NG Wheelbases and Lengths

[mpeffers]

Somewhat inspired by Jefran's 18' stuff, I dug out Xtracks once more and have come up with my own narrow gauge system. Admittedly, to make thing's a bit easier I've gone for UKN track in truescale, giving a gauge of 2'6"? Having got most of the track laid down (it's a really short route, following a canal through suburbia), I've got stuck into the scenery, part of which required a wire fence to run along the boundary of a park. I started with a flat version but, unhappy with the effect of it, decided to boot up TSM for the first time in a few months and knock up a set. This rekindled my enthusiasm for the whole diy aspect of Train Sims, and I'm now considering the possibility of creating my own stock for it, but I'm not sure where to start really.

The main line is basically L shaped, with two long straights, with a sharp 90 degree, 60m radius bend in the middle. At the west end of the line, there's a short track running out of the final station, turning sharply left (45m radius) onto the far side of a road, flanked by brick walls and into a cramped workshop area.

Feel free to correct me here but, as far as coaches go, the long straights would suit bogie stock better because they're more stable at speed than shorter 4-wheeled stock, however they have more of an overhang than 4-wheeled stock which may put a lot of strain on the couplings on the sharp bends and mean they foul the brick walls going into and out of the workshop (I don't want to make these any more lenient because I prefer the closeness of what I've done so far. The idea solution here seems to be to have quite short bogie stock with the bogeys pivoting right at the ends of the coach, so only the middle of the coach body would overhang on corners, and even then it'd be slight, however, I can't think of any prototypes that really follow this train of thought so are there any issues coaches built like this would suffer?
Also, I've never been a particular fan of articulated locos, so this approach wouldn't be suitable for the motive power. So far I've tested the line with PLtRly No.15 and a 0-4-0ST and it's obvious that the line's much better suited to the smaller engines, but would they be capable of the higher speeds (say around 20mph) without needing a larger boiler that'd cause the extra weight or overhang to warrant more wheels?

Thanks in advance,
Matthew Peffers (mpeffers)

[jefran]

Always good to see another NG route!

As to rolling stock, the WDLR bogie wagons were nearly all like that, with the bogie centres very near the ends, as the handbrake standards had to be clear of the body as here: (if I can get this hyperlink stuff right)
http://www.wdlr.org.uk/WDLR/stock.htm

There were many hundreds of the bogie open wagon, and it appears that Hudson built some passenger vehicles on the same underframe (though where they were used I have no idea - and it looks to have continuous brakes too). After the war, the Ashover Light Railway was built using WDLR surplus stuff, and all its coaches used these bogies - the very elegant Gloucester carriages might be a bit big, but the semi-opens (using bodies from the Wembley Exhibition of 1925 or 6) were quite short

I cannot get the URL to work! - Try a google image search on Ashover Light Railway - you should see one with some 1920s scouts on it

[mpeffers]

This picture??



They look interesting, maybe a little large still but I do like the idea of having a sort of standardised underframe for all the stock - could incorporate a few coaches and wagons where the bodies dont seem to quite match the underframe, like here:

Doubt the whole coach is more than about 18' long too...

I've decided to go for a try out a few quite unusual designs for the loco and scrap reality, starting with an 0-2-2T with large driving wheels, just to see what it'd look like...

[jefran]

That's the picture! The Ashover Wembley carriages were 19'-3" long over the roof, against 17'-8.5" for the WDLR wagon (there are some drawings on the WDLR site), whereas the Gloucesters were much bigger, 30'-1" long, and 2 still exist of course....

[mpeffers]

Should be able to stretch the coaches to around 18' so yeah, I'll dig around for the plans. May have to scale them down a bit so they don't dwarf the loco - as you can see, its not huge:

Not much I can do about that really though - I can't really go any wider than it is currently because of the routes loading gauge, any taller and it'd look particularly unstable and any longer and it'd look a bit too stretched, if you know what I mean. I will fit it with side tanks though, to bulk it out a bit.

Got a few pictures to show the problem I've got with stocking the line:

Here, with a PLR 2-4-2T you can see there's quite a big overhang, particularly at the cab end, and the loco only has a few millimetres of clearance when running along the wall at the top right of the shot, so I assume it hits it when turning in but I haven't been able to get a good enough camera angle to tell yet...


...however, it's large, rather squat appearence looks a lot better when you're bombing it down the straights.

[mpeffers]

Not too bad for a few hours work:


I'll add some noise to the texture at the end to stop them looking so flat...