BATTERY STEAM

As a regular reader of Garden Rail Magazine I am interested in the letter sent in by Andrew Mc Mahon reference, battery powered plus sound 16mm scale steam outline locomotives.

I am now in my Eighty’s and have been a 16mm Association member for many years. I enjoy running steam fired locomotives, but I find like many of my friends at a similar age, it is so nice to put a battery powered with sound locomotive onto my tracks and have instant running.

If the manufactures can produce diesel outline engines why do they not produce steam outline engines too?.

If I remember correctly Accrucraft did make and sell Isle of Man engines like this?, also I believe this type of powered locomotive can be bought in Gauge One?

The “00” Gauge manufactures have been doing this for some time , albeit track powered

David Loveard

Editor: Accucraft’s Isle of Man engines were offered with track or steam power. Has anyone converted their model to run on batteries?

I am not new to railways, both those on the mainline, and as a 00 gauge modeller, and used to buying RTR locos and stock. However, I am still very much a newbie to garden railways, and through your magazine and the 16mm association, the help and guidance provided has in turn helped me now build my first railway outdoors. I am enjoying this very much, I enjoy steam locos and will venture into live steam once I have built up the courage to run one. In the mean time I am happy with my couple of battery powered diesel locos (built by others) and some wagons running round my garden. Its nice to come home sometimes, play a loco and wagons on the track and just run for a while while I have a cup of tea.

However, the letter from Andrew McMahon struck a chord with me, and I too would would like to have a RTR steam outline battery operated loco to run those wagons and perhaps venture into a small passenger train working!

I do however, lack the expertise skill and sometimes patience to built from a kit loco. I have tried some rolling stock, and I ended up with something that’s not right and I can’t paint models very well at all they look awful so I will stick to painting my lounge walls and emulsion inside the house as my limit.

Modern tooling now used in 00 gauge has seen the range of locomotives expand to something that we could only dream off 20 years ago, and has largely killed off 00 guage kits except for that rare type loco that we all wanted, as the range is so vast now. I understand for many railway modelling is that joy of building and running something, I get that, I am just rubbish at it, and simply enjoy operating my trains

Perhaps in the future RTR steam outline models may become available. Then I can go to a shop, look on shelf, the shopkeeper says he has one in stock has one in stock all built in box and I can come home, unpack and run some trucks behind.

Glen Austin

Editor: Theidea of RTR battery powered steam does seen to have struck a chord with many readers. Offthe top of my head, only LocoRemote offer anything like this, and then only for very limited runs and for tiny prototypes. Playmobil used to offer RC 45mm gauge battery locos, including steam engine I think, but since production ended these have become collectors items. Finally, LGB produced their ‘Harlequin’ 0-4-0, but it’s more toy than serious workhorse.

So, it looks like there is a demand, does anyone fancy filling it?