Nottingham 3 1/2 rally.

Hello lee, are electric locos welcome?

Neil

Great, I'll put it in my diary - no promises, but I'll do my best to get along. It's a raised track at the GCR sheds as I remember?

Neil

Neil & Lee I hope to see you there, last year I went to Leyland and had a great time for me this is half the distance!

I can not have you with the only diesel I will bring my new toy (bought form the classifieds last year) This is my first posting hate computers the pictures upside down.

Lee, the website doesn't give any times - is there any more information you can give?

For anyone wondering this is the venue from the NSMEE site:

In an unprecedented move, I have invested in a brand new 7Ah battery actually meant for cyclic motor use rather than my old worn-out burglar alarm batteries. I've also checked out the 1:111 gradient and gambled on my high gear ratio

Neil

NG11 6NX

... 'I can not have you with the only diesel I will bring my new toy (bought form the classifieds last year) This is my first posting hate computers the pictures upside down'.

Be honest Paul it's from the Antipodes isn't it

George.

I've just come back from a great half-day.

Scalextrix fans will be delighted to know Paul's 08 has 'magnadhesion' as the photo shows, but it didn't work on the alloy rails. Paul kindly let me run round the track with his train - it was like being at Alton Towers with tension of worrying about derailing the loco with a full rake of wagons!

My battery decision was a good one - I did three laps or nearly 1 1/3 miles and the battery was still full of life. Although it slowed down a bit on the gradients, my problem was wheels slipping not grinding to a halt, gentle starts worked OK, so it was capable of pulling me up 1 in 110 on 50% power. I would guess that it would happily do a few more laps at least. The headwind was worse than the gradients - when I was stopped on a gradient one gust had me rolling backwards!

My very simple driving trolley worked well, especially the very simple rubber block suspension, but I think a bit of padding is needed on the stirrups as they started to dig into my legs.

I think I will simplify my controls. I discovered that I've fixed it so the back-emf brake can't be put on when you are in 'neutral'. That said the braking works much better now I have a truck with pads that give no danger of fouling the buffers.

Neil

P.S. they have four(!) bridgeports...

Just measured the off-load voltage of the new battery, it's has some 4-5 hours rest and it is putting out 12.61V which, depending on where you look, suggests it has only given up 10-25% of its capacity.

Someone at the track said a 7 1/4" loco did 6 laps on two of these size batteries without slowing down.

Neil

If you are interested the Nottingham club have a large collection of photos of this rally on their facebook page. If you are not on facebook like me you can access it via their web site also a link to a youtube video including Neil driving my train.

Paul

Thanks Paul, I'll take a look. Video of my choo-choo here!

Neil

And the Nottingham video with Paul's waggons: