1. Home
  2. Model Railroad Forum
  3. Any one know who S.F.H. was?

Any one know who S.F.H. was?

Hi,

I bought a "rolling chassis" for a live steam loco off ebay, (See:

formatting link
Which as you can see is described as a 3 1/2" shunting loco, with drawings.

In fact it isn't, its a 5" (which is a bonus) and came with 6 naff blueprints, and 6 buitifully drawn (in pencil) drawings at A2 size on tracing paper with lots of smaller drawings of all the parts, again all originals.

The only "name" type peice if information is that most of the main drawings are "signed" s.F.h. (All caps, but the S and H are the same size as each other but smaller than the F) the drawings show an engine that looks a dead ringer for Tich except that it is 5" and has nicer valve gear.

So does any one have any idea of who S.F.H is or was or any other clues about this engine?

Also I understand if I want to pull people with it I will have to add balast. How do I work out how heavy the loco needs to be to pull things?

Reply to
Benedict White
Loading thread data ...

Benedict White wrote: [...]

A conservative estimate of the potential tractive effort is 20% of the weight on drivers. According to my research, which will no doubt be corrected if drastically wrong, the rolling resistance of rolling stock ranges upwards from about 5% of dead weight, on dry level track on a warm day. Thus, if the tractive effort is say 100 pounds, your maximum load will be about 2000 pounds dead weight behind the drawbar. Gradients and weather will reduce this theoretical maximum load.

You should also note that a steam engine needs to have the boiler capacity to sustain maximum tractive effort for any length of time. There's no point ballasting your model to the point where it runs out of steam three minutes after starting out. You could of course explain that you are modelling an overloaded engine situation, but I doubt your passengers will be fooled. :-)

Reply to
Wolf Kirchmeir

The engine only has drivers, so all its weight is there.

Right, so if the train weighed 100lbs, its tractive effort would be

20lbs. which could pull 400lbs load, or basically we are looking at a dead load of 4 times the weight of the Loco..

Umm.... I need to find some especialy gullable passengers then. : - )

The drawings call for a boiler that is 3 1/2" diameter, by about 6" long, excluding the firebox and smoke box, and there is an ecentric driven water pump. Is that likely to be big enough?

Reply to
Benedict White

At this point you've asked a question that exceeds my expertise (which is all secondhand anyhow, gleaned from live steam magazines and conversations with people who've actually built one.) But if this lokey is indeed a version of Tich, then the photos of the original Tich in action showed she could handle one or two riding cars and two to four passengers (including driver) depending of course on the size of the passengers. Your version should be able to handle a bit more than that.

HTH and good luck!

Reply to
Wolf Kirchmeir

It does, many thanks for all the info...

Reply to
Benedict White

You may want to look to Yahoo groups for live steam groups that can better answer all of your questions/

-- Why do penguins walk so far to get to their nesting grounds?

Reply to
Bob May

Many thanks for that.

Because they can't fly?

Reply to
Benedict White

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.