resale values, 0-4-0 versus 0-6-0.

C

cheshire

Registered
Warning - this post is the result of my brain wandering late at night at work, so it may or may not make sense! I am lucky enough to have 2 live steam locos - an Accucraft Mortimer and a Roundhouse Silver Lady, both manual control. I have posted on here about struggling with the Silver Lady - if I had to choose a loco for looks it would be the Silver Lady, for running its the Mortimer. I think a lot of this is the extra length of the Silver Lady, it must give more friction on Radius 2 curves and so needs more power, resulting in running away on straights. I was contemplating either adding radio control to her (approx £200) or selling her to fund a coal fired DJB Ragleth or Riverdale Irene (both 0-4-0 so hopefully less friction etc on curves). The question is of resale value of the Silver Lady, manual, FR victorian maroon, painted tank tops, firing irons added, slight scuff to one side but generally in really good condition and just serviced by Dave Mees. I know that it will depend on who wants it, how much they would pay etc, but a ballpark figure would make the finance maths easier! Also I would feel happier selling it to someone who had seen it rather than blindly on Ebay, how might I go about that? Any ideas etc gratefully received, should this ramble have made any sense!!
 
I would expect it as a private sale to sell for between £800-£1000 if it has not been used a great deal. Personally I would never get a manual loco if running on a track with tight bends and gradients, buy an R/C loco next time.
 
cheshire said:
I was contemplating either adding radio control to her (approx £200) or selling her to fund a coal fired DJB Ragleth or Riverdale Irene (both 0-4-0 so hopefully less friction etc on curves).
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Live steam is not my forte, but £200 seems quite a lot for what amounts to a tx, rx and a couple of servos. I'm sure there must be a cheaper way of installing r/c. Might be worth investigating before making a final decision?

Rik
 
ge_rik said:
Live steam is not my forte, but £200 seems quite a lot for what amounts to a tx, rx and a couple of servos. I'm sure there must be a cheaper way of installing r/c. Might be worth investigating before making a final decision?

Rik
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I wouldn't expect it to cost much less if fitted by a pro, certainly it could be done for a lot less as D.I.Y. certainly in the £70 range. The point about wheels, 0-4-0 against 0-6-0 isn't really relevant as if you check carefully, the middle set on the 0-6-0 don't actually contact the track, so the issue is with the wheel-base, rather than the wheel arrangement. The longer the wheel base the sharper the attack angle of the flanges on the rail-head. That's where you're getting the friction.

I'd agree with Steve about the price, as a ball-park.
 
Hi Cheshire,

Resale isn't based on the amount of wheels the engine has but the quality of it, the manufacturer, the amount it has run, any damage etc. Clearly a poorly built engine with lots of scuff marks will sell less than a pristine factory built engine. Likewise Roundhouse engines sell for more than Accucraft.

I would recommend if you want to sell to put in on eBay and see what happens. Unfortuantely I cannot give you an exact figure of resale as I am a believer that the buyer will pay what they think the engine is worth and these things can depend on who is looking at it. Garden Rail magazine have adverts in the back for private sales and so does this website.

Having R/C professionally fitted will cost you about £200, maybe more for things like whistles and gas valves being R/Ced, but you could do it yourself relatively easily for much less than that. Like it has already been said, the middle wheelset doesn't have flanges so it should not prevent your engine going around curves but the wider front and back wheel might. Roundhouse give recommendations for the minimum radius their engines should go around.

Hope you get your issue sorted or the money you want for your engine.

Daniel
 
With steam engines you never know... You have to have something that someone wants and then the price goes through the roof. I had a direct acting diagonal paddle wheel engine that was built for a paddle steamer about 20' long that I found in a scrap yard. I paid scrap value for it and rebuilt it over the period of around a year and had ideas of building a hull to take it then reality dawned so I put it up on eBay thinking no one would want it as the provenance was unknown. Starting bid of AU$50 and lets just say that two Americans got into a bidding war.... And I got a new 20' caravan....
But with anything the quality is long remembered after the cost has been forgotten and eBay is the place to sell it especially as you can get a world wide market. If a "friend" is going to offer you a good price then that should be your starting place, if it dosen't sell then you can always offer it to your "friend".....
The trouble with G scale is that everyone seems to be tighter than a fishes stern gland... :o :o :o :o :o :'(
 
Cheshire - Quick question - Does the "Silver Lady Anne" have a longer wheelbase than a standard "Lady Anne"?

Reason for the question is that I have a standard Lady Anne (R/C'd) and I can drive her round my layout which has R1 LGB track in places (used to have a semi-circle of it in one part of the layout).

Have you tried your loco on a different layout - Is it your layout causing the problems - or is it the engine?

I'm sure you could pick up some 2nd hand R/C gear and fit it yourself - To be honest installing / setting up servo's isn't overly difficult - It may seem daunting at first - but its quite simple really.

Set up on the bench first of all - not in the loco - make sure all is working (the right servo responds to the right control - and then install in the loco

It really is quite simple - it must be - I installed mine and I'm an idiot! ;D ;D ;D
 
The Roundhouse website gives conflicting measurements for these locos, the main difference would seem to be that the Silver Lady has a sprung chassis, which I would have expected to help. They are essentially the same so I think the wheel-base will be the same.

There is really no need to go looking for s/h radio gear, new 2.4gh stuff is available at very reasonable prices these days, from a number of companies. Try GiantShark (used to be GiantCod).
 
Any thing narrow gauge have a coal fired DJB for sale at the moment ; http://www.anythingnarrowgauge.co.uk/listProducts.php?ID=7 if that's the road you want to go down then I'm sure you could trade in your Silver Lady in part exchange, which I would guess would cover about 50%ish of the cost :-\
 
"There is really no need to go looking for s/h radio gear, new 2.4gh stuff is available at very reasonable prices these days, from a number of companies. Try GiantShark (used to be GiantCod)."

Was it a hostile bite buy out??
;) :D ;D ;D
 
No, they just became a big fish in a small pond! :P
 
cheshire said:
... I think a lot of this is the extra length of the Silver Lady, it must give more friction on Radius 2 curves and so needs more power, resulting in running away on straights.
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Try reducing the gauge on the Silver Lady a bit by moving the wheels inwards on the axles. They won't need to move much, probably 1mm or so.

Silver Lady and Lady Anne have the same wheelbase.
 
The biggest problem with live steam locomotives and track is not the locomotive but the track itself. Now there is little problem with taking a steam loco round tight curves per se – the problem is caused when there is no transitional curves between 'straight' and 'curved'. Electric motors or geared steam can do this but not twin cylinder traditional locos. Given my very small garden I have, of necessity, a couple of fairly tight curves. What I don't have much of is straight track. It is all flexitrack, but were I to replace the track on the same site nowadays, I would use flex, but fixed radius in the tightest spots. For instance if one needed to turn 90 degrees then I would take enough fixed curve track to get round, then remove one (or possibly two) sections and curve the flex into it. This way the locomotive would be led into the curve, allowing manual control to be easily used and also more relaxed R/C running. Take a look at the real thing. The only place where I have seen straight track move direct into a fixed curve was in Her Majesty's dockyards
 
I agree with Tag, having a piece of R2 leading into a R1 curve or R3 leading into a R2 curve helps the engine into the curve and not the instant bind of going from straight to tight curve. Even my LGB Harz engine can show this if I just use R1 or if I transition with a section of R2 then go to R1 till the last piece which will be R2 again to transition back to straight. And I also second narrowing up the wheel gauge a little bit might help a bit in the curves. When I had my standard Lady Anne, she went around R1 with ease, she was more controlable in manual mode if I had a decent train attached, just light engine she was a bit more problematic. Mike
 
If you have a restricted ground level track I can't see why you would want a coal fired loco which would require l lot more attention than a manual gas fired one.
 
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