[Gary]

Chatting with somebody the other day who kit builds locos they mentioned that they had constructed a small tank loco which had 3 flywheels fitted and a 1:120 reduction ratio gearbox which allowed the loco to crawl 3ft in 15 minutes. There was an issue with having all those flywheels as to actually get the motor spinning meant applying a lot of power initially and then quickly cutting back on the power. This accelerated the loco pretty quickly and it took a few seconds to slow down again to a crawl as a result of the momentum of the flywheels. So maybe it was not that prototypical in terms of start up but once going it was a very smooth loco with a lot of inertia.

From a proprietory point of view the latest super detailed Class 08's have very good slow running qualities and make ideal shunter locos as the chassis is long enough and has been designed with enough compensation not to stall on standard points. They cannot match the performance described above in terms of 3ft in 15 minutes. This is a scale 0.17mph. However they do pretty well and can fool the eye into believing they are stationary when they are not!

For small shunting layouts good slow speed running is essential.

So what do you consider to be your best slow runner and do you have any tips to improve slow running capability?

Are the Class 08's actually the class leaders for slow running?

Happy modelling
Gary