The Rigid Chassis Debate -

[Rhinochugger]

OK - so the sale of The Earl sparks the debate about rigid chasis.

Having had some experience of building 4mm scale locos, when I built this beastie, I was prepared for the lack of side-play in scratch/kit built locos when compared with the mass market products. So I arranged for someone to turn the centre drivers to make them flangeless.

However, with hindsight, the one thing that I ought to have done is used brass for the frames, and then forced myself to use sprung horn blocks (as not in this pic)

The main issue is lack of traction. Despite a very healthy weight, and a massive 7-pole Buhler motor, there can be times when only two drivers are touching the rails (where the track lurches into sudden super elevation). As well as that, although my track laying's not the best, I expected the beast to rock occasionally on its centre drivers without electrical pickups, but being a US monster, there's plenty of pickups on the tender wheels.

So the loco goes OK, it stays on the track, and it pulls as big a train as I need.

But I built it for about £280.

But what if you pay about £900 for a factory loco?

I'm with Mel here, as someone on 'The Earl' thread has pointed out, you can buy a Bachmann Connie for £250 (list about £400) and that's an 8-coupled loco with fully sprung chassis and (now that bachmann have done all the bolts up tight) it's a lovely smooth runner, as are the K27s.

Bachmann's Annies still have plenty of axle 'slop & wobble' to even things out, which is the norm with mass manufacturers. It's probably ironic that the mass manufacturers are better at that in N gauge than they are even in 00/H0.

Not wishing to overly criticise a manufacturer that has done a huge amount for the British market, but if Accucraft are going to continue to produce hyper sensitive locos, they're not going to gain the support they need.

Caledonia had the excuse of the long wheelbase, but knowing that, Accucraft could have seen some of the difficulties coming even there.

Roundhouse have gone rigid with the Leek & Manifold 2-6-4, so while there is obviously a cost issue, for £900 for an 0-6-0, I'd expect something pretty darn good. I'd rather have a sprung chassis and less cab detail meself.

It'll be interesting to hear John (Sealion) trackshack's comments.

On the other hand, what are the USA Accucraft locos like, do they have sprung chassis?

The other part of the equation is track radius; there are a lot of G scalers who are limited to R1 & R2, and Accucraft would be crazy to ignore them.
[h5] [/h5]

 

[MRail]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

Adding a little experience, from the live steam fraternity...

The MR is a 32mm line using hand-curved 2'6" radius with some gradients around 1 in 40 on these curves.
Accucraft's Wrekin and Lawley were both unstable in these areas.
I eventually turned off the centre flanges, and in the manner of proprietary manufacturers, also took a little of the treads. This is the norm with Roundhouse Lady Anne and, I suspect, the L&M loco.
Both Accucrafts are now much happier, only having to cope with the drag on the curves.
There is one spot on the crest of a grade where they do tend to rock on their centre drivers, but have no problems.

I realise electrical pickup is a different ball game.

 

[jimmielx]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

By all accounts the Countess/Earl runs a treat on the R3 curves which are the minimum radius recommended by the manufacturer. So it runs well within the specification, that seems acceptable to me...

 

[hornbeam]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

What gearbox did u use on your loco? I've never had any major problems expect with my Roundhouse C&M which has a habit of jumping of when running forward something springing would stop I would have thought.

 

[Woderwick]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

I like compensation me.

Which leads to a bit of "play"

I did the same on the Mallet as it's got so many wheels.

The blind drivers were replaced with flanged wheels on completion.

Runs like a snake

No LGB parts were used in the construction of these models.

 

[Tony]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

While not YET having dipped my toes into building or running these locos im very intrested as ive had alot of fun trying to get home made wagons and coaches to run sucessfully on less than perfectly layed 45mm track that incorperates unrealistic radius points, curves and indeed hills and gradients.
And it may seem like im stating the bleeding obvious but ive come to the conclusion that as a lot of British stuff is made for the 16mm brigaide who are more intested in realisam than "playing trains". The tolerances of wheel, axel , bogie movement and indeed weight distrabution dont need to be as great as LGB etc.
Im not sure but i think if you were to ask any of the British companies why not ? they would say it would cheapen or their product would have less appeal to the purists who have traditionaly been their target audience
what do you think

tony

 

[PaulRhB]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

While some find pleasure in knocking LGB the 2-10-2 with its articulated chassis does what it says on the tin, with directional lights, flickering firebox, illuminated valvegear, pulsed smoke unit and sound

Well as an owner of the 2-10-2 and an Earl I think I can say that the BOTH work fine. The 2-10-2 looks ridiculous on R1 curves, the Earl struggles to go round due to the long fixed chassis.
On R3 they both run well but the 2-10-2 often has a bit of a crabbed stance at times after coming out of a corner as the articulation doen't centre the rear of the loco, I'd like to have seen a soft centring spring.

nearly 100% more loco for around 30% more cost

hmmm for the non sound loco £850 vs £1280 ? I make that nearly 50% more than the Earl or at £1560 for the sound one 83% more. Now if you consider the Earl was limited to 100 models and in brass and steel I think they are very comparable in value.

AND it works. And its already chipped

As said above they BOTH work and the Harz locos had a reputation for stripping gears on heavy trains at first, the LGB locos aren't properly compensated they rely on the plungers to maintain good contact on rough track joints and traction tyres to keep the adhesion high.
The factory setting on the 2-10-2's decoder (say £50 of the locos cost for basic mts) caused it to nosedive on stopping and speedboat surge on starting, you needed a programmer to get rid of that or very careful use of the controller. They stripped gears because they suddenly transferred all that momentum to the gears when the drive locked as power was cut off completely. I still wince if anyone hits the emergency when mine is running.

As to why the factory fit sound costs nearly £300 more than the basic decoder in the 2-10-2 when the same unit as a massoth chip is £160?

Proper comensation is the best route as Rod says but does require a more expensive design and you'd have to rely on belt drives and cardan shafts to allow it to work with the all geared drives LGB uses in the 2-10-2 as the rods are purely cosmetic. Steel wheels are also better than plated wheels as they grip the rail better.
Mel is restricted on what radius he can use and checked it would go round R1 but it is designed for 3ft and above.
The main flaw in the Accucraft Earl as I see it is the lack of pickups on the centre axle to allow it to cope with seesaw action over raised joints. Chassis wise the Accucraft locos have always needed running in by the user, which is stated in the instructions, Roundhouse do it for you but that's part of the reason they cost more for their live steamers.

So neither of these models are perfect but they are built to a cost. If you compensated the Earl you could add probably £1-200 and if you modelled the Harz locos real articulation and flangeless centre drivers a similar amount and struggle to get that round R3. Fidelity to the original has to be compromised for price and market.

 

[mike]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

so how meny waggons will the earl pull round r1 curves?
my point being..

 

[PaulRhB]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

Caledonia had the excuse of the long wheelbase, but knowing that, Accucraft could have seen some of the difficulties coming even there.
Roundhouse have gone rigid with the Leek & Manifold 2-6-4, so while there is obviously a cost issue, for £900 for an 0-6-0, I'd expect something pretty darn good. I'd rather have a sprung chassis and less cab detail meself.
It'll be interesting to hear John (Sealion) trackshack's comments.

Yep I think the long wheelbase on the Earl is also partly to blame as it attacks the sharp corners on tight radii causing it to climb up the rail as the flange bites too.

The other part of the equation is track radius; there are a lot of G scalers who are limited to R1 & R2, and Accucraft would be crazy to ignore them.

But at a cost to the realisim of the model as the only way would be to somehow steer the rear axle, luttermoller style. The Live steam one was very popular and re-engineering it chassis wise would have pushed the price for the electric to similar levels and probably not have been economic.

I bought Cale and the Earl and built my railway to suit them, It must be gutting for Mel after wanting it for so long but ultimately it is proving too big for his curves to run reliably. I had to give up on G US standard gauge because I couldn't fit in big enough curves to make it look right to me.

 

[PaulRhB]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

so how meny waggons will the earl pull round r1 curves?

Realistically it only needs to manage 10 which it copes with admirably

 

[chris m01]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

Going slightly of topic I have shimmed up my Aristo RDC bofies to remove flexibilty and make the wheels more rigidly fixed. They both now stay on my less than perfect track extremely well whereas the used to derail when the wheels could float more.

 

[stockers]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

Its also in the size of the flange. Small flanges look good - no contest. Big flanges stay on the track on sharp curves. Its a cadse of take your pick really.
Great shame about Mels pride and joy though.

 

[garrymartin]

To me its all a question of what comprimises you are willing to make,but the larger your curves the less you have to make, both in terms of what models you can run & how realistic they will look when running.

 

[yb281]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

R3 is tight enough and can fit in every garden you just have to build your track to allow for this type of model. If you want toy trains stick with LGB or Bachmann.

Well that's told us hasn't it?? Thinking about some of my favourite railways on this (and previous) forums, Linz Gsdat Bahn, Lazy Grange Bay, Ruritanian Railways, the C&S etc. etc., apparently the inclusion of R1's and largely LGB or Bachmann rolling stock makes them mere toys rather than cracking layouts??????

Have you ever considered a job in the diplomatic corps Steve?

 

[dunnyrail]

Woderwick is right on the button, compensation will give you 6 wheels traction. Though I doubt that the guy who turned off the flanges will be able to turn them back on again.

Try to get hold of a copy of Mike Sgharman's "Flexichas" booklet which tells you how to do it all. Will also make Pickup better, just look at the LGB Snout Nosed Railcars which do have xompensation built in. Runs like a dream all the time and pulls better than a Stainz even though it does not have traction tyres.
JonD

 

[PaulRhB]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

I think we need to split this up, compensation helps with uneveness in the track and wheelbase affects the radii of corner you can navigate.
I doubt compensation would have helped much on Mels model as I think it's the wheelbase that was more likely to have been the root cause of his running problems after adding battery power.
I came to G scale after building O gauge locos and getting fed up with trying to get gears to mesh quietly so I find the running in part quite normal. I switched to R3 fairly early due to liking big engines so would always go for that as minimum but the WGLR's character and charm is that Mel managed to make convincing railway rather than just a circuit using the R1's. I saw a Cale on the G scale stand on R1 and it could only run slowly or derailed which convinced me to build Camberwick using R3 rather than R2.
Looking at track contact It would have been interesting to fit skate pickups and see how that compared to the plungers Mel added to see if there was a difference on track power, I doubt it but would be interested.
To get round tight corners and still power that axle means something like the USA trains 6axle motor block and stub axles for the rear crank or the sleeved axle with gears to the crank axle that was used by Luttermoller.
Garden railways are always going to mean some compromise, overscale flanges are the cheapest answer followed by geared drives with some lateral movement ( and cosmetic rods) which LGB use both. Problem is they still have a huge advantage on spreading the cost of this over AccucraftUK.
Without watching the Earl on R1's I can't be certain and I'm tempted to have a look this evening if I get time and see what happens.

 

[chris m01]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

My minimum diamete is 12 foot except for a few R3 points. This suits me. I agree that R1s are not a good thing and I don't like to see large locos or long wagons going round them. I also agree that don't like to see large locos compromised by being designed to go round sharp bends. But all of this is just my personal preference for my railway.

Railways which do include R1 curves please their owners and, as Mel says, there are some great railways which use them. I can think of a couple of railways I have visted and thoroughly enjoyed which use R1s even though I wouldn't use them myself. Live, let live and enjoy the variety.

 

[Woderwick]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

P is right, the USA tank will do R1s, with all the drivers flanged because of the short (docks) wheelbase, irrespective of the compensation. The mallet prob would, but I would n't want to spoil the look of it.

 

[Rhinochugger]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

R3 is tight enough and can fit in every garden you just have to build your track to allow for this type of model. If you want toy trains stick with LGB or Bachmann.

Well that's told us hasn't it??
Have you ever considered a job in the diplomatic corps Steve?

Inevitably this discussion was likely to head towards 'my garden's bigger than yours' (where's the emoticon for blowing a rasberry when you need it?)

Clearly R3 as a minimum is a worthy ideal, but only if it'll fit. On the other hand, I do sometimes raise half an eyebrow when I see pictures of small radius points in a very long stretch of straight track.

I'm one of the lucky ones who can take R3 as a minimum, and I was even luckier to have some advice from Sandy Taylor of Scottish Garden Railways when I was first buying track - 'Go large' he said, and unusually for me, I listened to someone's advice.

However, R1 or R3, it is clear that long chassis should have some form of compensation/equalisation, even if it's just a lightly sprung centre axle, and a little bit of side float would go a very long way.

Although I always wondered how an LGB 2-10-2 went round corners, and I knew that the LGB 2-8-2 crabbed (now I realise they use the same system) it's another of life's compromises. In a debate like this, it's worth being objective and standing back from our pet likes and dislikes to review the issues at stake.

Anyway Mel, what chance of talking to those nice people at Accucraft and buying a body only - then we can look at finding a chassis?

 

[hornbeam]

Re:The Rigid Chassis Debate - on Mel's behalf

Cheeky Monkey,

Personally I don't compare plastic unscale mass produced models to scale brass ones, but its your railway so if your happy and im happy- Rule8!