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New 4+4 Bobo to enter service at Hastings Miniature Railway; The story so far.
Topic Started: 30 Jun 2011, 11:21 PM (3,370 Views)
HMR-DAN
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Hi all.

The long awaited completion of our 4+4 Bobo Speedy-Fizzle is very near. Work started in July 2009 prior to us purchasing the railway and moved preaty swiftly.

By December 2009 the chasis was complete, with the bodywork, and the Perkins 103-10 engine fitted. The loco at this point was named Jerry Lee and was to be mechanically driven, this work was to begin in January 2010 with the full intention of the loco being completed ready for the 2010 season.

Unfortunatly we had a major set back as my best friend Daryl Valentine (the more technically minded one) sadly passed away on 16th January just 3 days after his 24th birthday. This created a huge problem as, just like myself, everything was in his head. He rarely wrote things down as he would lose the piece of paper!

With the loss of my friend, coupled with taking over the railway, work stopped on the loco. Partly as we had so much to do to the railway, but mainly as I felt I could not complete it on my own, a, because I didn't know how, and b, as I could not bare to go near it. It was covered up and pushed to the back of the tunnel.

The months passed by, and there it sat, doing not a lot but getting in my way!

In march 2010 we purchased another locomotive, which went under extensive overhaul called Derek. We did not like this name and felt the loco needed a new identity, so it stole the name Jerry Lee. (We already had the name plates!)

In September 2010 we held a charity day in memory of Daryl with the proceeds going to the NACC (National awareness of Crohns and Cholitis) as Daryl was a sufferer of Crohns. We raised just over £1,000. This was the first time the loco had properly seen the light (having been built at night time after working hours) and spent the day on display. We also decided it needed a name, since we had stolen its identity for our other loco, we deciced to name it Speedy-Fizzle (Daryl's nickname) Family and friends all attended and I was given a bit of a hard time being told Daryl would kill me if I didn't finish what we started!

I spent the next couple of weeks trying to decide what route to take, This was where I made a big and drastic mistake. I removed the perkins and fitted a Peugeot engine with auto gear box. This meant most of the bodywork had to be altered. We did this and started some line tests. It didn't work! Well it did, but I thought 2mph was a bit slow considering the gearbox had gone right through the gears and was now reving at 6000rpm! Back to the drawing board.

I went away with a headache and a pocket full of disapointment. Gave up and returned the loco back to the back of the tunnel.

With all the winter closures and work commencing on Rock-a-Nore Station it was left alone for the winter, with no-one even looking at it for six months.

The Railway re-opened in April this year and about a month later Daryl's mum came to see me asking how the loco was getting on? Well it wasn't. I had given up by this time. I clearly did not know what to do with it.

Two days later she came to see me again with a folder she had just found marked Train Project. Inside this was all the designs and drawings we had done in the early days of designing and building the loco. There were also photo's of other locos with their drive systems etc. At the back I found a piece of paper, It was a quote for a hydraulic system to fit to the perkins engine dated two days before he passed away. I contacted the company to see if they were familiar with what we were doing and was astonished to find that they had all the information about our loco (sizes etc) and had worked out the best system to power it. Daryl had obviously decided this was the best route to take so I followed suit.

Unfortunatly this also meant removing al the changes I had made and putting the loco back to the same possition it was in in December 2009. This has now been completed, with a few alterations, hopefully for the best. The Hydraulics have arived this week and work has started on fitting them. We are also upgrading the axles and bearings as the loco has become alot heavier than originally anticipated.

Hopefully 95% of the work will be completed in the next two weeks, then its back to line testing! However, this time I have a good feeling about this as the hydraulic system is identical to that in Jerry Lee with the added bonus that it will drive four axles, not two. Providing all goes well the last jobs will be to paint the loco and fit the trimings.

We are aiming to have the loco ready for service for the first weekend of the summer holidays. This will give the inconsiderate car drivers something to think about when they drive in front of it. A 14" long, solid lump of steel with chevrons on the front and back of it. I certainly won't be getting in its way!

I will post more on the developments over the coming weeks.

Bye for now.
Dan.
Edited by HMR-DAN, 30 Jun 2011, 11:26 PM.
Dan Radcliffe
Owner and operator of Hastings Miniature Railway
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ChrisM
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That's a great story, Dan - good luck with finishing the project, no doubt it will be even more difficult, but I'm sure Daryl will be smiling down on you! I shall look forward to updates :D
Edited by ChrisM, 1 Jul 2011, 10:08 AM.
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Ivan
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Hi Dan

Further to my previous comments about your hard work on the HMR, the background about your friend makes your efforts even more impressive, I am sorry to hear about Daryl, but it's great that his work and memory live on.

I love the name Speedy-Fizzle it would have been apt for my locomotive in it's early years, but perhaps not ideal for the Peugeot form of your machine ;) Mind you 6000rpm, 2MPH, I bet that would have pulled the side off a house !!!

Good luck with the project I must get down there again to see your set up.

Cheers, Ivan
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HMR-DAN
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Hi again. Thanks for the comments.

We now have the hydraulics fitted and the new braking system in place. The new axles and bearings are a vast improvement as well. Unfortunately this has now created a new problem, the new take-up bearings only have provision for one set of springs where-as the original system was double sprung. This now means the suspension is now non existant! I therefore have now ordered (at great cost) a complete set of miniature spring-assisted shock absorbers (similar but shorter than the type used on the rear of mopeds). These are fully adjustable and are capable of taking up to 1100lb per shock giving a total capacity of 4 tonnes.

The loco has also just had its first coat of paint, there's something about red oxide I love, everything looks clean and new! Having been in build for two years, as you can imagine the sea air has got to it a bit so what was once nice new shiny steel is no more, therefore a lot of prep work has been involved.
As many of you who have done this will be aware, using an electric sander for eight or so hours, plus wire brush wheels on grinders takes its toll on your arms, so no doubt I will ache for many days to come!

More to follow soon.

Dan.
Dan Radcliffe
Owner and operator of Hastings Miniature Railway
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Murray Tremellen
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Nice to hear that this loco is finally approaching completion. I'll be very interested to hear how the hydraulic system performs. At Ruislip Lido, our Severn-Lamb hydraulics, Bayhurst and John Rennie, have been giving trouble over the past few years, to the point where our board is now seriously considering having them converted to mechanical transmission. I hope that Speedy Fizzle proves to be more reliable!
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bvr379
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The 15" gauge Bure Valley Railway has used standard industrial hydraulic components for both of its hydraulic locos. The original Bo-Bo, BVR #3, was built in 1988 and BVR #4, an ex 2ft gauge 0-4-0 Hunslet fitted with a Peugeot 206 diesel engine, was completed about seven years ago. Both have been "approved" for passenger work by HMRI. However, before we got approval for BVR#4 we had to put a governor on the Peugeot engine, so that it did not overload the transmission.

For pictures and details see here. The same page also has a video of BVR #4 in action.

It has been found that the key issue with hydraulic units is to keep the hydraulic oil cool. On BVR #3 an ex Pea Harvester unit was installed about 3 years ago, which certainly improved its haulage capacity.

I hope that everything works out OK for you at Hastings.

Best wishes.
David Barnes

Bure Valley Railway - The 15" gauge railway with powerful steam locomotives.
Trains between Wroxham & Aylsham in Norfolk.
Daily services between 24th March and 28th October 2018.
Please look up the BVR website, for more details.
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HMR-DAN
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Hi all. Well speedy has now been running for nearly four weeks without too many problems.....HA HA HA! Not! It's been working but I don't think there have been many evenings where adjustments and alterations havn't been required. The first lesson I have learned is that if you don't ballast the front end down to counter-act the extra weight of the 12mm cab floor on the back it doesn't like to stay where it should be, i.e, the track! This was quickly solved by getting someone to stand on the front. However this was not a suitable sollution as the person stood on the front wanted vast amount of cash to do it for the whole summer. Luckilly there was enough room in the front end to put 4 35lb bomb proof breeze blocks in place and they are happy to work for free!
Having solved this problem we now had a new one...sorry an old one, it still wasn't fast enough, despite the new hydraulic system. This somewhat baffled me as the exact same system running in our 2+2 diesel is too fast! After taking a gamble with pulling power, I reluctantly reversed all the gearing so it was geared up instead of down which gave me the correct speed, but, this now meant that it struggled under load on the corners. This is where I had to go against all logic, laws of physics, close my eyes and hope. there was only one way to get round the corners.....Wait for it.....speed up before going into the bend. This was working and luckilly we had no derailments or misshaps, but I don't need to tell anyone reading this that this is not the way to do things. A quick word of warning to anyone wishing to try this, don't, unless you are 150% sure your track is set up correctly. Thankfully I have great faith in my buisiness partners ability to set corners up on railways, being that he was one of the head safety engineers on the London Underground.
Thankfully two nights ago we established the cause of our problems.
For anyone reading this who is either thinking of building a bobo loco or converting one to hydraulics using two motors on one pump I can give you a free piece of advice. If anyone tells you to use a 50/50 flow divider, save yourself a lot of hassle and the best part of £300.00.
Possition the motors in the bogies ensuring that your motors are mirror image, i.e, if you stood in the middle of the loco facing front and the motor is to your left, when you turn round to face the rear this motor should be to your left. This will mean one motor runs clockwise and one runs anti-clockwise. Hydraulic motors naturally run a fraction faster clockwise than the anti-clockwise. Then link the pipes in series ensuring that (and you would need to work this out depending on what side the motor is in the bogie) whichever motor is running anti-clockwise is the first in line depending on the direction that the loco is traveling. This is because when you run hydraulic motors in series the second motor in line (in this case the clockwise motor) will run a fraction slower, but as i mentioned they run faster clockwise, this will now even the speed out over the two motors in both directions.
This now has solved all the problems including another, at 700rpm on speedy, my steam outline diesel couldn't keep up with it, and that is restricted to 12mph at 1800rpm! After having a bit of fun on my 200yard stretch of recently renewed straight at about 2200rpm (christ knows how fast it was going) I was able to put the gearing back down to its original configuation and is now restricted to 12mph at somewhere around 1200rpm.
It now has its full strength back and is pulling beautifully.
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Edited by HMR-DAN, 22 Aug 2011, 11:44 PM.
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BenVincer
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Having visited the line on Monday with 'Speedy Fizzle' sitting on the turntable, can I just say what a lovely looking addition to the line it is. Glad you have solved all the problems you have had with it and congratulations on it's proper launch into service!

Ben
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Colinlothlorian
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That is one chunky good looking loco. I wonder how I can shrink it to 7 1/4"? I think I will stick with electric transmission at the moment, at least I can pretend to understand it, whereas hydraulic is a closed book.

I wanted a big diesel, but not quite as big as the other one!
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BenVincer
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Another new locomotive at Hastings...

Posted Image
(Taken from the HMR's facebook page)

That's five locomotives there now! Certainly makes the trip more interesting now that it used to be!

Ben
Edited by BenVincer, 17 Feb 2012, 12:45 PM.
Ben Vincer
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David Humphreys
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Nice looking engine and no doubt any colour resemblance to Thomas is purely coincidental.

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colinpeake
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Given that this appears (from the Facebook page) to use some body parts the rebuilt Keef, it looks as if thee is more to come from the HMR workshop! Personally I think the 'smokebox' looks a little oversize, but I suppose it is in the miniature railway tradition!

Colin
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penrose
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For those who aren't on the UKminiaturerailways Yahoo group: The new steam outline loco has gone to Knebworth Park, with 'Uncle Jim' returning to Hastings.

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BenVincer
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Posted Image

What a terrific paint job - well done to all involved! (Pic from HMR Facebook)

Ben
Edited by BenVincer, 17 Mar 2012, 01:16 PM.
Ben Vincer
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colinpeake
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Now that looks super!

Colin
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