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Post by mattscrutton on Sept 19, 2014 23:39:43 GMT
our rails are made of Duralamin, not sure how much different it is to aluminium but I certainly have no worse a time gripping it than steel.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2014 23:49:53 GMT
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Post by Roger on Sept 20, 2014 7:10:00 GMT
We all talk about Aluminium as if it's the pure element, but it's always an alloy of some kind because pure Aluminium is pretty hopeless as an engineering material. Everything we made from Aluminium as apprentices was specified as made from Dural but on reflection I doubt if it was. I remember being told at Uni about keeping soft Dural rivets in a fridge for use in airframes, they would harden after fitting. So whether the every day 'Aluminium' we buy is Dural in the hard state is anyone's guess.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2014 10:27:39 GMT
Maybe our friends in Switzerland or Austria can come up with a fully-working rack railway in 5" etc ??----------- Talking of which, where have those two guys ( One with the William and the other with a 9F ) got to ?
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Post by ejparrott on Sept 20, 2014 14:18:21 GMT
There's several rack railways around, Beamish I believe has our closest, in 7.25" gauge
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Post by yorkshireman on Sept 28, 2014 8:28:45 GMT
Hallo The idea to extend the drain cocks by a bit of pipe is not really smart in my opinion. If there is no natural gradiant where any residual water can run off when the loco is at rest, where would it go? Possibly back to the cylinders, and if these are made from Cast Iron, a classic case of rust starting. Some folks squirt some water soluble cutting oil down the blast pipe. The idea is that the oil will absorb any water droplets. The water will the not get into contact with a metal surface. Johannes
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cotswold
Part of the e-furniture
Still testing the water
Posts: 307
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Post by cotswold on Sept 28, 2014 12:25:54 GMT
The one thing that I do like about ali rail is the fact that it's less likely to wear/damage the tyres...i have seen some horrific tyre damage on some loco's, ali is a lot more forgiving... however as stated it's a challenge to get grip on a wet rail while negotiating an up gradient, especially on our club track with it's tall trees all around. Pete Are you sure? I had always believed that the surface of Ali is oxide and that as it wears off and mixes a bit of spilled oil you get a first class grinding paste for reshaping loco wheels.
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