Mechanics of a Funicular Railway

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Introduction

This is not a design document but a record of my mental ramblings beginning around April 2021. For example: You will find that I discuss N-scale (because a kind friend sent me a pack of N-scale wheels!), but then my age, eyes and hands suggested OO-scale. Then my high-school physics took over and I decided to maximize Energy by maximizing Mass (hence custom built gargantuan gondola ore-wagons) and Velocity (hence a full 36 inches of track AND a variable but steeply inclined baseboard. If you try to read these notes from start to end you may be confused by my change of direction, because I wake each morning thinking “No! That’s not right. I can do better than that …”

https://www.newrailwaymodellers.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=56430

Perhaps two N-scale wagons, initially loaded with lead.

Two coal-chutes, a yard of N-scale track, and a length of chalk-line for cable.

(1) The lighter (empty) wagon is titled “m” in this discussion, the loaded (heavier) wagon “M”.

(2) M descends and pulls m to the top of the incline.

(3) On reaching the top, m dissipates its remaining energy by impacting a lever which absorbs the energy into a lever which chutes a load into the wagon (the m-wagon is about to change identity from m to M)

(4) A second or less after this event M dissipates its remaining energy by impacting a lever which causes M to vent its contents into a chute below. (the M-wagon is about to change identity from M to m)

(5) The wagons now change identity; what was m is now a fully-loaded M at the top of the incline.

(6) M must be on enough of an incline to allow it to begin rolling towards m. Momentum picks up and M hauls m to the top of the incline.

(7) The process self-terminates when the input chute can no longer deposit a load into the wagon at the top of the incline.

(8) This mechanism suggests a series of funiculars bringing loads down the mountain in a series of steps

(9) I can accept as a basis that wheeled tubs run on rail track

(10) The tracks can be mounted on a ?” wide base strip that itself is then dropped into the valley side.

(11) Track work (1) :-

In the diagram above, a loaded wagon (“M” in my earlier technology) is loaded at the upper level “A” with material in the brown hopper; The unloaded wagon (“m”) has discharged in the brown hopper at point B. The upper wagon M being heavier than m should now descend the incline hauling up the wagon m (but please see “ The Bricklayer’s Lament ”).

Except the wagon M cannot start moving unattended unless it is on a slope, as shown by the thin black line above A. The slope of this loading platform is critical because the slope must be steep enough to overcome the static friction of M. Too shallow and the M will not budge; too steep and we are in danger of losing M before it is fully loaded!

(12) Track work (2) :-

At the locations “c” and “d” I have used straight lines for the transition from incline to station, but in practice this should be a smooth curve of transition. Never in my life have I tried curving rails in the vertical plane in a short space. On a 16’x10’ layout I had a bridge, but the transition there was a very gradual slope, not a change from a 60º incline to a near-horizontal plane in about the length of a rigid-wheelbase wagon.

(13) Track work (3) :-

If the funicular is built to N-scale, specialized track work will be less tolerant than an OO-scale model. That means that an N-scale modeler will be closer to the threshold of failure than an OO-scale modeler.

(14) Charge and discharge.(1)

One hopper (at A) charges a wagon while a second hopper (B) receives the discharge from a wagon. If the machine is to operate continuously the wagon at B must empty significantly faster than the wagon at A charges, otherwise we will have a loaded wagon trying to haul a partially-discharged wagon up the incline. The machine will stop running.

(15) Charge and discharge. .(2)

The discharge hopper at B has a manual gate which the human operates secretly in the dead of night in order to transfer the lower hopper contents to the upper hopper.

The laden wagon needs a triggered gate so that the wagon contents can fall into the lower hopper.

The charging hopper, however, must release only a wagon-load at a time, enough to fill the wagon, but not enough to overflow the wagon.

This suggests that the charging hopper has a rather delicate mechanism that can be triggered by the arriving empty wagon, but can be shut off completely once the wagon is full!

To date I have considered all the energy coming from gravity, but an on/off horizontal gate in the charging hopper would require too much energy to slide it shut against the flow of material, surely?

What about an auger mechanism that would rotate just enough to spiral a wagon-load of material? I suspect that that two would require more energy than can be delivered mechanically.

A two-hole gate moved back, and then forth, could be activated by a rigid control rod using the kinetic energy of the loaded wagon arriving at the lower level. More thinking required here.

Another alternative is to deliver mechanical energy secretly bled from mainline trains running around the layout. Suppose a track-side pawl and ratchet that could move a sliding gate one millimeter at a time. Perhaps twenty such triggers spaced around the track (or one trigger passed twenty times) would work. Multiple triggers on several simultaneously running continuous loops would make the loading appear to be a random event.

(16) Hauling cable (a)

I have a half-baked idea that there must be some slack in the rope. Suppose for arguments sake an 18” incline requiring a 36” hauling cable. Using the arrival of the wagons at A and B as triggering mechanisms, and bearing in mind “Charge and discharge” and other timing matters, an extra (say) 3” in the hauling cable suggests that the empty wagon return is triggered a second or two later than the laden wagon start; that is, we would see the wagon M start from A, just a second or two before the wagon m starts from B, as the slack in the cable is taken up.

This suggests that the descending wagon M arrives at B and triggers action there a second or two before the unladen wagon m arrives at A. Indeed it suggests that the unladen wagon m must complete its journey in free-fall (upwards!), as the tension in the cable dissipates.

The kinetic energy of that rising unladen wagon is being dissipated during that last second or two, being converted to potential energy.

The result is that the arriving unladen wagon has less kinetic energy to trigger a mechanism at A (specifically opening the charging hopper)

(17) Hauling cable (b)

Is the cable made from chalk-line (a woven string of cotton fibre) or wire (as in picture-hanging wire) or chain (as in Meccano sprocket chain)?

The string method introduces stretching on each use with consequent loss of energy available to power the system.

The wire or chain method suggests less loss of energy.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Triggering Mechanism

I am pretty well at the end of my thinking, and have been pondering the triggering mechanism; in terms of clocks we would call the “The Escape Mechanism”.

I have pondered the difficulty of warping the track to provide near-level platforms at each end from a 60º incline and relegated that to Phase-39 of the project. Too, I think I should build a prototype of the model in OO-scale to give the eyes and hands a fighting chance.

That leaves me with TWO 36” lengths of Peco Flextrack laid in parallel and, instead of building a wagon from scratch, ordering two OO-scale wagons (rather than build a box on a OO-truck or bogie)

Two 36” lengths yields more energy because of the greater height. To that end I might order two Gondola wagons to increase the mass available. All this with a view to starting off with as much potential energy as I can amass at the head of the incline so that I can have oodles of kinetic energy at the foot of the incline.

There will be no near-level platform; both tracks will be straight-line. That means that the discharge must terminate well before the charging process triggers the movement of the laden wagon.

The first thing, after laying track is to examine the forces relating to triggering the hopper. If I can’t trigger the release of the unloading (discharge) and the loading (charge) with limited energy, then I must consider an external source, such as lever- or crank-operation of the process of loading.

Friday, April 23, 2021

The Vision is Good

So the vision is good – a OO--scale twin-track funicular delivering ore down the valley slope by ore-tubs that counter each other’s weight. It is not a perpetual-motion machine, but it appears to be.

At the start of operation, ore granules are dumped into a coal-chute at the top of the railway, using the ore from the receiving hopper at the foot of the funicular, filled during yesterday’s operation. There is no apparent source of energy. Magic!

The practicalities are severe, and it probably will never work. But it will be fun trying!

Components

The formatting and scenery need not concern us here – trees, colours and so on. The practical side concerns us, and because energy is in short supply (one wagon-load of potential energy per trip), we need to maintain mechanical simplicity.

Twin tracks, straight line, no points, sidings, or curves.

The prototype/proof-of-concept to be in OO-scale for ease of construction, as well as providing a bigger quantum of potential energy.

A Single coal-chute structure containing side-by-side discharge hoppers

A single wagon rake, but initially could be lengthy gondolas to provide bigger quanta of energy

Simple lever mechanism for discharging material from wagons and from the upper chute.

A variable incline while we determine practical cut-off points for operation. Will a 30º incline suffice, or do we need 60º or more?

(1) Tracks

I purchased five 36” lengths of Peco Flextrack. Two pieces provide two parallel tracks on a 48” long board 12” wide.

(2) Incline

The board mentioned above lies horizontally while work is being done, trigger mechanisms tested and so on, but can be inclined with a prop to test the energy requirements.

(3) Charge/Discharge

I have the view that a simple sliding horizontal plate will make the best ore gate in the coal-chute and in the wagons, because most of the available energy will be used in opening the gate. Compare a simple “slide me one inch forwards” request to “rotate this auger twenty times”

(4) Gates

The black outer outline represents an ore wagon. A rail track is not shown, but it lies beneath the wagon.

In the centre of the container a shaded area represents the hole through which ore can be discharged

Covering this hole is a rounded-corner plate to which is attached a strong horizontal arm which protrudes from both sides of the wagon.

Suppose that the wagon, fully-laden, is traveling at speed down the incline, from right to left.

When it reaches the lower-level receiving hopper, the horizontal arm meets a vertical post which arrests the movement of the arm and its attached plate, but not the wagon.

The wagon continues travelling to the left while the arm and plate remain still.

This causes the plate to slide to the right, relative to the wagon. The wagon is travelling to the left relative to the plate.

The hole being uncovered, ore drops through the hole into a receiving hopper.

The wagon is now empty and waits to be hauled to the top of the incline.

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

More Thoughts on Energy

More thoughts on energy, for energy is the critical factor; especially the energy required to admit one wagon-load, and only one, from the charging hopper at the upper end.

Initially I shall implement charging by parallel cylinders, the inner one operated by a crank handle turned by me.

Both cylinders have a hole punched in the wall. The crank handle is turned, rotating the inner cylinder, until its hole aligns with the outer cylinder hole at the base of the hopper. The inner cylinder fills with material. The inner cylinder volume is that of the ore wagon.

The crank handle continues rotation until the inner cylinder hole is above the wagon, at which point the ore flows from the inner cylinder into the wagon.

One rotation of the crank can be sufficient to fill the wagon, or some integral number of turns – allowing for variable capacity wagons.

I need the bar-trigger mechanism at the foot of the incline to open the wagon hopper allowing ore to run out by gravity, and the bar can close the door on its return.

This approach will allow me to build the two-track incline, install the two hopper/chutes, and rig up two wagons, giving me a test bed on which to test energy levels and perfect hopper mechanisms.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Carpentry

I have scavenged two chunks of plywood – old cupboard shelving – from the shed. At the foot sits a clamshell of hinges, hoarded from old doors and cupboard doors,

I decided to re-fix the prop hinge, so here are the parts laid out on the kitchen floor. The prop is the bit of strapping closest to the camera. (Later this day I removed the prop and went with two side-props)

The prop is on the left. My 48” funicular baseboard is propped up at an angle of about 80º, about the steepest I might ever want to run this.

And here the baseboard is at about 30º, a more reasonable looking angle. I have used an electric stove to prop the prop!

So, remove the prop, lay the hinged boards on the driveway. Sweet it is to work in some sunshine.

The two door hinges close-up.

One of the two angle bracket; flanged. Two wood screws hold the bracket to the board, a small bolt with washers and a nut allows the side-prop to pivot.

Two side props are holding the baseboard at a 90º angle to the floor.

Two side props are holding the baseboard at a 60º angle to the floor.

The side props have holes drilled through at strategic places along their length, and pins/nails are driven into the side of the baseboard at strategic places. If I were not so tired I would have dug out some trigonometry tables and done some real measurements.

This week I want to see a variable-angle baseboard, perhaps mount two parallel tracks, and wait for the ore-wagons to arrive.

While poking around in the shed I found a pill-bottle with a lovely small pulley and a couple of key rings that look as if they would make ideal guides for a cable of cotton chalk-line. Hooray! Second Use For Everything !

Sunday, May 02, 2021

Playing with the Incline

Here we are at an incline of about 45º. The two parallel tracks are not hanging by a thread because I am using three-inch nails, not screws. A nail slipped between the end sleepers and casually draped over the edge of the baseboard is enough to stop the tracks sliding down the ramp, so I can take a photograph.

In practice the rails will be centred along the length of the board, with a cluster of buildings surrounding each end of track.

You can see that I have shunted the idea of a passing loop right off the board. For Now.

More Thoughts on the Gate Mechanisms

Now for a bit of physics and mathematics: The movement of a wagon will drive the trigger mechanisms. A fully-laden ore-wagon will descend an incline and deliver enough energy to cause an unladen wagon to climb the incline and trigger the loading mechanism!

We can split this into six parts:

(1) A loaded wagon descends the incline

(2) An empty wagon is hauled up the incline by the descending wagon

(3) The empty wagon has enough energy left at the top of the incline to trigger the opening of the chute, so depositing a load of ore into the empty wagon at the top of the incline.

(4) The loaded wagon triggers a mechanism to open the wagon's floor-chute, so emptying the wagon

(5) As the empty wagon departs the lower station, its motion triggers the closing of its chute

(6) As the loaded wagon departs the upper station, its motion triggers the closing of the supply chute.

Right now it doesn’t matter how YOU think or describe what is going on, as long as you can see in your mind what is going on. I wrote “… its movement triggers the closing of the supply chute” but had I written

“… its motion triggers the closing of the supply chute” or

“… its speed triggers the closing of the supply chute” or

“… its velocity triggers the closing of the supply chute” or

“… its momentum triggers the closing of the supply chute” or

“… its energy triggers the closing of the supply chute” or

“… its power triggers the closing of the supply chute” or

“… its force triggers the closing of the supply chute”, you can still see the thing at work. The loaded wagon goes down the incline and in doing so it somehow closes the door of the delivery chute.

In my pencil-and-paper diagram above I have suggested a narrow opening for the chute, because I have a feeling that an opening as narrow as a bubble-tea drinking straw will offer the least resistance to a sliding gate or shutter that interrupts the flow.

We learned these skills as toddlers, when we were just starting to talk. Some would say “we have an intuitive feel for this”, but I think that as toddlers we learned that things with more mass offer more resistance to being moved. We learned that we could pick up a tin-soldier between our fingertips, but we needed to grip a truck with our hand, and we needed both hands and the strength of our legs to move the castle to another place. As adults we recognize the different techniques with a piece of grit, a pebble, and a small rock dug out of the garden.

The more mass an object has, the harder it is to start it moving, and the harder it is to stop it moving. Your parents probably described it as “Oomph!”.

I think of the loaded wagon, the instant before it departs the upper station, as having a certain amount of mass (perhaps the mass of the dried rice in the hopper PLUS the mass of the wagon itself), and I think of this mass as descending the incline, but especially as falling through a vertical distance that depends on the angle of the incline.

In specific terms, if the wagon-plus-load is one pound of mass, and the top station is one foot above the lower station, then in theory I have one foot-pound of “Oomph!” available to do my work.

Hence a gondola wagon can deliver more mass than four-wheel wagon, and lead delivers more mass than rice, and a 60º incline delivers a greater height than does a 20º incline.

If I want this proof-of-concept to work then I want the largest wagon I can accommodate, the densest grain I can find, and the greatest height I can manage.

That will deliver the maximum amount of work available to me.

By choosing a narrow aperture (drinking-straw diameter) for the delivery chute, I have maximized my chance of having enough energy to close that chute, and still haul the empty wagon up the incline and close its door before departure and have it trigger the re-opening of the delivery chute and the opening of the floor-chute in the loaded wagon …

So at this point I can start designing a delivery chute with a narrow opening – I don’t care that it takes a minute to load the ore wagon – and I can make real, physical measurements of the force I need to open and close that narrow opening.

I can convert those amounts of “work” into terms of energy, and see if my mass and height can provide that much energy. The mass and height must provide more than that; but if I can’t design a delivery chute that can be closed and re-opened by (say) six foot-pounds of work, then I must think again!

You can easily see why scenery is not my main concern here!

Sunday, May 02, 2021

Energy Quanta

Here are four cans of sardines, part of my pantry stock. They weigh 1lb 6oz by my kitchen scales, so each of the cans weighs about 5.5 ounces. I do not yet have a wagon, but I have a lower and an upper estimate for the mass available to me.

I would like the system to function with a wagon-plus-load mass of six ounces; the system must function with 24 ounces. I can’t imagine a laden wagon weighing more than 24 ounces on OO-scale track

I am basing the funicular railway on a 36-inch length of track. The maximum gradient is 90º, so the maximum height is 36 inches.

The ABSOLUTELY MAXIMUM energy available to me is mass times height, or 1.5 pounds times three feet, or 4.5 ft-lbs.

Why all this calculation? Because the trigger mechanisms for opening and closing the hatches are critical; if they don’t work, nothing works. I can measure a custom-built hatch, with its sliding door, and see how much force/energy/power I need to open and close the hatches (two open-close operations per wagon trip; eight operations for a full cycle) and if the requirement is more than my absolute maximum, then the scheme is a dead issue.

And remember that my absolute maximum will never be achieved. A funicular railway operating at 90º is not a funicular railway; it is an elevator. And I must counter friction and spend energy hauling an empty wagon up the incline and, and …

All of this tells me that I must set my hand to building a coal chute with a sliding or rotating trap door and obtain a tension spring or two

This crude diagram shows a test bed structure in black, face-on. Four cans of sardines are waiting to fall, indicated by the purple vertical arrow, onto a right-angled receiving platform, that is pivoted by a small red axle.

When the sardines hit the platform, the receiving pan will rotate anti-clockwise around the red axle, drawing a small horizontal shaft (black) to the left (as shown by the smaller arrow). The shaft will draw a shutter or “trap door” (red line) to the left and open the hopper.

A second platform (not shown) on the right-hand side of the baseboard, with only one can of sardines on board, because I have less energy available to me now, will operate a similar lever to draw the trapdoor back to the right, closing the chute/gate.

If I can get this to work with close to my maximum available energy, then I might be able to get an inclined funicular railway with wagons to work.

Sunday, May 02, 2021

The Wagons

Nigel, thank you for this rapid and informative response.

I would like to place an order for four four-wheel bogies and two large ore wagons, all ready to use.

That is, my eyes and fingers do not have to fidget around with teeny-tiny brass cups at this stage. (If I find that I need to do fine operations at a later date I shall shanghai one of the teenagers that stroll past my house!)

Once I am equipped with the four bogies I can make an ore wagon that, should I require the mass, will carry four cans of sardines. Once I am equipped with two large ore wagons that can carry four cans of sardines …

Please send me the URLs to what you have in stock you think will satisfy me. Energy-Efficiency is the watchword. I trust your judgment.

Armed with the URLs I can return to your web site and place the order.

My immediate need is to determine energy requirements and to this end I have built an adjustable incline and am now (“four sardine cans”) dredging out my high-school physics (Newtonian Mechanics) from sixty years ago. There is a diary . ( http://www.chrisgreaves.com//Modelling/Funicular/index.htm ). In your Copious Free™ you might want to scroll down to Wednesday, April 28, 2021 and glance over the images to get an idea of where I am at this time.

Monday, May 03, 2021

Nigel>> just to let you know friction does not scale down.

Hi Nigel, and thanks for this stimulating note. I thought I was doing well to claw my way back to Newtonian mechanics, but …

I will have to brush up, but my understanding is that there is a coefficient of friction, which is constant, and that the frictional force is directly proportional to mass, which in the case of a load of dried rice, is proportional to the cube of the scaling – twice the length, then eight times the volume, so eight times the mass, and frictional force.

In our case we are pretty well committed to “OO-scale”, but I work towards making the largest rolling vehicle I can fit on my existing OO-track, to maximize the mass, and so as to maximize the potential energy available to operate the mechanical triggers. Once I get the awkward-looking prototype working I can start reducing it to a more attractive dimension. So I think of gondola cars to start with, then ordering UK-style wagons. (eleven-foot?). Because this is a closed system, not part of any mainline running, I can make the wagons as awkward as I choose, as long as they work!

Nigel>> If I understand correctly you want 4 ready to run bogies with metal wheels and 2 ready to run wagons with metal wheels and you are going to build and attach your own bodies.

Correct. The “wagons” to be gondolas, if you have them in stock with efficient bearings.

That will give me two RTR wagons for a brief trial, then two customized gargantuan gondola wagons to maximize energy delivery.

The two gondolas will furnish a brief trial (“Phase 0”?) to see if RTR wagons can provide enough energy in my crude apparatus. If they function well, then I can skip the bogies step. I suspect that the RTR gondolas will fail on my initial pulley-and-string system,

So then I can settle down to Phase1: building my own frame and sides/ends and mount them on the bogies, get the ugly things working, and then move on to Phase 2, which will be to replace my bogie-devices with stock wagons from the store.

I am ordering both the bogies AND the wagons up front in an effort to reduce shipping, but mainly so that I can see that my initial creation is not yet good enough for RTR wagons. I am optimistic enough to believe that the scheme will work, but realistic enough to see that I might have to pass through a clumsy stage before I can get to something to be proud of, a to-scale model that works.

Nigel>> Are you planning to discharge through the bottom of the wagons?

My high-school physics teacher made a fleeting mention of anti-gravity, but Mr. Puzey was not strong on that point. (grin).

If there are good-bearing wagons with a bottom discharge, I assume that they are designed to be triggered manually, either by a little finger-lever to the side, or by a trackside mechanism. These I would modify to make them work by trackside triggers using a small force.

According to the BBC, the world’s steepest railway runs at an incline of 110º, a piece of data which I am still trying to digest. I had earlier tried to visualize a 80º incline which would necessitate end-discharge. Since this is a closed system, not part of any mainline running, I have the freedom to discharge as I will.

I am assuming gravity because any other kind of force will (again, I assume), drain too much of my available energy.

The discharge triggers, from the loading hopper and from the wagons, are my primary concern, and I am now working on a design that will open/close gates with the minimum energy. It won’t matter if I have a small discharge gate that takes a minute to empty, as long as I can trigger the opening and the closing with what remains of the energy.

Indeed, I have contemplated different discharge gates to make the discharge times different, so that one wagon can be delayed. I do not want the laden wagon to start its descent before the lower wagon has had time to empty!

Thank you for your questions/comments. They spur me to thinking of more points to consider.

Monday, May 03, 2021

Bending the Rails

I've been mulling over how I might bend rails in the vertical sense.

A side-view of a funicular. At "A" I thought of having a very-slightly-inclined, but near-horizontal rail bed. My idea was that the wagons would look more natural charging/discharging on a horizontal bed.

In the diagram near "A" you will see a label "c", with a thin line. This is my not-to-scale gradient on the rail bed, enough incline to get the laden wagon rolling towards the steep part of the track.

I quailed at the thought of using Flextrack to flex in a dimension it was not designed to flex in, but now I know that you, with your experience as a rail-bender, know a thing or two, and that you are in a position to post a valid comment on this idea:-

Time is our ally.

Suppose I built a wooden frame with a curved main body (curved to my target curvature where the top of the incline must transition to the horizontal platform), and attached to that curved base, a piece of flexible wooden strapping (one-eighth inch plywood?), with the 36-inch Flextrack sandwiched at one end of the frame.

That is, one end of my track is sandwiched between the curved wooden drum and the flexible wooden strap.

Each evening I give a screw a quarter turn before going to bed, and so each day, a little bit more of the track is bent in the vertical sense to make a transitional curve from (say ) 60º to 0º.

So, it might be a two-month job, but Time is our ally.

Based on your experience, is Flextrack likely to succumb to this relentless but gentle pressure, or am I most likely to wake up one morning to find a piece of track suitable only for dioramas based on this page ?

I know that this technique is used in real life, rolling-mils and the like, to bend real-life-steel rails, but am curious about Flextrack's ability to submit when the curving is applied in the vertical sense, and in my case, the transition is much more severe than it would be in a real-life rail bed transitioning from an incline to a horizontal.

Too, I shall indeed essay with a spare length of track, but any points from an expert can only help me (grin)

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

Delivery Chute

My latest pencil-and-paper, focusing on the delivery chute, the mechanism that loads a wagon at the top of the incline. “bulk storage” is a slope-sided hopper into which I pour dried rice grains. Uncooked.

On the floor of the hopper, partway down the structure, is a floor perhaps two inches square, with a circular hole. I would like the short cylinder to have an adjustable throat, possibly made with a belt made from the thin strip that can be recovered when a can of Hereford Corned Beef is opened. If nothing else the belt will allow to me to vary the time it takes to load a wagon, and hence the time it takes for the top wagon to begin rolling.

At the top of the short cylinder is a sliding shutter or gate (below) which interrupts the flow of ore from the hopper to the wagon below.

Bottom right of the sketch is a thought for a sliding mechanism, the operating part made from tin-plate, with each end of the sliding part available for a “pull” cord or a “push” rod, or any suitable combination.

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

The Wagons

I have 4 of the R6154A hopper wagons with metal wheel.  The body is attached by a screw  https://britishmodeltrains.ca/search?q=r6154a LMS Bogies 36-024  https://britishmodeltrains.ca/products/36-024-bachmann-lms-bogies-2-per-pack?_pos=1&_sid=98bedc1e1&_ss=r There have been a couple of examples of people building similar inclines in the hobby magazines over the last 3 or 4 years. In every case they have found that the mass of the wagons, sting and friction on pulleys does not work on the model in the same way as the full size railway. The steepest railway is in Australia - it was shown on TV last week Michael Portillo Great Continental Railway Journeys

Nigel, thank you very much for this prompt information. If I have correctly negotiated the online shopping sites, you now have an order for two wagons and four bogies, and I shall begin visiting the post office ten times a day like an eager nine-year old(grin) As you have determined, in the area of modeling I am good at theory, but short of experience. This first essay at a funicular railway will provide me with data - especially in terms of what works and what fails - and there will be refinements. I anticipate more purchases. In particular if I find that I need more potential energy I might go the route of bigger wagons (larger volumes, hence larger mass), or NASA-like bearings (heh-heh) or whatever. I meant to say in an earlier email "just find something you can ship to get me started on a journey of occasional dead-ends". I am glad that I found British Model Trains, and want you to know that I appreciate your guidance very much indeed. ND>> The steepest railway is in Australia - it was shown on TV last week Michael Portillo Great Continental Railway Journeys https://bluemountainstoursydney.com.au/attractions/scenic-railway/ Fifty-Two degrees! I shall use this figure as a benchmark. When I get my "perpetual motion" funicular working at 52º you will hear the joyous shots across Canada! Thank you again

Post by ChrisGreaves » Tue May 04, 2021 10:00 am ChrisGreaves wrote: I checked out a Canadian web site https://britishmodeltrains.ca because last month I paid $cdn42 customs on an order from the UK. I have this morning ordered TWO " R6154A Hornby Procor hopper wagons "Readymix Concrete" (weathered) (Unboxed) " and TWO Packets " 36-024 BACHMANN LMS Bogies (2 per pack) " The price with shipping etc is much more than I would have paid in Perth back in 1964, but I am smart, and put it on my BMO credit card, so The Bank Of Montreal is paying for it (grin). I am impressed with British Model Trains prompt and courteous responses to my email purchases. Now, back to the Funicular thread. Thanks again for all your comments and suggestions.

Post by ChrisGreaves » Tue May 04, 2021 10:13 am I have this morning ordered TWO " R6154A Hornby Procor hopper wagons "Readymix Concrete" (weathered) (Unboxed) " and TWO Packets " 36-024 BACHMANN LMS Bogies (2 per pack) " Current status: The hinged (variable incline) baseboard is set up I have set aside two 36" lengths of Peco track. I have ordered four coach bogies for two gondola wagons in Phase1 I have ordered two four-wheel wagons for Phase 2 (Phase 0 is "hook up the wagons for a quick trial run, just in case they work RTR) I had sardines for supper last night and washed out the tin and the lid, so now I can begin modeling a sliding tin-plate shutter in a tin-plate sleeve and see how much force I need to open and to close a hopper loaded with dry rice. That's assuming, of course, that I can negotiate the tin-snips (purchased yesterday) out of the blister-pack without borrowing my neighbour's tin-snips to cut the plastic blister! British Model Trains sent me to The Blue Mountains where I learned of a prototype funicular with a 52º incline; possibly the steepest operating funicular in the world. I shall use this value as a benchmark on my system. Whether I reach or exceed it is moot at this time, but when I do reach it, I will treat all members of the NRMF to a ride on Scenic Railway Blue Mountains!

And just in case I need more energy, that is, more potential energy, that is, greater height, I took down a shelf from the workbench and it is ninety-two inches long, say seven feet, so twice as much track, so twice the distance, so four times the velocity, so four times as much energy.

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

The Tinplate Gates

I cut part of the sardine can with my *NEW* tin snips and wrapped a 1½-inch wide strip around a steel ruler.

I slid the cradle to one end of the ruler and snipped the end square. Same at the other end.

I have slipped my shutter in the enclosure. I must make a large aperture in the shutter, larger than the largest hole in my adjustable belt. As well as a small hold at each end to receive the pull-cord or the push-rod.

It’s my first effort, and I so enthusiastically crimped the sides of the cradle with my pliers that I had to use a fine vegetable knife to lever apart the jaws of frictional death. Lubricants is another issue.

I must reform the cradle so that the two sides do not meet in a “V” shaped notch but in an “[“ shaped channel. I see no advantage to using energy to overcome friction-in-a-groove. I want the channel solely as a guide rail for the shutter.

Tuesday, May 04, 2021

The Wagons

Once the RTR wagons arrive …

… I will strip as much as possible from the body – ladders, valves, coupling, brake wheels and the like, so that the mass to be hauled up the incline is minimized.

As well I have an option to extend the sides of the wagons to increase volume, mass, and energy. Thought: If I remove the lower end of a wagon completely, can I depend on the momentum of the ore itself to shoot off the wagon? No need for a wagon-trigger mechanism then. A slight down slope on the lower platform might help, but that will cost energy to get the empty wagon rolling again.

Wednesday, May 05, 2021

Wagon Delivery (Canada Post)

Wednesday, May 05, 2021

Angles of the Incline

In the diagram, the distance from the hinge to the prop on the thick-black-line base is thirty two and a half inches. The sloping incline (green) is to be set at an angle of 10º, 20º, 30º and so on. Where must I put the pins and holes in the prop (purple vertical item) and base (green sloping line)?

My high school mathematics taught me that the Tan of an angle is the ratio of Opposite side over Adjacent side.

I can’t just measure height along my prop because it is a hinged prop, and its angle changes as I adjust the incline. I will mark off 24 inches along my base, and use the tabled heights to adjust the prop, and then mark the places for the holes in the prop, and hence the places for the pins in the inclined board.

Saturday, May 08, 2021

More Thoughts on the Coal Chute Gate

Refer to the diagram for Sunday, May 02, 2021 in which I measure the work/energy required to slide a shutter. It comes to mind that I could use a rod-ramp to slide the shutter. The ascending empty wagon could depress an inclined lever?

My sliding tinplate can be set away from the hole, providing that the sliding tongue reaches out far enough to cover the hole.

I think that the slider should be underneath the cardboard base of the hopper; I have a feeling that it will take less work to close off a trickle of rice that has passed through a narrow opening than to close of a stream that supports (say) eight inches of ore. It is easier to stop the outflow of a punctured dyke than to stop the flow of a breached dyke.

That suggests a removable base to a hopper; furthermore the hopper need not be tapered – what do I care for emptying efficiency? The hopper can be a rectangular carton with most of the base cut away (or replaced by some L-shaped wood) so that a base can be switched in and out during trials. The gate takes little weight, so the cardboard holder itself can slide in and out of supporting rails made from – cardboard!

I dismantled a dishwasher rack to use as a gardening soil sieve. Four two-wheel bogies will be dragooned into action if I can’t get 00-scale to work. I shall skip 0-scale and go straight to 2-scale!

Sunday, May 09, 2021

First Hopper

Here is my little gate, a strip of sardine can enclosed in a cradle of sardine can. It runs freely, to my delight.

I have used tape as a temporary fix to the base of the cardboard box. The square marked with a felt pen shows the extent of the gate once it is slid to the left.

I have drilled a hole in the gate to which I can apply a push-rod or a pull-string.

My brave attempt at a hole. This turned out to be MUCH too small. I should rely on the gate for flow control.

The box (“hopper” or “coal chute”) showing the gate strip peeking out at the right-hand side.

Some old Mung Beans tossed into the hopper.

Then I found that the hole was much too small; so I enlarged it ...

… and fitted a sawn-off top from a two-litre pop bottle to increase the pressure on the beans. I had not thought that I would need to increase the pressure. I thought that pressure from a vertical column of ore would inhibit movement of the gate.

But there again, I thought I needed a narrow gate for better control. It seems that a need a wider hole for FLOW!

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Hello; I found your web site through Elaine's Trains, from NRMF. I note that Tytton Hall Yard has a coal chute and that "This is a coal loading facility mainly loading MGR wagons". If the coal chute is operational I would like to exchange ideas with the modeler. I am working on a mechanical railway, masquerading as a perpetual-motion machine (heh heh) which will consist of two parallel tracks, each with an ore-wagon, connected by a string. A loaded wagon descends and hauls an empty wagon up the incline. Each (alternate) empty wagon is loaded from a coal-chute at the top of the incline, and then deposits its load into a hopper at the bottom of the incline. I am in the midst of developing triggers and gates to open and close trapdoors in the coal-chute and the wagons. If any of your members would like to exchange ideas by email I'd be happy to do so.

Hi Chris, Thank you for your email. I will pass your contact details on to the person who built the loader. Kind regards, David.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

More Thoughts on the Hoppers

I have an easy-sliding trigger mechanism, gate I should say. The time is come to build two hoppers with gates, and a solid structure to hold them.

Top-left: two wagons sit side-by-side (this will never happen) inside the solid structure, identified by the hatched vertical pillars. Made of wood, what do I care?

Above the wagons sits the chute enclosure. It too is robust, and encloses two identical hopper mechanisms. Inside each hopper is the inverted top of a two-litre plastic bottle, circular, with the neck feeding into the hopper floor.

Pasted to the underside of the floor – so directly above the wagons, is the sliding gate mechanism.

Top-centre: a view above a wagon, tracks lead downhill to the left.

The rectangular outline of a wagon is shown, as is the circular outlet from the hopper (neck of the bottle), and the sliding mechanism produced a week ago. “c” marks the hole in one end of the sliding strip.

Bottom-centre: elevation of a wagon. The uphill end of the wagon is significantly higher than the downhill end, but note that this conflicts with maximizing material retained in the wagon!

When the wagon approached, unladen, from the left-hand side, the high end pushed the bar on the slider to the right, opening the trap, allowing material to flow into the wagon.

When the wagon is sufficiently full, it overcomes the friction(?) and begins to roll downhill, that is, to the right.

The wagon departs, laden, through the left-hand side, the high (uphill) end pushes the bar on the slider to the left, closing the trap, preventing the flow of material from the hopper.

Does it make any difference if a higher downhill end of the wagon is used to push the gate open, and pull it close on departure? This might be better because it cuts off flow while the wagon is still under the outlet.

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Cutting Cardboard

I don’t fish, so it is not time for me to cut bait, but it is time for me to start cutting cardboard. I can build the chute body – the upper part, while waiting to determine the best height of the lower frame; that waits for wagon and track heights and so on.

I will start with two 2-litre pop bottles to maximize the running-time, once this starts to work. Pop bottles are about 4.5” diameter, so the upper portion will be roughly twelve inches high, nine inches wide, and four-and-a-half inches deep. Please refer back to yesterday’s note on “Top-left”.

I lay two bottles side by side. The bottle necks define the distance between the two funicular tracks.

Confirmation that my tracks will be 4.5” apart on centres. I think that this means I could build ore-wagons about four inches wide, if I need the mass (which means energy)

I take a piece of scrap cardboard, knowing that within an hour I will be tossing my work away and making a better hopper. I mark out four panels 4.5” wide with a small tab at one side.

Here one hopper is cut, scored, folded around a pop bottle, and held in place with a little piece of adhesive tape. Here, the dimpled bottom of the bottle pokes above the hopper; that base will be cut off to allow me to tip ore into the hopper, and the neck of the bottle should remain flush with the other end of the hopper so that the trigger plate can slide across it easily.

Less than twelve inches high.

Two draft hoppers side by side showing surplus material of bottles at both ends.

I cut two supporting plates 4.5” square, locate the centre, and cut out a one-inch square. I can cut a square because the bottle necks are one-inch diameter but the shoulders will support the necks.

In Real Life the neck of the bottle should be flush, or recessed by one millimetre, from the outer (lower) surface of the 4.5” square base.

Now to rebuild two hoppers from a new piece of cardboard, marked out carefully with the square base as part of the main piece.

I am very much a touchy-feely, pencil-and-paper guy. I mentally dream up an idea, but I implement it with concrete steps. This diagram shows a not-to-scale template for a hopper with sides of 4½ inches and height of 11 inches.

The walls will have flaps at each end and once the glue and clamps are applied I shall use my jar of cast-off appliance screws to (basically) rivet the double-seam.

The width of cardboard will be four times 4½ inches plus one inch for each flap, or twenty inches.

The base will be attached to one wall, and will have three flaps. Glued, clamped, and screwed.

The height of the cardboard must be 11 inches plus 4½ inches plus the lower flap of one inch, so 16½ inches

I need two hoppers, but I can alternate the templates, so a sheet 20 inches by 27½ inches will do.

Thursday, May 13, 2021

More Thoughts on the Gate Mechanism

If my hopper gate mechanism is really easy to slide, instead of a spring, I could attach a string and weight to the end, so that when the wagon is drawn away from the lower-level dumping hopper, the weight pulls the floor gate closed?

My sketch diagram served me well; during the cutting process I went back and forth to the image, and caught myself before making a drastic cut. It is only scrap cardboard, after all,

Here is a sheet of cardboard. Hard to see, but the pencil lines, with 45° tabs marked are waiting to go under the knife. (Whose handle disintegrated in 2013, after years of duty, so a ½” dowel and two small bolts soon solved that problem!)

And here are the two hopper kits ready to be scored where they must be folded.

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Wagon Delivery (Canada Post)

This morning the Canada Post package status is updated, so it DID arrive yesterday, despite the warning “Delivery may be delayed due to extreme weather conditions St Johns, NL”. We all had bright sunshine, fleecy lambkin clouds, gentle breeze all day yesterday. I am down to my last pail of rainwater …

I roll up my trouser legs, hop on the bike, and ninety minutes later (chat with Velma, and then chat with David, chat with Kerry, chat with Tom & Fergus) like the six-year-old I am I feverishly scrape plastic from the carton, toss the polystyrene popcorn away (six years old, remember?) ditto the bubble-wrap, and voila! Two Steel-Wheeled Ore Wagons …

… and two pairs of steel-wheeled coach bogies in case I need to make humungous (well, four-inch-wide) ore cars.

Now I am praying for rain so that I don’t feel obliged to work in the shed or in the garden.

The adjustable incline is ready. The track is ready. The *NEW* **IMPROVED** hoppers are ready to be assembled. I have a piece of cotton string to link the wagons. All I need to do is build a sturdy base for the hoppers, and learn how to take a movie with my smart phone!

(later)

The problem with an old house is that even the water in a glass isn’t level! There is no horizontal surface here. I resort to using my pill bottle of pulleys as a buffer-stop to take a photo of the rolling stock, and rolling it is!

I can see now how large layouts have trains of, say, a hundred gondola wagons or twenty main-line coaches.

As I (six years old!) extracted the bogies from the thin plastic, I BROKE ONE OF THEM! It didn’t even get as far as a length of Peco track. A little bit fell out, bounced off my work pants and tumbled to the grey industrial carpet floor. Gone!

Then I found that the hook part of the coupling drops in and, obviously, out.

Why is this? These are quality bogies. I can BLOW them along the track. Why is the hook so easy to remove/replace. Is there a better hook? I note that these bogie hooks are not compatible with the ore-wagon hooks.

Incompatibility is not an issue for me here, because whether I use the RTR wagons, or my custom wagons, neither set will meet as a rake of wagons on a mainline. They are destined to operate only on my two-track funicular.

I have scored the panels and am in the process of gluing them. I do not have the expensive grips that the professionals use, and my spring-clips cannot cope with the angles, so I am resorting to small wood-screws through the two surfaces to be glued, using scrap cardboard as a “nut”. It needs hold only for sixty minutes – enough time to wash dishes and have supper – and then I can do the next two flaps.

Here you can see the wood-screws peeking through the cardboard “nuts”.

And yes, I have mislaid my wonderful sliding gate, so I shall make two more sliding gates, one for each hopper, and then the first sliding gate will show up.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

I have been pondering the trigger to release a laden wagon from the upper level after the wagon is loaded.

A week or so ago I had the empty wagon using the last dregs of its kinetic energy to open the door of the supply hopper, and to close the hopper on departure. My mind was focused on a leveling-out of the upper platform so that the wagon would sit near-horizontally while it was being loaded and then, perhaps, a compression-spring scale would gradually depress and somehow release a catch (like a coupling-hook) to liberate the loaded wagon.

I had mental images of not a curved (in the vertical plane) track, but a segmented track, perhaps re-assembled from chunky 2cm lengths, which would men buying one of those motorized mini-saws, and …

This morning I turned the problem around and thought about using the lower, emptying wagon as the trigger.

Friction, usually my enemy, might be my friend.

That ascending, empty wagon, shoots upwards and comes to rest, held in place by static friction; also the friction of the cotton cord around the pulley. The wagon is on a straight-line slope, but even when laden it doesn’t have the oomph to free itself and begin down the slope. Loading is fast, but not fast enough to generate an impulse of motion in the horizontal or vertical sense.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the descending wagon has begun to unload. There is a point where the wagon loads are equal, and clearly friction will hold that upper wagon in place. The trick is that the lower wagon is unloaded (due to a smaller aperture in the base of the wagon) much more slowly than the upper wagon is loaded, so there is a time-delay. Suppose I can load a wagon in five seconds, but drag the unloading out to thirty seconds.

At that thirty-second mark, there is enough difference in weights such that the upper wagon has passively achieved a weight differential and it can now overpower the friction AND the weight of the now-empty wagon.

Think of that descended wagon as being an egg-timer with the sand running out of it, triggering the release of the upper wagon.

The mechanism would have to be fine-tuned in respect of load/unloading times and mass of load, but it should be possible.

There are two ways to cut the circular hole in the base of the hopper: (1) before gluing the tabs in place and (b) after gluing the tabs in place. That I am trying the second method here tells you that I didn’t think of the two methods until after I had glued the tabs on the first hopper.

Note the mistaken line scribbled out before penciling in the correct line. “Measure twice; Cut once”.

Monday, May 17, 2021

Yesterday I snipped the strand of wire that kept the five metres of chicken wire intact. I could not find the end so I snipped where I thought it should be and ended up with a short and a long string of soft wire, shown here. This morning I am eyeing the wire and wondering whether a single strand will be enough to make a flexible lever strong enough to be struck by a wagon and dragged to open the trapdoor, yet flexible enough to spring back to the vertical after the end of the wagon has passed, and thus be available for dragging the trapdoor closed when the loaded truck heads off in the other direction.

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Step #1 in stripping RTR stock; locate and identify an envelope for the small parts.

The couplings came off by releasing a screw. In the photo, a sharp knife is carefully levering up the black plastic ladder assembly that runs across the end of the wagon case. The wagon on the left has been levered, and the ladders are hanging on by virtue of the lugs that fir through the penultimate steps. Into the envelope!

I have unscrewed the truck from the wagon case. The screw is resting in the truck but must be placed in the envelope.

The first wagon is to the front; the truck shows a recess in which is the boss for the screw, the inverted case shows a steel? Plate for weight.

Why this exercise? I want to strip the two HO wagons from excess mass before conducting a short trial on an incline – the two wagons connected by a string . Not every atom of excess mass, just enough to say that I have reduced it.

On top of that, I will be man-handling these wagons, and removing fine detail such as ladders suggests that it will not be damaged.

On top of that, these wagons will soon be barreling down and up an incline during testing, I would not want to shred fine detail when I don’t need to.

I am not yet at the stage of cutting a hole in the truck and the case and assigning a gate/slider. First of all: two wagons and a string around a pulley. The loaded wagon can haul the empty wagon up the slope? At what angles of incline?

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Another thought: magnets do not provide energy, but they might work to hold back a loaded wagon (or an unladen wagon) for a while, giving a quantum hurdle to be overcome? Or perhaps increasing (or decreasing) mass as the wagon load changes could draw a magnet away from a latch?

Sunday, May 23, 2021

The twin hoppers laid on their sides with the tracks leading to their centre point. Those are the necks of the pop bottles dead-centre of the hopper bases.

The tracks are five inch centres.

I use a crude straight-edge to mark the centre line of each track.

I use a crude straight-edge to mark the centre line of each track.

An overview of my work on a kitchen workbench.

Malleable wire, was used to hold a roll of mesh in place. I have zig-zagged it into shapes not unlike a hair-grip, two to three inches per leg.

Difficult to spot, but two lines of wire march down the underside of the baseboard.

Both tracks are held in place by wire passing over a sleeper and through a hole in the baseboard.

Starting to take shape. Twin hoppers at the head of an incline; parallel tracks sloping down to the non-existent receiving hopper (“holes in the baseboard”!)

I will leave a bit of track at the top end so that I can reach in to that end of the hopper and nudge a wagon?

Overall view of the board and hoppers.

The two Hornby wagons. I picked up a scrap of hot-water pipe insulation tube on my way home on Friday; chunks of it make great buffer stops for expensive wagons.

Oh yes, my spray-paint enclosure is working fine. Peggy’s old TV that was rescued from a trip to the tip. I knew it would come in handy.

The two wagons in harness. Like a Good Canadian I have lassoed them around their bodies with synthetic cord salvaged from old venetian blinds.

Truth is I used two hands to tie slip knots and didn’t actually lasso them.

I have abandoned the idea of tiddly pulleys as being too energy-hungry. Simple is usually better. In this case two shiny new pins at the top end of the track.

I am not as stupid as you might think: A discarded tray made from an old carton serves as my runaway-truck-ramp.

The system in embryo and in profile.

The Upper Wagon full of mung beans, unable to do its job.

Status: I will need some serious chunks of lead and an incline significantly greater than 5º to make this work, but at least I am, to coin a phrase, on track.

The empty wagon is great; it rolls down hill as soon as the weight of the loaded truck is released. I need to find a large mass that I can fit into the wagon while I gradually increase the incline to see if the laden wagon can drag the empty wagon up the incline.

Monday, May 24, 2021

I could augment the energy by a second source. The first source is the potential energy of the ore in the coal-chutes/hoppers. The second source could be a hidden weight (think “ cuckoo-clock chains ”) under the board, with an escape mechanism that could deliver a jolt of energy at each discrete step in the process, but this is getting complicated!

My first model uses a 36” length of Peco-00, but if the length causes problems I could use a shorter track – after all, it only has to have a Top and a Bottom; the Middle is irrelevant – to reduce cable snags, dragging along the sleepers etc.

An advantage of my 4’x1’ baseboard layout is that it can be laid on the floor if I want to reduce damage to falling wagons during testing. Less height to fall than from my waist-high workbench.

Six hours of dog-sitting does wonder for the motivation! I selected three pieces of batten from the shed, trimmed to length, and got busy. The tracks, and hence the wagon, look as if they run between maintenance platforms. The wagon hubs/wheels have a clearance of about 3mm each side, if that.

In typing this up I realize that this temporary trick to maintain the Flextrack in a straight line might serve as superior guard rails and inhibit much damage when derailments will occur.

A shot of the wagon clearance.

The current trial.

A sheet of cardboard will serve as either a buffer stop or a ski-jump. As Lucinda said “We shall see what we shall see”.

The holes are a convenience left over from my first winter here when I tried to seal windows by battening plastic sheet over the windows. Ha hah! If I had spent more time picking through my jar of nails I would have used non-headed pins consistently so that I could slip the battens off the baseboard at will.

The pulley system. A failure before it started. The cord does not slip easily, and once weight is applied the cord makes a hairpin turn and pretends that it is a ship hawser on a capstan. Still and all, I have to start somewhere.

Since I already had a jar of nails handy, and the mung beans are too light (“these beans are as hard as nails”) I decided that a load of nails was a first approximation to a load of one-eighth inch diameter Uranium ball bearings.

I dragged the empty wagon to the right, the heavy wagon traveled an equivalent distance to the left, and then with gay abandon I used my hands to raise the baseboard at the left-hand (laden wagon) end.

Before I had time to catch my breath in astonishment, neither wagon moved. So I increased the slope from an estimated 5° to something closer to 10°, then to something distinctly further away from 5° than I would have dreamed, and then at about 45° the loaded wagon began to crawl down hill and the empty wagon crawled uphill.

By the time they met my arms were tiring, so I left the two of them there yarning and came here to type this up.

And to phone David and ask him while he is in St John’s next week working on cars, to ask around for supplier of 1/8” ball bearings. David agrees that heavy earth-moving equipment doesn’t use 1/8” ball bearings, nor do motor cars, and the only place we might source them is from within sealed units in the guts of old VCR tape decks.

We shall see what we shall see.

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. While I wait for ball bearings, I should find something better than mung beans or nails. Which type of statement always leads me to say “Define ‘Better’”, to which the response is “More dense”. Which means I should compare the density (unit mass per unit volume) of mung beans, nails, and then – what? Gravel? Wet soil? Clay? I should be striving to find the most mass per unit volume I can lay my hands on. That was my reasoning behind Uranium in preference to Lead.

I reset my spring-loaded kitchen scales to zero with a glass measuring cup and went to work.

Gravel appears to be the best bet for density, although nails might be easier to tidy up as discrete units. The incline as shown is not the final incline, and I am not using any sort of fine-scale or electrical circuitry.

My guess is that wet clay would be better still, and for the period of testing the weight-loads of wagons, this could be left in one wagon for the duration. Once the ground re-thaws (frost again overnight) I might hunt some clay.

A pear of wagons (evil grin) with one of the loaded with damp gravel.

Note that the tracks are shifted to the right. The batten is pinned to the baseboard but the tracks slide between the battens. My cable was too long, so I was able to effect a shortening of the cable by sliding the tracks to the right, which would normally mean that I needed a longer cable, but since my cable was already too long, the new position of the tracks made it fit just right!

Don’t try this at home, kids: don’t load the wagon with a plastic fork from a jug of gravel while the wagon is on the track. Use a large sheet of paper and then you can send the spillage back into the jug.

The tamped-down load invited me to fill in the Interstices with water, but out of respect for Hornby I resisted.

This time I took the thread through a key ring clip, two shown here in this image, but worse than yesterday: the laden wagon refused to move until the ramp was close to 80°, at which time the track slipped downwards.

I suspect that I will need a top-class pulley, the tightness of cord around a nail or thin spindle creates too much friction, and I suspect that this will be true during all subsequent phases.

I suspect that this is the end of my quick-test (Phase-0). If the loaded wagon does not have enough energy to raise the lower wagon, then it doesn’t have any surplus energy for triggering gates to open and close, does it?

On to Phase-1 which is custom hoppers built on the coach bogies; going for max mass.

So here are two pairs of coach bogies waiting for me to devise two humungous wagons that, when loaded, do not tip over onto the track.

Of course when I build my own wagons I can build as I am capable, like the tipping wagons in this thread .

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

I rise and my head tells me that a single pulley mounted on an axle, steel on steel, has two configurations: the wheel can be in the horizontal plane with a vertical spindle, or it can be in the vertical plane with a horizontal spindle. I take the stance that without a trial one orientation might serve better than the other. I wonder if Johnny Templeman has any decent but fine pulleys in HIS workshop. If the rain holds off …

I am worried about energy. I have not finished looking for self-propelled inclines, but so far have found no examples. This could well be that others have tried and then discarded the idea as impractical. It is time to make serious measurements.

This cruddy diagram was meant to show an unladen wagon being hauled up the green incline via a pulley and cradle. In the cradle we see a can of sardines in tomato sauce, and a can of sardines in water.

I could do worse than collect figures and tabulate the results by (I) number of cans of sardines required to haul an empty wagon up a slope, against (ii) various slopes (expressed in degrees, radians, or inches of supporting prop)

I should do that both for a laden and for an unladen wagon, just to see what I am up against, and that suggests a third dimension (iii) nature of material used for the load.

Sigh! A fourth dimension (iv) RTR wagons versus my scratch-built monsters. In this case I would expect the results to be near agreement.

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

A further thought: to date I have considered parallel tracks, two wagons coupled by a single cable running around a pulley at the high end.

Why can I not have separate cables on a “ winding wheel ” at the head of each track? The cable passes downwards into the winding shed and continues through the baseboard to a weight significantly greater than the wagon, and the timing of the two wagons is regulated by a single gate that oscillates between two gates on the upper hopper. The lower wagon empties quickly; the upper wagon fills slowly, and it is the full upper wagon that triggers the switch of wagons?

The problem here is that I have to have a cuckoo-clock mechanism to supply the energy; my energy no longer arrives directly through each wagon-load of ore.

Thursday, May 27, 2021

My brain it teems with endless schemes at the 0m27s mark. Here is the list presented to me by my brain when I woke this morning

(1) Can't Scale Gravity

I believe this to be true, so building a model to 1/72 scale or similar means that the utility of gravity will not be to scale. That is, whereas in real life a regular wagon filled with ore will start to run down a shallow incline and do a lot of physical damage, on my models the scaled-down wagon will damage my brain (grin), but nothing else.

(2) Cotton Thread

(But see “Parameters” in this list).

My use of the first piece of thread that came to hand is misleading. I should try a piece of cotton sewing thread, or a piece of nylon sewing thread; either one of those might provide less loss of energy through friction.

(3) Plastic-Wrap Then Wood-Glue Block of Gravel

The trouble with real-life gravel is that it scatters easily and it contains invisible particles of clay and dust. I should line a wagon with plastic-wrap, and then load it with gravel that has been rinsed with, say, a weak solution of wood-glue. Let it harden, then trim the edges of the plastic wrap, or perhaps tape a second piece like a tarpaulin over my solidified block of gravel. It can’t hurt …

(4) Pulley Vertical Axis

I foreshadowed this on Wednesday. The pulley might run better on a vertical axis than it does on a horizontal axis.

(5) Pulley Horizontal Axis

I foreshadowed this on Wednesday. The pulley might run better on a horizontal axis than it does on a vertical axis.

(6) 1/8" Plywood for Gondolas

I have a strip of one-eight-inch thick plywood left over from my mobile sieve project. I can build robust gondola bodies from that; thin plywood should be more robust than cardboard, and almost as easy to cut and shape.

(7) Rotary Trapdoor

Now this is brilliant. Instead of a sliding strip enclosed in a race, and needing one trigger to open the trapdoor/shutter, and a second trigger to close it, I might try using a rotary trigger, such as you see in the plastic top of your ground pepper canister. (There is usually a larger slot as well as the ¼ inch diameter hole).

A suitably prepared disk with holes (and gaps) at the correct positions, might get by with one trigger rotating the disk to the open position as the wagon travels in one direction, and then a second trigger rotating the disk to the closed position as the wagon travels in the other direction. Worth thinking about.

(8) Parameters

Consider this: I am modeling the funicular by trial-and-error, always looking for an easy way out, and coming up with one or more ideas for each feature.

Each idea should be tested. For example:-

(a) RTR wagons or custom-built gondolas?

(b) Cotton string, Nylon string, Cotton sewing thread, or Nylon sewing thread?

(c) Key ring #1, key Ring #2, Pulley vertical spindle, pulley horizontal spindle, or two-inch panel pin?

(d) Angle of incline (10°, 20°, 30°, etc)

(e) Mass in loaded wagon

There are more parameters, but already I am looking at 2x4x5x8x2 or six hundred and forty combinations. If I ran through three a day, eight months would pass and I would still have no guarantee that I can get this to work.

There are shortcuts. For example, I have concluded that the densest mass available to me right now is gravel (I am still waiting on the ball-bearings), so I have committed to gluing a heaped load of gravel in a wagon. That eliminates all other material. And I achieved this mainly by mental work. The scales with rice, popcorn etc was a diversion.

Perhaps early on I will be able to pick one of the pulley-like mechanisms as being superior, and that will eliminate four of the five parameters right there. Think “640 combinations reduced to 128 combinations” right there. Likewise the range of angles should quickly reduce from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 to something around 30 to 60 degrees.

A view of the shared spindle as a two-inch pin; once the string tightens it acts like a ship hawser on a capstan.

The first hopper car lined not with plastic wrap, but with a flimsy from the vegetable area of the supermarket. Why use perfectly good cling-wrap?

Besides which the voluminous plastic bag will catch all sorts of run-off.

Loaded and ready to roll. Almost.

The next morning the glue had not set, so I squeezed a large dollop of 100% wood glue over the top to help make a secure binding, and left it to dry some more. The loaded wagon experiment is set back one day.

Friday, May 28, 2021

John Garity’s thread has videos that show an empty skip rocketing down the track to join a batch of empties. The speed is out of scale. In my case such a speed would be welcomed because it represents useable energy. I should anticipate out of scale events as an occasional benefit of my not being able to scale gravity.

My goal is to establish a baseboard on which wagons oscillate back and forth almost perpetually.

Thought: A see-saw baseboard will not work, but it makes a fascinating flight of fancy!

Although my pop bottle hoppers might have five-inch centres, my two tracks do not need to have five inch centres. I can funnel the pop-bottle output sideways towards the centre point before the output exits the hopper. That will give a smaller track centre figure.

Saturday, May 29, 2021

I have mentioned springs before, in particular with respect to trapdoors. I had not considered trying to use a spring to store any residual energy, and handing it back when motion resumes.

Two more thoughts about the bogies:-

(1) The bogies seem to wheel a great deal more freely than do the wagons. Tests will confirm this. If true, then a large-size bogie gondola may work and a OO-scale wagon may fail.

(2) Plywood comes in 4’x8’ sheets, but clearly I will not be building gondolas on that scale. That said I can see a gondola wobbling and maybe tipping about its longitudinal axis if the base is too wide. How about a four-track funicular, where each track simulates a rail? Think “catamaran”.

Sunday, May 30, 2021

I do not make progress like those of us with wives and lofts and bank cards, because ***I**** have a town that either stops by to chat, or stops me to chat when I am passing by. Also a garden, and now a wonky stove/oven that must be repaired.

I do devote much thinking time to the project, as anyone who has tried to wade to the end of this page will testify.

So I thought I would share a little bit of news, because you all deserve it: Today saw the first run of a loaded wagon hauling an empty wagon up the incline.

Now, before you get excited, this doesn't prove anything; I was always confident that a big enough disparity in mass and a sufficient slope could haul an empty wagon up.

And this is, after all, a glued-in load of gravel; there is no filling-at-the-upper-end or discharging-at-the-lower-end, although the hoppers/chutes are built, and I do have sliding-plate triggers, which I am thinking of abandoning for rotary-plate-with-a-hole, like the canister of ground pepper or that of cocoa powder.

I took a movie, but is now ten years since last I played with Camtasia and video formats, and had videos from my web site, and videos on YouTube, so there is a bit more non-modeling time I will have to spend when I can take a break from composting grass-clippings.

Also, I want to record some data here.

Each idea should be tested. For example:-

(a) RTR wagons or custom-built gondolas?

(b) Cotton string, Nylon string, Cotton sewing thread, or Nylon sewing thread?

(c) Key ring #1, key Ring #2, Pulley vertical spindle, pulley horizontal spindle, or two-inch panel pin?

(d) Angle of incline (10°, 20°, 30°, etc)

(e) Mass in loaded wagon

There are more parameters, but already I am looking at 2x4x5x8x2 or six hundred and forty combinations. If I ran through three a day, eight months would pass and I would still have no guarantee that I can get this to work. And that is 640 combinations if I do them once each. I might want to do each combination three times to smooth out any minor differences in local conditions. I anticipate that the pulley system might introduce variations from run to run.

In the meantime, if your system can cope with viewing and/or downloading a 54MB MP4 movie taken with my smarter-than-me phone, then click on http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Modeling/F ... 202107.mp4 .

The movie is shaky for the first few seconds.

Oh yes. I now have to work out how to build a tripod and mount the camera and, probably, edit the front and back off the MP4 files while I run around the camera ...

Tuesday, June 01, 2021

I am delayed by the baseboard, the incline. I have the inclination to work on it, but not the time. As well I have a mental log-jam. I know that I want an adjustable incline, with some sort of leg or prop that allows me to choose different angles for hands-free operation, but I have not given myself the time to sit down with paper and pencil to “build it”. I have a spreadsheet processor with trigonometric functions, so converting from degrees (o, 10, 20 etc) to “length of prop” is not a problem.

Shawn says that my sheet lead will be available today, from his neighbour who makes his own lead sinkers. David tells me that Swyers will stock bird-shot and other nodules of lead.

A more modern version of this [balanced or gravity incline] existed at the Decauville farm, possibly as early as the 1840s I spent some time in Evry in the late seventies, commuting via Le Bras de Fer station from Gare de Lyon.

That early-morning thought of baseboards did the trick, and my mind went to work after I went back to sleep. Prop. Angle. I will make a set of perhaps three or four props. My props will be cut to a specific length. A ten-degree slope represents one tenth of a circle, and so to a first approximation a prop to hold the incline at ten degrees needs to be one-tenth of the circumference of that circle, and the circumference is given as 2 x PI x R, where R is the radius. The value for R is the length of the incline.

This table is not accurate. There is a formula for the length of a chord, I know, because I remember Mr. Brian Feld testing us on it in class one Monday; but I have forgotten the formula, so I will use a fraction of circumference, which is a first approximation to the length of a chord. I have not forgotten Mister Feld’s insistence that we do every problem in our head, before we dragged out of book of trigonometric tables, paper, and pen.

Besides which, when I report that “a four-ounce wagon with nylon sewing thread on a vertical-axis pulley dragged an empty wagon up a forty-degree slope in seven seconds”, we all know that I am using my spring-driven kitchen scales to approximate the weight, a stop-watch to time the travel, and who knows what brand, thickness, or type of nylon; so the angle is merely to give you (and me) some idea of what the gradient might look like.

Much more importantly, the obtained figure allows me to compare against other situations. I would expect the travel time to decrease as the angle increased. Furthermore, if my cotton-thread/pin trial shows that it is slower than my nylon-sewing-thread/pulley trial, then I would expect it to be consistently so, and so the precise figure does not matter; all that matters is “Is the improvement consistent? Yes Or No?”

To that end, like evolution, once I find a superior method, I can avoid all trials in the inferior method. This should prune the number of trials back from six hundred and forty.

I have made a crude stick with holes 8, 16. 24, and 31 inches from the end. I set a two-inch pin in the edge of the 46” baseboard, and use the first hole (8”) on the pin. The end of the baseboard is about eight inches above its pivot-point. I claim that the angle is about ten degrees of slope.

Detail showing the eight-inch hole set on the two-inch pin, which is tacked into the edge of the baseboard.

Now: How am I going to record the data, and which is the best sequence?

Wagons/Cable/Spindle/Angle/Mass?

I can’t change wagons until I have built the gondolas, and I want to avoid that if I can quickly establish that RTR can doo the job; that rules out wagons as the most efficient variable.

Changing the cable involves slipping a different lasso over each wagon. Not a big deal.

Changing the spindle out to be straightforward since I can leave the pulley and key rings on the spindle. But in the case of the pulley I must thread the cable through the pulley.

Changing the Angle is relatively easy, especially if I can change it without removing the wagons.

Changing the mass ought to be easy – just lift out one load and slip in a different load.

Each trial will be represented by a record of data:-

I want to determine the BEST combination, so I must define what I mean by BEST.

Best combination: “Delivers the maximum residual kinetic energy at the end of the run”

Means? A wagon run is a loaded wagon barreling down the incline dragging an empty wagon up the incline. Each wagon must then be capable of triggering loading/unloading by tripping a trigger, and that action requires energy. I want to maximize the available energy once the wagons have reached their destination.

I can sum the energy in order to measure it by leaving one wagon in suspension and passing all the energy to the other wagon.

Suppose the cable long enough so that the full wagon does not quite reach its terminal (during the trial), then, the theory goes, the unladen wagon reaches the upper terminal with all the remaining kinetic energy. I could use that energy to push some sort of measuring weight, then visibly measure the distance that weight travels.

The time of travel (of the wagons) is not critical; residual energy is critical.

I need to measure this residual energy; I can use units of distance for this:-

At sixteen inches, I maintain that this is a 20º slope.

And this is a 30º slope.

And this is a 40º slope, although to my eyes this image appears to show a 45º slope.

Wednesday, June 02, 2021

“I’ll take what I can get”. This detail is from an image posted here , a coal-handling stage. The angles of the coal-chute appear to be 45º from which I infer that 45º was a working slope for coal-handling.

“Test Your Strength” by ringing the bell is a popular scam at the fairground, taking money from muscled oafs who have not heard of the squared laws. The energy required to lift the sliding weight to that height is not linearly proportional to your strength, but is proportional to the square of the distance, that is, the height of the bell. Hence the temptation. “It got to within five percent, so an extra five percent effort will win the stuffed bear”. No!

Indeed it is the same law that invites me to increase the length of my incline. I have not written of this to date, but I am using thirty-six inches of track because Peco provides track in those lengths. In theory, a seventy-two inch length of track, double the length, would provide four times as much energy; I’m just saying …

Which leads me back to measuring how much energy remains at the end of a run.

Consider a buffer-stop, but instead of two relatively small ovals using hydraulic rams to absorb the energy, a piece of cardboard sliding between two other pieces of cardboard. Friction between the cardboards absorbs the residual energy, and the more energy there is (and remember I am looking at comparative energy here, rather than absolute values), the further the cardboard strip is shunted.

I can read off a measure of energy by the distance the strip is pushed (or “travels”); a greater distance means greater energy.

Here is the track, extended to the right to accommodate my cable, with the empty wagon at the left expecting a buffer. The laden wagon at the right has descended as far as the cable is going to allow it. It would expend energy bouncing at the end of the string unless that energy had been absorbed by my absorbent buffer at the left hand side.

The buffers on the wagon will strike the cardboard piston, which needs to be 0.5” and 1.0” above the baseboard.

I will mount two scraps of batten as a base, and rest a third scrap unattached on top. The empty wagon, arriving from the right, its buffers will strike and then push the third piece of batten to the left, as shown by the arrow. I can record the distance the batten moves as a measure of energy.

If I improve performance, I can increase the friction by adding a second piece of scrap or even using some home-made weights.

On the other hand, consider that on a slope, the wagon will be pushing the slider uphill! Where the measure is based on a significant mass being pushed uphill, the slope accentuates the energy drain. A sliding cardboard strip in a sleeve might remain the better measure.

Thursday, June 03, 2021

No doubt about it; I am a genius. Here is the piston closed up. The head of the piston is at the right hand end, and is slightly offset from the piston housing.

Here’s the brilliant part: A tapered piston rod. My theory (to be tested later today) is that a tapered rod provides a gradient of friction. I say “tested” because already I suspect that I should taper the rod in the opposite sense so that the narrow end is being pushed in at the end of the stroke, so that the more of the rod is enclosed, the lower the friction, and so the approach is closer to linear than exponential, making for linear measurements of energy.

As always I am looking at comparative values rather than absolute values. “Is this configuration better?”.

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

The Bridgnorth Cliff Railway in Shropshire is a steep (33 degrees) 3' 6" gauge funicular, originally water powered, ... so a 33º slope has a real-world example. I could do worse that stipulate thirty degrees as a minimum slope, a boundary condition.

Welcome to Bridgnorth Cliff Railway England’s Oldest and Steepest Inland Electric Funicular Railway! “The track is 201 feet long, with a rise of 111 feet and consists of a double run of track …”

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Summer is gone and it is time to get back to work. I am amazed at where inspiration strikes. “ The UK's last aerial ropeway uses no power ” means of course, “uses no energy”, since energy is what does work, and power is just the rate of work - energy per unit time. And of course, the aerial ropeway (a form of discrete-unit conveyor belt) uses the potential energy in each laden tun of shale to pull the empty tubs back up the hill, with even a bit of energy to spare.

My model is scraping the bottom of the barrel. How I would love to have a bit of energy to spare, but alas, I do not.

Where does the Forterra brickworks get so much energy?

Tom Scott> “Thanks for the email! Alas, everything I know about the ropeway is in that video -- I can't help beyond that. Good luck with it!”

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Sometimes the muse takes its time.

Last winter instead of hammering away on my gravitational funicular model I devoted my Copious Free™ to recording a rather large audio book (480,000 words) In the Spring I somewhat foolishly planted four pumpkin seeds, and spent the rest of summer slashing at the vines to stop them smothering my gooseberry bushlets. Also trying not to annoy the guys who were installing the first four of seventeen new windows.

I am not stupid! Each window is installed with a seven-inch wide sill so that I can have a plethora of houseplants and seedlings to pamper over winter.

Then!

This morning my dream of a round-the-house railway resurfaced.

"What if", I thought, "I built a six-feet by nine-inches baseboard that will sit on the window sill AND accommodate my houseplants on those black foam trays which house meat products?"

I could build one per window-sill, which in terms of bedroom - office - living-room - guest room would give me seven baseboards, each one a little rural station.

Nine-inches wide means that it could accommodate the meat trays AND a length of OO_scale track.

The baseboards would serve as a static diorama yet could be linked by one-inch wide boards supporting inter-village track.

Give me another year or two to cogitate and I will report back ...

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