Best Of The Stephenson Rocket

[ncbqguy]

Seems to me there were accounts of a bonfire being built on a bed of sand on a flatcar being pushed ahead of the locomotive before headlights were invented....
How are you going to simulate that!!
Charlie Vlk

[peteski]

I believe in Britain (where the right of way is fenced in) locos ran at night without headlights. I know - seems weird. Maybe a small marker lantern was used.

[learmoia]

It would have been cool if you could hide the motor in/as the water barrel, as there are a wide variety of interpretations of what that looked like.

And the edge wall seems to go high enough that could could hide the drive gears on one side and the wires on the opposite side behind the edge walls

[Lemosteam]

Who’s to say that some dude didn’t rotate the barrel and put it to one side, with the coke on the other…

Seems plausible.

So have you run the tender yet?

[peteski]

Der Adler loco from that time period had barrels on their sides (but oriented in a wrong direction for housing a motor).

[Chris333]

This one burned wood 

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better video:

[Lemosteam]

Lolololol!

Methinks that MT couplers would not make it. 

[mmagliaro]

Who’s to say that some dude didn’t rotate the barrel and put it to one side, with the coke on the other…

Seems plausible.

So have you run the tender yet?

Actually I have.  It can propel itself back and forth on my workbench test track, but not without a lot of sputtering because of pickup.  It CAN, however, push the engine and cars along, so traction is not going to be a problem.  Whew.  Hooray for tungsten.

I am in the process of adding weight, fitting the weighted barrel in place, and hooking the power feeds up from the engine to the tender so I'll have 8 live wheels instead of 4. 

[cfritschle]

Notice there is no stop across the front of the tender.  So they must never have planned on having much of a coke pile in there, because it would be spilling out the front all the time.  They built it to be easy to climb in to grab a few chunks in a shovel, or even with your hands, and toss them into the firebox.  If you look at the tiny access door to the firebox, no way would a shovel go in there.  So they were probably just shoving grapefruit size (or smaller) rocks of coke in there by hand.

Max,

You have probably already looked at this drawing on Wikipedia of what was supposed to be the original Rocket.  It shows a man with a very pointed and short handled shovel.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stephenson%27s_Rocket_drawing.jpg

[mmagliaro]

Thanks for the tip on that picture with the shovel.  Yes, I suppose that is a third option I hadn't considered - not a full-size shovel or bare hands, but instead a small spade-sized shovel.  We all have to realize, of course, that that drawing, which came from "Mechanics Magazine" (an 1829 edition) was just that - an artists conception of what Rocket looked like.

But it's reasonable.  So be it.
I'm goin' with the pile of coke and the small shovel.

[mmagliaro]

Just a quick update.

It runs!
https://youtu.be/9MXj4WUvGT4

I am working on it to make the motion more uniform and the pickup more reliable.  But this is one hurdle.
And as shown in the video, it is quite capable of pulling (pushing) the two coaches I bought for it.

Yeah, I had to cheat with that coal load, but there will have to be compromises simply dictated by the sheer tiny size of this thing.

[Chris333]

Was totally expecting it to "take off" and was pleasantly surprised!

[mmagliaro]

Was totally expecting it to "take off" and was pleasantly surprised!

Oh yeah... the speed range is very good.  Top end  is barely 20 mph.  I have been working on it since I took this video.
I can run it under 5 mph.  The pickup is the killer.  If I can get some more weight into the boiler, I think I will be able to
make it crawl without it stalling for lack of more pickup.

[Chris333]

Add pickups to the whole train and use 2 tiny magnets to couple and transfer power.

[u18b]

Max,
This is amazing.
Thank you.