AD60 Garratt – more weight

by Josh Beveridge

I managed to have a look at my Garratt yesterday. I found a piece of lead flashing (about 1.5mm thick) in the garage. I cut 2 pieces 55 x 12mm to lay between the driving wheels under the keeper plate. I removed the centre screw from the keeper plate and used it to hold the lead in place.

After a test run, it didn’t do much better. So I added another layer of lead. These pieces were 60 x 12mm and were attached with the same method after about 20 minutes of trying to find a longer screw (turned out to be a 9BA x 3/16 long).

This time the engine hauled another 200g of rollingstock (4 more RU’s or two VLX vans).

The double layer of lead adds 55g of weight to the loco. Total weight of the engine is now 785g.

For the record – RU’s weigh 50g model (35t real) OHG weigh 85g model (20t real?)

Test train 1 (no weights) – 13 RU’s + OHG = 735g (475t) Test train 2 (with weights) – 17 RU’s + OHG = 935g (615t)

The gradient on my spiral is 1:50, with a radius of 700mm (29in) – which should give me a grade of 1:40 with a bit of creative maths.