Manning Wardle L Class

Last week I got a parcel - my Rapido Manning Wardle L-class arrived!

Posed on Loctern Quay it looks great, quirky and characterful like a narrow-gauge loco. However, clearly it's not for Loctern, I ordered it with Whittingham Hospital in mind, so I pulled the diorama out the garage...

The question is, how does it run? Well, Whittingly isn't yet wired up, so some creativity was required. Taking the power supply from Loctern, an adaptor lead for the old club layout, and a pair of crocodile clip wires, I powered up the front track for a short test run. 

It ran very smoothly. The mechanism is a little noisier than most modern mechanism, but not excessively so. Feedback needs to be switched off though!

It's a very small loco, so I thought it worth comparing to other small locos. It's a little longer than the Peckett but not a lot (~6mm), and considerably shorter than a Terrier. I think it will fit in well with the short trains of Whittingly. 

It's barely longer than 4-wheel wagons, and slightly lower than a van. 

It will need a little weathering, but first I just need to crack on with turning Whittingly into a layout!

Magnetic uncoupling with standard 009 couplings

While I am happy with using Microtrains couplings for most of my 009 stock with its advantages in shunting, I have realised that fitting them to my Heljan Manning Wardle is too difficult but also unnecessary. It will only be likely to run with suitable coaches such as the Peco ones, and so long as it can couple up reliably and uncouple to run round the type of coupling doesn't really matter. So retaining the "standard" 009 coupling is easiest, except that the ones factory-fitted to the loco sit too high, and I've been unable to adjust them until they couple reliably to the Peco coaches. 

A while back I bought a pack of Greenwich couplings to fit the NEM socket, these were bent up following the instructions and simply push into the sockets on the loco in place of the existing Peco type couplings. Being thin metal they are easily adjusted to sit level, which the Peco ones don't. As you can see here by leaving the loops off and the pivot tabs up (or cut off) they clear the cowcatcher easily. 

Being pre-blackened the Greenwich couplings look discrete but are entirely compatible with the Peco coupling - though since I have left the loops off the loco (to keep the cowcatchers) the coaches will need loops at both ends. I do need to provide some auto-uncoupling though, and I don't like pop-up ramps for the Peco loops.

So here is an ordinary staple held centrally in some pliers. Both sides were bent upwards from the flat plane of the staple.

This makes a U shape with the ends bent up - these tails were leaned back slightly, and trimmed about 3mm. 

The bent U shape is fitted over the outside of the Peco loop droppers. They can be tweaked to be a cosy fit, but not too tight as that can stop the loop moving freely. The upright tails are fixed with a little bead of superglue gel. The couplings are easily pulled out their sockets to have the staple fitted. 

The Peco coupling works normally, but when positioned over a magnet the staple pulls down which lifts the loop. If there are two loops a pair of magnets might be needed, but I only want to uncouple the loco (without loops) from the coaches so this should work well with one magnet. Here a tiny 2mm x 2mm neodymium magnet is held between the sleepers with blue-tack, a Greenwich magnet would be ideal but I don't have one, I will try a slightly longer magnet set under the sleepers which should work with less accurate positioning. However, the experiment shows this is a simple mod to add magnetic uncoupling capability to the standard Peco 009 coupling. It might work with other types so long as the loop is not magnetic (the Peco loop is plastic).  The coupling on the Manning Wardle is level here and couples to the Peco coach, but does still look slightly high in this photo, a quick adjustment with pliers should fix that. 

More on Heljan Manning Wardle Issues

While the inability of my new  Heljan L&B Manning Wardle to run through the PECO 12" radius pointwork of Awngate is a big disappointment, I did say I'd check it out on the newer 18" radius points. So I took it to the club last night and ran it on the new under-construction layout. It did manage to run smoothly through most of the points, but at a couple of them it derailed in the same way seen before - with the pony wheels lifting at the tip of the blades of a facing point.

I realised it seemed to occur taking the left-hand route (whether that was the curved or the straight route), so I looked again at the centring springs. Having tweaked them to reduce pressure in an attempt to help the loco negotiate 12" radius points (as advised by the instructions) the truck was not staying central. I've no tweaked them back to maintain just enough pressure to centralise the truck, ensuring pressure was equal each side. This helped a great deal.

I've also tested the loco on my also under-construction layout Hexworthy, which also has PECO 18" radius points. However despite the adjustments to the pony truck, it would still derail on three of the four points, depending which way they were switched. Eventually I could see no option but to take a file to the points...

The modifications used a small file, and only took a few seconds:

• At "A" the inside of the blade was stroked with the file to sharpen the tip, taking care not to affect the top edge
• The recess of the fixed stock rail was also stroked with a file at "B"

The idea is to reduce the amount the blade protrudes from the fixed rail so the flange of the pony wheels cannot ride up on the tip. This, frankly, should not be necessary for any RTR loco, but it does work, and now I can run the loco through all the points. This trick may well work on the 12" points used on Awgate too, but I don't really plan to use the loco on that layout.

That's not quite all the issues though. The couplings point upward, and are far too high to couple to stock, including the PECO coaches.

The club layout has 12" curves and gradients. The loco did manage the curves, which is a relief, but at some points it stopped with it's wheels spinning. These appeared to be at transitions in gradient, or to the super-elevated curves. Some of these track sections probably need adjusting, but it is clear that the loco needs more vertical movement in the pony trucks, which is currently restricted by the coupling extensions meeting the buffer beams or cowcatcher.

So we are getting there, but we're not quite there yet.