Ride on Railways

Spreading the load.

Technology has moved on in big strides.
I am currently testing two 12v 280ah batteries in my Earl loco. The batteries come with Bluetooth monitoring built in which the phone picks up with no hassle.

There was about 3mm to spare under the tanks. This could be a 10+ year battery solution and offers up to 100% more capacity than the 4 lead acid batteries they replaced.

Looks like fake sky over the workshop but no edit in this shot. Few drops of rain but not the promised showers - yet.

We were asked if we could do a 5" coupling like the one on our Ulysses loco. Slightly adapted so it fits on the standard bolts for the normal coupling.
Accepts bar coupling with pin and has the advantage of restricting the side movement in an advent of a derailment.

FOR SALE - custom dummy rivet tool. Made this for a project which was a bit trial and error. The guides are M12 stud connectors so bottom dia is a M12 bolt and top a piece of stud with 5mm rod through the centre. Means easy to make alternative punches.
Punch with a hammer to make the rivet. Throat clearance is 280mm.
I printed out a reverse image and put on the back to locate the rivets. Guide can be used for parallel rivets. Cab is 1.2mm steel to show what it was used for.

£35 + postage

It is nice to have things wrapped but 200 vibration mounts in bags of 5 and each on in its own bag.
Knife blade in the vice to slice them open. Half way through.

This is a wire wound potentiometer which I would like to try in my Earl Loco. It cost 6 x the price of the usual ones but not sure it warranted such a large box for delivery.

The latest Hercules to go out. This one was an experiment in with different body panels and an extended chassis. I was also set the challenge of a Colas Rail style livery. In the end I actually used Canary Yellow and Gloss Yellow.

On the surface nothing new but the tram controller now has 2 notches between marks. This allows a bit of smoother notching up.