[shikhantmorris]

Hi

I am wondering if there is a study somewhere in the MRF that critically compares Steam locomotives with respect to their drive systems. Purely tender driven, Tender driven with shaft driving the engine wheels and engine driven (with and without pick-ups on the tender wheels). Could somebody please pont me to it.

I have a navy class 00 Gauge Hornby from their Venice Simplon set. It has the motor in the engine with extra pick-ups on the tender. It runs pretty well and has excellent speed. I don't possess a tender driven loco but am tempted by whats available out there.

But on the face of it I am put off by the thought of it as I don't see how tender driven locos could be as good as or better than engine driven.

Cheers

Railquest

 

[Robert Stokes]

In only give you a personal view. I have some older tender drive engines which, as finance allows, I am replacing with engine driven ones. One drawback of tender drive, is that it is possible for the wheels on the engine to stick. Then you see the ridiculous sight of the engine careering forwards without its driving wheels moving.

 

[7113]

In my assorted fleet I have examples of loco drive, cardan shaft drive and straight tender drive. In my opinion the worst of the lot as it frequently results in the loco crabbibg due to its being pushed.

Regards

 

[ME 26-06]

I have tender-driven Fleischmann engines (DRG 41 and 18.5) as well as loco-driven Brawas, and although they are all good performers, I strongly prefer tender drive.

In case of maintenance, I won´t have to disassemble a delicate steam engine, piping and all, but merely need to take off a tender shell. Neither my Fleischmann nor my Rivarossi (I) engines ever got pushed with their wheels stuck, so I really can´t comment on that. Still, the rather voluminous tender body allows for larger flywheels, giving the engine a smoother ride. And, you get a real good "see-through" engine frame.

My 2 Eurocent.

 

[ebaykal]

Please check:

http://www.modelrailforum.com/forums/index...?showtopic=2523

All my steamers are tender driven except for the Trix SNCF 150X ( Oh what a huge dissapointment

it turned out to be.) which is loco driven.
In HO land if you are not a Maerkliner nearly all brands steamers are tender driven really no choice at all.

Its merits? I really do not see any, at least with loco driven models you have a huge space in the tender for a loudspeaker.

Baykal

 

[34C]

Since a socking great electric motor and gear train has no real business inside a steam loco boiler or tender, I have no prior position on where the mechanism is to be positioned, nor which drive is to be preferred. The sight and performance of the model in action should decide. Provided the eye perceives the loco to be doing the pulling, and a full size load can be hauled, and the appearance of the model has no compromises realting to the drive installation then all is well.

But practically, one can usually perceive where the drive is coming from. Steam loco wheels should sometimes slip a little, and if there is any slack (even the slightest) between loco and tender, the loco should extend the slack in pulling away forward. That makes loco drive my strong preference, especially as present technique will deliver more than enough traction for realistic train loads to be hauled. But if a desireable model type was produced tender drive only as a necesity to prevent the mechanism being on view , and the manufacturer had taken the trouble to make the loco look right dynamically when running, I would have no objection to the purchase.

 

[Saint Johnstoun]

When we lived in Leicestershire in the 1980s I built a large loft layout which was populated with Hornby Tender drive locos in quantity.

Due to other commitments, the layout often sat unused for weeks and I had a hell of a job getting the dormant tender drive locos to run again. The result was that when we moved back to Scotland in 2004 I got rid of all the Hornby Tender Drive locos and have been gradually replacing my stud with loco drive examples.

However, Many years ago before we moved south I bought a number of Airfix Castles cheap here in Perth and detailed these, even doing a streamlined Manorbier Castle. Strangely the old Airix tender drives never gave the contact problems experienced with Hornby and I still have them all, plus an Airfix 4F and 2P which still perform well.

Also, I did a Caerphilly Castle using an Airfix loco with a Hornby 3500 gallon tender and this strangely has never given any problems. The old Hornby problem was that most locos picked up from one side only on the loco and the other side only on the tender. Add to that the prehistoric tender to loco coupler and the problems compounded themselves. Any short period of disuse and all the contacts had to be cleaned.

 

[shikhantmorris]

So it seems that most of you guys like engine drives and given a choice would not go for tender drives. The only point so far that has emerged in favour of tender drive is that you don't have to take apart the engine and its delicates to service the motor.

I believe current OO offerings from Hornby and Bachmann have their motors in the engine so you have the same complication anyway (if you are playing both sides of the channel ), if anything, continental models are sturdier so you have less of a chance of damaging them as compared to Hornby or Bachmann.

In case of continental engines, it seems it is more of an issue of availability of engine driven locos rather than preference.

regards

Railquest

 

[Saint Johnstoun]

Historically, that is why UK manufacturers pre-war altered the scale to 4mm to make room for motors in the locos - we've had to live with this ever since.

 

[6991]

No particular view on the matter, but will say this

- H0, no problem, cannot imagine anything better than tender drive - my GFN and Roco tender locos (GFN 38 and 39, Roco 23, 50, 57, 58 - shortly to be joined by 18-1) run beautifully. Tiny problem on the earlier Rocos (57, 58) is the connection between tender and loco - solved by getting them out of the box and keeping them on your layout, together, connections in place. However, I must say, I do not posess H0 tender locos with engine mounted motors - kind of doesn't seem right - thought it went out decades ago - with 3-rail - even sold my 2-rail, engine motored, Triang Britannia and Pullmans in 1965 to turn to TT gauge.

- N, yes the sticky wheels syndrome on the motorless engine does play a far greater role - and does look really silly - I have several engines (trix and GFN) thus motored and it is exacerbated by the fact I don't run them that often these days since H0 took over.

6991

 

[Anthony James]

Hi Guys,

IMO ROCO (twin drive )with a tender and Loco drive cannot be beaten, they will pull more than any tender Loco that I know of, put one up against a Fleishmann the other day and it beat it hands down, where the Fleishmann stopped and stalled the ROCO just kept going, I amgoing to try it out next time with the BRAWA 06 that I have,now that should be interesting.

Regards

Anthony

 

[adecoaches26point4]

Hi Folks,

Am I missing somethng ? My loco fleet includes all the major manufactures and quite a number of Kit built also.(German HO)
(Try a Rivarossi loco with there clutch drive, when you turn off the power the drive disengages and the loco freewheels,

pure magic,

shame the technology seemed to disappear with the old company.

)
I find no problems in the running of any of them, whether tender powered or loco powered.
Most will pull a prototype load and many will exceed it by miles.
Good maintenence will reap many rewards in performance.

My 2 pence worth.

David

 

[7113]

QUOTE (adecoaches26point4 @ 8 Oct 2008, 16:22) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>(Try a Rivarossi loco with there clutch drive, when you turn off the power the drive disengages and the loco freewheels,

pure magic,

This is the system I have on my old Riv Royal Scot, and although a bit of an oddity on the scale front it is still among my favourites in the HO fleet.

Regards

 

[Brian Considine]

I have examples of all types of motor/transmission & to be honest I just don't care what method is used - as long as the model performs correctly & to my satisfaction - after all the fact that we have an electric motor in a steam outline model it will always be a compromise.

 

[Lancashire Fusilier]

As I am developing sound, smoke and light installs for all my 4mm scale EM locos whether new build or RTR conversions I am planning to free up as much space as possible in locos and utilise the tender space for the motor where possible and use a cardan shaft to drive the loco wheels. I think this is a pragmatic solution to the matter - kind of having cake and eating it too perhaps? For instance I have a couple of Hornby 2Ps with tender drive that as new chassis get fitted, I can remove the tender drives and replace with new motors while leaving the boiler space free for mass, smoke unit and lighting etc.

 

[Totnado]

Hi,

I have several tender drive engines and can honestly say that I find little or no difference in performance of either design. I favour the Hornby brass pinned tender which connects to a sprung brass and steel combination found on the engine as in the "Duchess of Sutherland" against the fixed tow and wired connection of say the Airfix "Royal Scots Fusiliers" but this is purley a penicety mental view of the connections as they both perform similarly but with one important exception.

This exception is that the total pickup and return of electrical current is through all six front wheels of the engine equally divided between positive and negative and this provides an very wide range of contact when crossing points or heavens forbid dirty rail sections and it is found that in these circumstances the Airfix system can be trolled very slowly accross any hazard without it failing to move or indeed it even thinking of stuttering. The duchess is similarly equiped but spreads her 5 pole return similarly through it's front wheels whereas it picks up it's positive feed through it's tender wheels. It too is a remarkably smooth 'operator'.

Locos that are seen to be suffering from seisure when being moved along by tender drive are almost certainly suffering from simply not being looked after or rather more likely that the Axel has been pushed by some extraneous force through the wheel hub and is fowling the valve motion causing it to lockup.

Contrary to all the aforegone and given a free reign I would have all my engines boiler driven purely for aesthetics, but it is unthinkable that I should rid myself of the superb detailing as provided by Airfix and for that mater Mainline both of which as far as I can tell are still I think being used by Messrs Bachmann with the singular exception wheel rim and tyre thickness, but not in all cases.

Cheers.
Tot-na-do

 

[Big Dave]

I have been building a large shed of A4s most are tender drive and as I have found a new silver link loco drive was a very poor runner up against a silver link tender drive which just keeped on pulling up a hill side with in the end 9 coaches the loco drive would only pull 3. There so easy to fit decoders in and you have all the room in the train for smoke and sound were the sound should come from.

 

[Erik]

I have several Fleischmann steam engines with tender drives and they all perform very nicely without any problems. In my opinion, the benefits of tender driven engines are as follows:

1. More space for the motor = more powerful
2. More space for flywheel = smother and more stable running, nice long gliding run when power is off or temporarily lost.
3. Much easier to get access to the motor and gear system for cleaning and lubrication

Erik

 

[Brian Considine]

I too have quite a number of FLM (& other "Europeans") that are tender drive & agree with Erik.

Personally, I don't care where the drive is, as long as the locomotive performs.

I just don't see the objection of tender drive, unless of course people have been influenced by inferior copies of European models with "features" such as badly engineered traction tyres, excess play in "drawbars" & erratic mechanisms.

At the end of the day we are looking at a steam outline locomotive powerd by an electric motor - a huge compromise for a start, so where it is actually driven is irrelevant, provided, as others & myself have already said performs.

 

[Brossard]

Let's be clear - there's tender drive where you have a pancake type motor in the tender and the loco is pushed by the tender and then there's the motor in the tender driving a gearbox in the loco. The latter case, I think, is the best of both worlds although I haven't done any. I have a great deal of experience with the former having started British modelling in the mid-80s - very little of it good (IMO). (Some models had pancake motors in the loco - these were no better).

I think I agree with Brian and would clarify that my definition of performance is the ability of the loco to move at a scale 5mph continuously - can the pancake motor design do that? With the ability of good quality decoders to adjust performance I wait to be convinced.

I'm fairly ruthless with my locomotives. If a particular loco doesn't perform to my liking - out it goes to be replaced with one that does. My collection is fairly small as a result.

John