2: SCARM SCARM has no control over the production of parts. Indeed the Hornby parts rule SCARM, not the other way round. SCARM must conform to whatever Hornby, or other track system, says. Hornby could add an R6 radius curve and the SCARM guy will just add it to the library, just as he did for TT:120 track. SCARM need only match the nominal, the only tolerance it cares for is that your tracks join in theory. It could just use two or one places for the dimensions, but the build up of tolerance in the computations will swiftly obviate the utility. The easiest thing for the designer of SCARM is to select floating point variables for calculations. It just so happens that these computations are fairly straightforward and subject to reverse engineering by me. Who could see that coming !? Part 3: Intensify the Conflict This is an engineering phrase. It means to exacerbate the issue. There are some others like "eat the ugliest frog first" but we may discuss that at another time. 🙂 Intensify the conflict: of course, no one will ever use set track for 2800 pieces. But it does exacerbate the issue. If I put 2800 pieces into SCARM, tiny errors in computation are magnified 2800 times! In this case, the intensity reveals the values with certainty. We can see the radius that SCARM uses. The nominal radius that Hornby dictates. Helpful? Bee

Happy to explain LT&SR_NSE, no worries. TL;DR: SCARM uses one value for R2. It is deterministic. The mathematics tell us where points should be, and when I use the correct value, SCARM agrees. When I compare to SCARM using an incorrect radius, SCARM does not agree. Thus, we know the one value it uses. 438 mm. Further, this must agree with the nominal value of the physical track, or it cannot produce layout confirmation, particularly so with lots and lots of pieces. The slightly longer version: This is an advanced mechanical engineering topic. It talks to the relationship between the theoretical aspects of CAD and practical manufacturing. Its a fairly complicated topic, but the over view is presented thusly: SCARM is essentially a simple CAD tool. We pick from a library of preprogrammed parts. We pick R607, for example. We do not specify the radius of that track, we just get that piece of track. The dimensions, like included angle and radius are fixed. So the first thing we must understand is the behavior of SCARM, to see if it is deterministic. Does it use the same value for the angle and radius of R607, each and every time I select that from the library? The short answer is yes, it is deterministic. I can mathematically predict where the endpoint is, to a very high degree of precision, given the inputs from the starting point. It is always the same values, the same endpoint. SCARM uses a singular value for the radius. A singular value for the included angle. R607 is parameterized. The issue of tolerance does not apply for SCARM as it relates to manufacturing. The theoretical track in SCARM must match the nominal, or the accumulation of error could render the program useless. This is a subtle point, but critical to understanding. Suppose I accept a tolerance of 438 mm +/-0.15 mm. In actual practice, there will be a gaussian curve (bell curve) of parts compared to the nominal specification. So some parts could be as low as 437.85, some as high as 438.15. So what should SCARM use? Will it be a random selection for each track piece? Random selection will not work well for 8 sections of R607 arranged in a circle, as the endpoints of 1 and 8 will likely not meet. It's not just the radius that has a tolerance, its also the included angle. SCARM does look at the endpoints of two tracks in close proximity and decides if they can join, or not. If the tracks endpoints are within some distance, SCARM says they will join. A tolerance of join-ability. Afterall, SCARM is to validate your track configuration. For a circle of R607, with 8 segments, the value used in the SCARM library should be at the one value, such that the circle joins. Will it join if you use random angles and radii? Maybe, maybe not. That would be a poor tool indeed. If all the included angles are low, they do not add up to 360°. Will the circle join if you use any one value? Of course it will. SCARM checked our circular layout and all the endpoints connected! How does SCARM relate to the physical parts? So I run out and purchase my 8 pieces of R607. These have true manufacturing tolerance, with that gaussian distribution centered around 438 mm. I connect them up. Even with tiny errors, the tracks will go together. The tiny dog legs will not affect running. As long as the Hornby track is within a manufacturing tolerance, what SCARM tells you will likely go together. Why? Because in the real world, it is extremely unlikely that the errors add up linearly, to give a max build up. As the errors are on both sides of nominal, they tend to cancel the overall error. You must still plan for and account for the extrema, but in all likelihood, it will not be thus. Think it through. What value should SCARM pick for the radius? It cannot be a random distribution around nominal. It cannot be a gaussian distribution about nominal. If I am to pick one value, I should pick the nominal. This will permit SCARM to validate my layout to the highest order of accuracy. It will match. It cannot match if the radius is consistently wrong. Now examine the Wiggle Waggle Railway. I compare two fixed values. They are either R2= 438mm or R2=438.15mm. SCARM could use either one, but which one? Or perhaps another radius. When I accumulate the difference in chord length over multiple segments, the difference is magnified. The error is linearly proportional to the number of segments. It is strictly multiplication. So with SCARM commanded to install 28 curves, it does so. In a deterministic sense. I then tell SCARM I want a new starting point. Of course, I will select a new starting point strictly by the trigonometry and maths. If the new starting point agrees with the old endpoint the track join lines will be perfect. Therefore, what I used for the radius was correct. If there is a gap at the new / old, then the radius I selected is wrong. Easy peasy. Either its 438 or 438.15 mm. And we can immediately see the mathematical answer that agrees with SCARM is 438.00 mm. In the first SCARM experiment, we have perfect agreement with the 438 mm radius. At 438.15, we do not. We confirm this by intensifying the conflict. In the second SCARM experiment, use 28 segments, connected back to back. We see that if I compute an overall length, using 438.15 mm and set the start point, it is off by ⅛". Hold up Bee, you rascally rascal. 28 pieces? That's well below the threshold for the free version of SCARM. What happens when I pay for SCARM and inject 280 segments of R607? The error between the two accumulated chord lengths is 1¼". Remember, the pay version has unlimited components. Suppose I pick 2800 sections of R607. It grows to 12½" or more than a foot!! Yes, I think most anyone would notice that. A one foot gap? Yes, even I might pick up on that minor gap. Intensify the conflict, again. What if I have 28,000 segments of R607? Okay, most would think me daft for such a layout, but the delta is now over 10 feet. That's one heck of a keep alive. SCARM uses one value for R2. It is deterministic. The mathematics tell us where points should be, and when I use the correct value, SCARM agrees. When I compare to SCARM using an incorrect radius, SCARM does not agree. Thus, we know the one value it uses. 438 mm. Further, this must agree with the nominal value of the physical track, or it cannot produce layout confirmation, particularly so with lots and lots of pieces. This should be enough to explain it. If not, ask away. I really do not mind a bit. Bee

The Wiggle Waggle Model Railway is an end to end layout. It consists of 28 sections of R607. 14 will turn to the left, 14 will turn to the right, alternately. Back to back curves, one after the other. R607 is a double radius curve. The included angle is 45° for each. The length of the chord, across the curve is straight forward. Chord Length = 2 * sin(angle/2) * radius If radius = 438 mm, then chord length is 335.230687 mm If the radius is 17¼" (438.15 mm), then the chord length is 335.345492 mm Fairly tiny difference. But here at the WWR, we have 28 of sections, not just 1. Simply multiply each by 28 and find the difference. The difference is now 3.214541 mm (⅛"). I set up the WWR in SCARM. I placed 28 pieces of R607, as described. I then added a start point, as if the radius was 438.15 mm. Here is the result R2 curves are 438 mm, not 438.15 mm (17¼"). Inescapably resolved. This is also a good way to illustrate Build up of Tolerance (Hornby Post) . A tiny error accumulates. Bee

Therein is the crux of the matter. 'Tis not the price, it is the perception of value to the buyer. The buyer decides if there is value and then either pays the price [or not]. Hornby offers an item at a price. It is up to us, the customers, to decide if that price offers value. Inflation is ever present. The current offerings, at their price points, apparently are insufficient to make Hornby profitable. Hornby needs to turn a profit. QED: prices will rise. Bee PS My apologies if I somehow managed to offend you Colin. That was never my intent. I was attempting to illustrate a point and may have meandered over a line that I did not see at the time.

Those old buildings are slathered in pine tar! For my uses, I purchased genuine pine tar, not some cheap knockoff, primarily on the testimony of those buildings. Its part of the advertising campaign. Fungus is the enemy of wood. Fungus needs a few things. An organic material to feed upon (wood), a bit of moisture, oxygen and a hospitable environment. Removing one or more elements inhibits fungus. Pine tar and coal tars/dust are very inhospitable to fungus. No fungus? No rot. Bee

Which is why discussions of price invariably are colored by the perception of value to an individual and their station in life. It is clear that, for many individuals, the prices are too high to fit within their budget. For others, the quality is more important. Perception. Is Hornby profitable? If not, then they must adjust prices to account for this. Hornby is not a charitable institution. It is a profit motivated business. If a price rise inhibits you from purchasing, you have my sympathies, but the world of Hornby does not exist to serve you personally, nor me for that matter. Absolutely. Inflation is a fact of life. And by the way, that will not stop me from typing my little heart out. See you in Sept, 2025. 😁 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