surging steam locomotive problem solved.

[Loren Perry]

A couple of months back I asked if anyone had any ideas about how I could fix a brass steam locomotive I had that exhibited a longitudinal surging while operating. It's a brass ATSF 4-8-4 imported by Hallmark and despite a number of good suggestions from RW members, I was never able to smooth out its running qualities, so I just set it aside and moved on to other things.

Yesterday, I decided to revisit the problem and tried again. This time, while running (and surging) through one of my curved tunnels, it derailed and I had to drag it out backwards about six inches. This caused it to throw a traction tire. After I carefully re-installed it and made sure it was on as precisely as possible, I ran the engine again, and Hallelujah! The surge disappeared and it ran flawlessly around the layout while pulling a 12-car heavyweight passenger train.

My theory is the soft traction tire had somehow partially slipped on the driver and bunched up on one side, or possibly even climbed partially out of its groove, making it a few thousandths of an inch thicker at that point. This caused the driver to tend to lift the engine with each revolution, but with all the tungsten ballast I had installed, the engine didn't exhibit any vertical motion that I could detect visually. The act of lifting the heavy engine on one side caused the motor to slow slightly with each revolution, hence the surging effect. The traction tire may have also caused the derailment in the curved tunnel by lifting the drivers just enough to allow the lead driver on the outside of the curve to slip over the railhead.

I never spotted the misaligned traction tire when I was troubleshooting the problem earlier. My attention was focused more on the rods and bearings. So if anyone has a similar surging problem with their steamer, check your traction tires and make sure they are properly seated in the driver's groove and not bunched up on one side.

[atsf3751]

Congratz Loren. The Hallmark Santa Fe 4-8-4 and 2-10-4 are excellent running engines.

[robert3985]

@Loren Perry   Loren, Glad you got that problem figured out! 

Oh...pics please.  Yeah, I know you don't like to post pics, but your work needs to be shown. 

(1) Create an account with Google, go to www.googlephotos.com and set up an account there (not complicated) and upload photos from your computer to appropriately named albums you create there.

(2) Open the photo you want to post here, and copy the photo location, which will be a big, long address

(3) Paste the photo location in your post here and immediately after the last character in that address type ?jpg

(4) Highlight the entire photo location with your cursor by dragging it over it, then go up to the "insert image" tool button above your posting's window and push it

(5) Voila!  You're done!  I always push the light blue "preview" button on the bottom of the "Post Reply" screen to make sure my photo is working before posting my reply.

OR, put the short flashing vertical line of the position indicator where you want your photo to be and push the "Add image to post and upload to gallery" with your cursor, and follow the instructions that come up.  It's really easy too.

I hope this works easily enough for you Loren so that we'll see more pics of your work!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[Loren Perry]

Thank you, Robert, for taking the time to create these photo instructions! I'm going to try it and see if I can make it work. My computer is an iMac desktop about seven years old running OS X. I'm barely internet literate and have only a rudimentary understanding of the computer, but I'll see what happens.
If this works, I'll owe you one.
Thanks again!

@Loren Perry   Loren, Glad you got that problem figured out! 

Oh...pics please.  Yeah, I know you don't like to post pics, but your work needs to be shown. 

(1) Create an account with Google, go to www.googlephotos.com and set up an account there (not complicated) and upload photos from your computer to appropriately named albums you create there.

(2) Open the photo you want to post here, and copy the photo location, which will be a big, long address

(3) Paste the photo location in your post here and immediately after the last character in that address type ?jpg

(4) Highlight the entire photo location with your cursor by dragging it over it, then go up to the "insert image" tool button above your posting's window and push it

(5) Voila!  You're done!  I always push the light blue "preview" button on the bottom of the "Post Reply" screen to make sure my photo is working before posting my reply.

OR, put the short flashing vertical line of the position indicator where you want your photo to be and push the "Add image to post and upload to gallery" with your cursor, and follow the instructions that come up.  It's really easy too.

I hope this works easily enough for you Loren so that we'll see more pics of your work!

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[Rasputen]

You can also post images right here at the Railwire.  Use the "Gallery" link right next to "Member Map" below the top banner.

Or send them to me and I'll post them for you!

[mmagliaro]

Loren,
I'm glad you got it fixed.  But from what you described, I have a theory about this.

I'm not so sure the tire was bunching up.  The surging you describe, I think, was more likely caused by periodic slipping of one or both tires.  Imagine: The driver rotates, the tire slips a little, the engine slows down because the tire is slipping around the wheel, then it grabs and the engine takes off again.    And a loose, slipping tire would definitely be vulnerable to getting tossed off the wheel.

When you reseated the tire, you make have just accidentally got it in a good spot, or wiped something off it just by handling it, which made the problem go away.

Just something to keep an eye on.  If it starts doing it again, I'd replace both tires with new ones.  KATO GS4 tires ought to work on there.

[Loren Perry]

Robert -

As I said, I'm internet challenged and I have no one near me to tutor me on the quirks of doing certain things. As the net continues to develop and change, I feel like I'm falling further and further behind.

Consequently I'm a much better modeler and photographer than I am an internet user and I really need to be taught as though I was an alien from another planet. Or even a child! Step-by-step-by-step. So many people assume that I know the shorthand that everyone seems to be familiar with, but I simply don't know this and I'm ashamed to admit it. I have hundreds of good photos of my layout that I'd like to share but they'll never be seen unless I can somehow break through this barrier.

That said, I'm stymied with Step 2 of your instructions. That one "simple" sentence is confusing me and I'm at a loss as to what to do. Can you please contact me offline at goldmedl@rockisland.com to help me get through this?




Oh...pics please.  Yeah, I know you don't like to post pics, but your work needs to be shown. 

(1) Create an account with Google, go to www.googlephotos.com and set up an account there (not complicated) and upload photos from your computer to appropriately named albums you create there.

(2) Open the photo you want to post here, and copy the photo location, which will be a big, long address

(3) Paste the photo location in your post here and immediately after the last character in that address type ?jpg

(4) Highlight the entire photo location with your cursor by dragging it over it, then go up to the "insert image" tool button above your posting's window and push it

(5) Voila!  You're done!  I always push the light blue "preview" button on the bottom of the "Post Reply" screen to make sure my photo is working before posting my reply.

[mark.hinds]

EDIT:  (Confusing previous post removed). 

Trying the in-house Railwire image hosting method, as suggested by others in this thread; here's a screen capture of Railwire's popup window for doing this:



And here's the resulting test image after clicking on the "add picture" box.  (Note the caption they added lower left of image; I guess that's the price we pay ...). 

[peteski]

Before things get too complicated for Loren, why not just have him upload photos directly to this forum?  We now have that capability, and going by the recent debacle with external photo hosting, the Railwire is now my go-to photo host for all the forum related photos.

Loren, if you look above the text window where you are typing in your post, there is a "Add image to post and upload to gallery" link. That will add a photo (or multiple photos, one at a time) to the post you are creating or editing.  It gives you 2 choices: "Add picture" just uploads a photo to the post you are composing (that is what you most likely will use) or "User Gallery" which will upload your photo to your own Photo Gallery section of this forum and also link to it from your post. Either way, just fill out the appropriate fields in either section of the popup window and then hit the "Add Picture" button. That's all there is.  All the confusing stuff will be done automatically.  That's all there is to it.

Loren, did you get my PM?

[robert3985]

Loren,

....and to everybody else, I also suggested that Loren might try the "Add image to post and upload to gallery" that's just above the Post reply writing window in my original post to him, but personally, I find Googlephotos to be just as easy.

I'm a Windows user, so I can't give you screen shots of what I do since you're running an Apple.

This is made a LOT easier if you have both TRW and Googlephotos running in separate tabs simultaneously...

Step two assumes that you have been able to upload photos into Googlephotos.  Although it's not necessary to create "albums" there, it makes organizing your photos more efficient.

Sooo...start writing your reply here at TRW, then go to the tab containing Googlephotos, and choose your photo you want to attach to your message....

We are now at "step 2" and it is accomplished by:
(1) With your mouse, single left clicking (pressing the left major top button on your mouse once) with your cursor positioned on your chosen image you've uploaded to Googlephotos, will bring the photo up nice and big. 
(2) Then, single right click on the image and you should get a window with several choices, but the only choice you are interested in is "Copy Image Location".  Put your cursor on that choice and...   
(3) Single left click it, then...
(4)...go to your message at the tab containing TRW. (no, you don't have to close Googlephotos).  When you're here...
(5)...position the blinking short vertical line (position indicator) where you want your photo to appear in your message, and...
(6)...single right click.  This will bring up a window with some choices for you. 
(7) Single right click on "Paste", and the image location will appear in your message...and it will be a very long, multi-line, complicated thing....

Then, go to step three in my original instructions...

Yeah...there are seven "sub-steps" in step 2...but for clarity for you, I listed each and every motion of the mouse...and after you go through it a three or four times, it will become second nature to you.

I expect to see a photo here in your next reply!   

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[peteski]

Why use external 3rd party photo hosting when they can be hosted locally here?    I suspect that Loren does not need show those photos (relating to this post) on half a dozen other forums, or show them somewhere else on the internet.

[mark.hinds]

Why use external 3rd party photo hosting when they can be hosted locally here?    I suspect that Loren does not need show those photos (relating to this post) on half a dozen other forums, or show them somewhere else on the internet.

Note I modified my previous post to illustrate your "hosted on Railwire" idea, above at 12:28:27 PM.  Note that, when I tried it, "Add Picture" DID put a copy in gallery, and also it tended to put the image at the bottom of the post instead of at the point where I had the cursor (requiring a cut-and-paste to move it up).  But overall, this works well for Railwire posting images. 

[peteski]

Note I modified my previous post to illustrate your "hosted on Railwire" idea, above at 12:28:27 PM.  Note that, when I tried it, "Add Picture" DID put a copy in gallery, and also it tended to put the image at the bottom of the post instead of at the point where I had the cursor (requiring a cut-and-paste to move it up).  But overall, this works well for Railwire posting images.

Yeah it works, and it is much less convoluted than creating and using a Google account.  And when you are composing a post and add photos as you are writing, the links to the photos will show up in the correct locations.  I now almost exclusively use TRW gallery to add photos to a post (instead of directly attaching image to the post) because I can find them really easy in my gallery if I need to re-use them later in another thread.

[Loren Perry]

Remember, Bob - I have a MacIntosh with mouse that has only one button. I can't "right click" or "left click". Unless of course there's some kind of workaround that I'm unaware of.

I managed to get a sample photo on my new Google account. But now I'm wondering if the people suggesting I use the in-house Railwire system instead might be on to something. I'm looking into both right now.

I know that once I succeed at posting the first photo, it'll get easier. It's that first step that seems to be the worst one for me.

No picture this time, but I may be getting closer...



We are now at "step 2" and it is accomplished by:
(1) With your mouse, single left clicking (pressing the left major top button on your mouse once) with your cursor positioned on your chosen image you've uploaded to Googlephotos, will bring the photo up nice and big. 
(2) Then, single right click on the image and you should get a window with several choices, but the only choice you are interested in is "Copy Image Location".  Put your cursor on that choice and...   
(3) Single left click it, then...
(4)...go to your message at the tab containing TRW. (no, you don't have to close Googlephotos).  When you're here...
(5)...position the blinking short vertical line (position indicator) where you want your photo to appear in your message, and...
(6)...single right click.  This will bring up a window with some choices for you. 
(7) Single right click on "Paste", and the image location will appear in your message...and it will be a very long, multi-line, complicated thing....

Then, go to step three in my original instructions...

Yeah...there are seven "sub-steps" in step 2...but for clarity for you, I listed each and every motion of the mouse...and after you go through it a three or four times, it will become second nature to you.

I expect to see a photo here in your next reply!   

[NSEGeorge]

Right Clicking on a Mac with an old style single button mouse is hold down the "CONTROL" key and click.

Otherwise, and $5 mouse with two buttons will plug right in, and you have a 2 button mouse even on your apple.

Hi Loren!

NSE George