New Hornby - press preview tomorrow

John Turner

Me. :-)

Although I will probably wait until they do a Coronation class.

-- Enzo

I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.

"Whokid" wrote

...

Small enough diesels and generators exist so I'm sure it's technically possible but I imagine such a thing would make a hideous whine, so ideal for an HST. Maybe suitable for a garden railway where your nearest neighbours are more than a mile away. 8-)#

I do ;-). The price may be high but it would be fantastic to have a live steam 00 model on my layout!

Jim

I think all model railway items other than something like the Tomy or Brio ranges are unsuitable for 3 year olds but (unless the Black 5 is different) that's the recommended age which was on Hornby products last time I checked...

Just checked mine too - it's a standard Hornby box, but it says the same thing on the leaflet inside, after the warnings about delicate parts.

Oddly, Corgi OOC and Lledo Trackside are not recommended for children under 14, but EFE suggests 3. There seems to be no "happy medium"; I'd say about 8 is an age when kids can handle delicate objects.

MartinS There seems to be no "happy medium"

You're forgetting Doris Stokes..... :-)

-- Enzo

I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.

if these models are produced in the same factory in China as the rest of the Hornby range then they won't have to sell -that- many to turn a tidy profit. It's all done by batch production nowadays.

Hornby also already have the tooling/drawings for the bodywork of the locos so there's very little cost/development on that side of it.

Pete

How can I forget her? I've never heard of her.

If anyone was going to pick up on that, it had to be Enzo. :-)

If their first attempt is successful, perhaps they will refine the mechanics and eventually produce non-streamlined locos with exposed cylinders.

But any news on the Q1 and any other models, besides the steam thinghy. I REALLY want to see pictures of the Q1's Rob

click here:

on Monday. Pat should have all the news.

Pete

Well they are pretty small diagrams but to me it looks as though there is a water tank in the tender with a water feed to a cylinder with immersion heater in the boiler area with the resulting steam being fed to the cylinders. If they have been clever it will run on standard dcc.

What's the odds? Keith Make friends in the hobby. Visit Garratt photos for the big steam lovers.

I think Mother Nature has an opinion on that.

Let's do some math. Suppose your DCC voltage is set for 12V p-p, "nominal" for H0/00. How much power will that immersion heater take? Instead of guessing, I did a web search for 12V coffee makers for reference. The one I found is 165W, and is advertised as taking 20 minutes to brew 4 cups of coffee. 165W / 12V = 13.75 amps. How big are the DCC bus wires in your layout, then? And the track feeders? If the heater is in the 150W range, and if I was the engineer at Hornby that had to make this contraption work, I think I'd be looking at using the DCC protocol but at something like 60V on the track. That way you have some hope of running 2 or 3 locos on a single layout block with reasonable amperage, and have simpler wiring and connector problems all around. Of course, at 60V you give up simulaneous running of typical 00 DCC decoders.... very short running times excepted :-)

Of course, my base assumptions might be wrong. This isn't 4 cups of coffee... the boiler will certainly hold less. Maybe a 50W heater is sufficient to bring the kettle to boil in 20-30 minutes, and maintain steam pressure thereafter. Let the DCC voltage go up to 16V, which I think most 00/H0 scale decoders are happy with, then 50W/16V = 3.125A

-- on the large side of reasonable. Of course, at 16V the non-live-steam locos will need to have new speed curves programmed, but that's not a big deal.

I'm curious as to whether there is a thermostat in the boiler controlling the heater coil. One might consider building one without, and letting the "fireman" use his judgement. In which case, you could use DCC protocol over a variable voltage supply, where the fireman's control sets the track voltage per the needs of the boiler.

But probably all of the above speculation is wildly off the mark.

-dave

Flash steam generator!

Sorry. Not for me at any price.

In message , mutley writes

Me too. But I'd like to see how they do it in a tank engine.

In message , Dave Curtis writes

From

The locomotive is powered by a mini immersion heater located in the tender and is heated by a safe low voltage current passed along the track by the remote regulator. This low voltage boils the water which in turns creates the steam pressure.

Being simple to operate, after a small amount of practice, the driver can obtain approximately 25 ? 30 minutes of running before the locomotive needs topping up with water. The engine also produces realistic steam sounds from pumping pistons to the engine whistle, coupled with the unmistakable nostalgic smells of steam and hot engine oil.

In message , Ian J. writes

I think at the moment there are more questions than answers, but all will become clear in the course of time.

If I were to get one (big IF), I would only want the loco (and anything else required to get the loco going) and not the track or coaches/wagons etc., because I've already got rather a lot of Hornby track laid in the garden, and boxes full of coaches/wagons just waiting to be hauled around the layout.

But I've no intention of buying Mallard, because it isn't ex-Great Western or ex-Southern Electric.

Given the current popularity of Harry Potter, I'd have thought a live steam Hogwarts Express would be a good seller.