Having spent some time over the weekend when the little one was asleep doing some work, I managed in return to get a little noisy modelling done yesterday while he was at nursery; I do love having a job that allows me flexibility in when I work as long as the work gets done. The result is that I've managed to move the Clayton O14 loco build along a little to the point where it's now moving under track power.
The downside of more weight is that there is even less space inside than before so I had quite a few problems with electrical shorts, but after some careful tidying and some electrical tape in key areas it moves. Clearly the wiring is just temporary; there isn't room in the loco for all that spare wire but I've left everything nice and long until I sort out the lights and will wire everything up properly in one go at the end. The pickups possibly also need a tweak here and there to improve running, but I'll probably do this once the model is painted as they'll only get knocked when the wheels are dropped out etc. The good news is that with the extra weight introduced in this version it seems to run nicely, although I'll only know for certain how it performs once I try adding the rather heavy driver figure as that was what caused the most problems last time. For now I'm happy with how it's coming along though.
Whilst assembling the model I did briefly ponder another change from the previous version. I managed to accidentally assemble the model without fitting axle bearings. The result, as you can see in the video, was that the wheels were free to rotate slightly around the centre line of the locomotive.
Many models are actually designed to incorporate features similar to this, usually refereed to as a compensated chassis, to help the wheels maintain contact with the track at all times, and hence to ensure proper power collection over points etc. While I did briefly ponder leaving the model like this I decided not to, simply as I was worried that the plastic gear would suffer terrible wear against the stainless steel keeper plate, but has anyone done anything like this before? Any thoughts on how successful or terrible an idea it is?
