Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Coupling up

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Firstly we’ve visited two miniature railways, both recommended at nearby country parks.  The Echills Wood Railway is at Kingsbury Water Park and is a superb run of over a mile.  The odd engine shown above bears a kind of resemblance to the funkey ‘Vale of Ffestiniog’!  The other is more of a standard miniature run at Ryton Pools – a green class 37 this time.

I’ve also managed to wire up the question mark board with it’s 4 feeds now attached to the track and the bus.  Furthermore the ends of the bus wires have had their connectors added and all is good.

Last night I decided to have a play with greenwich couplings (well expong is organised by these guys and gals).  I found them excellent to fold up and use as simple loco couplings and extension backwards with three mounting holes should make them great for adding to brass bodies with just a vertical wire inside the ends.  The black colour is how they come – ready blackened! 

I then tried to make one up into the full coupling.  I didn’t need the magnetic uncoupling and was aware that the extended leg would catch on the exit from the down gradient on the layout, so I snipped this off. However this means that the very small and light loop doesn’t like to return to the normal position, and so I have decided to give up on that one and just use ordinary bemos.  However I think they are well worth using as loco couplings.

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I also ordered the 4 new peco mainline points I need, and to pay for these and the NGG16 I bought, a few items have been added to ebay:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/colinlea009/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

1 comment:

Tom said...

Colin,

how about folding over the end of the 'tail' so that it's at parallel with the loop rather that perpendicular to it?

that way the wire will be over the top of the magnet for auto uncoupling and it will be less likely to foul on things.