Subject:
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Mount Washington Cog Railway
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Thu, 6 Oct 2005 03:01:25 GMT
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Here’s a model I’ve been working on this week of the Mount Washington Cog
Railway in New Hampshire.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, it’s a small steam-powered railroad that takes
passengers from the base of Mount Washington to the top. It was first built in
1869ish, and has morphed a bit over the years.
Due to the grade that the train must climb (about 36 degrees I think I read),
the locomotive uses a cog that meshes with a rack on the rail line to pull
itself slowly up the mountain. The full explanation is here:
Mount Washington Cog Railway
I tried to model the same behavior using technic gears and gear racks.
Cog
Rack
The other thing that I attempted was the distinctive tilted boiler. Because of
the steep grade, the boiler is tilted on the locomotive so that it is level when
the train is moving up and down the mountain.
Locomotive
Power for the model is supplied by a standard battery box hidden within the
passenger coach. This required that, unlike the real train, I tether the coach
to the locomotive. This turned out to be a good thing though, as the locomotive
was back-heavy, and tended to flip over without the weight of the coach holding
the front end down. I built switches for the battery box into the roof of the
coach so that I don’t need to open it up every time I want to change direction.
I made an AVI file of the train moving up my test track, which I’m estimating to
be about 30 to 35 degrees.
Climbing
the Track
I’ve run it at up to 45 degrees, but it occasionally slips as the locomotive
wants to tip backwards, which disengages the gears from the rack.
Now I just need to get enough bricks to build Mount Washington.....
-Elroy
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Mount Washington Cog Railway
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| (...) Interesting model. Strangely I keep finding that I'm thinking microscale each time I see the pic! I was wondering why you alternated the rack from side to side of the track? Did you find that this gave a more reliable grip? Also, have you (...) (19 years ago, 9-Oct-05, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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