Giles' misc. Work bench.

[James Spooner]

Simon,

That would be a perfectly practical way but not so good on the realistic operation front.

I have just been watching a few Youtube videos of operations on the Welsh Highland and on a lot of them the Garretts are seen slipping one engine while the other plods on! Not always the same one either. The ash train story, where they shunted half the train into a siding at Bedgellert, has slips alternating front and back in the same movement!

In model form a motor to each bogie would recreate that with a bit of deft finger control. But what about the plume of steam from the chimney?

Ian.

Yes, one difference between a Garratt and a Fairlie is in the regulators. A Fairlie has a regulator for each end, which enables the driver to minimise slip at each end, whereas a Garratt only has one regulator to serve both bogies. That means, when one end slips on a Garratt, the majority of the steam is directed to the slipping end and the non slipping end tends to get less steam. Probably difficult to emulate in model form…

Nigel

 

[jc2001]

My 7mm K1 Garrett was fitted with two CT Elektronik decoders - one for each bogie mapped to the same address. Sometimes this used to give erratic behaviour where one bogie ran faster than the other. It's now fitted with Zimos with better stay-alives and this is far less common.

John

 

[simond]

Given the availability of pickups I’m surprised you bothered with KAs? Presumably the pickups on the two bogies are linked?

 

[jc2001]

Yes the pickups are linked. The stay-alives are more belt and braces than anything else. It certainly is the most reliable runner of my NG engines.

 

[Giles]

My 7mm Garratt likewise has two decoders (one with sound) but otherwise identical, and of course identical motors. Even with identical settings, the front and rear engines don't share identical characteristics, leading to one sometimes slipping going up the bank! I previously tried a single decoder driving both engines, but that was much worse.....