I am looking for ideas here. I have an OO garden railway, about 50m long, which starts and ends in the garden shed. I think it would be useful to have a non-electric loco, to run around a few times before I power up. The obvious uses would be cleaning and drying the track. Does anybody else have one of these? Are we talking clockwork, or battery powered, and where can I get one?
Thanks for any suggestions,
Vernon in Middlewich.
In message , Vernon writes
Hmmm.
When I clean the track, first of all I go over it with an old dustpan brush, to get the leaves, windfall fruit, and loose animal droppings off it. Then I go over it with a stiff brush to get the stuck-on animal and bird droppings off it. Then I go round it with one of those Double-O gauge association track cleaning blocks to bring the rails up shining.
Total time taken is about half an hour.
Running anything round the track will not clean it, and it'll derail on the first hardened bit of bird-s*1t it comes across.
There haven't been any clockwork HO/OO models since around 1960 with the exception of a few very small and lightweight Tri-ang 0-4-0 tank locos.
There have been some cheap Hong Kong battery train sets in recent years - 0-8-0 Diesel shunter, two wagons, track, station, accessories. They actually run quite well :-)
You could make your own battery-electric using a loco pulling a battery wagon - I would suggest the Jouef 0-4-0 Tank locomotive which has a very low current draw and say 4 A size batteries in a bought holder carried on a wagon behind..
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Ask the community — no account required