Bob, Ken, and Vic,
Thank you for the welcome, now I truly feel welcome (and comfortable).
To begin my first comments. I have come to know, respect and befriend Dave Goodson. He became a Dealer for Barry’s Big Trains in 1996. At that time Russ Reinberg was giving me feedback on my products.
Dave volunteered some comments which seemed more complete in the evaluation. Russ was moving on to other venues and spending more time on his mag, so I switched the evaluation process to Dave, after asking if he would evaluate my new products and innovations. Dave agreed.
I will say in my position, I am looking for the negatives to address and solve, but I was hoping for a few more positive comments, you know a couple of “atta boys”. Very hard to come by. But the process works. Dave’s comments always include the “how-to”, which I can accept or avoid, but the important thing for me is that the comments are direct, honest and to the point, no wastes of time or having to guess what Dave is trying to say.
At one point, Dave remarked that the drive would surge while pulling a heavy train on a downhill (Dave has a 4% slope). At that time my wife’s daughter lived in the Seattle area and she was wanting to visit, which we did. I then was able to meet Dave, see his layout over a couple of days. Dave demoed the surging problem,
which sent my mind racing, since this was obviously a real problem.
Back home I tried flywheels (couldn’t fit a flywheel big enough to cause any effect). Investigated drives from
other manufacturers. I don’t remember what triggered the solution exactly, but I tried a double thread worm and found an improvement. Sent a drive to Dave to test out. He agreed we were on the right track, but needed more work.
One of the features of a worm (on the motor) and the wormgear (the driven gear) is the gear ratio. On a single thread worm (direct drive), the gear ratio is the nmber of teeth on the driven gear. On a double thread worm and worm gear the ratio is half of the number of teeth on the wormgear. What this means usually is the gear ratio will be too high (for trains). The trick then is to lower the output gear ratio (and multiply the torque). This is down by putting the double thread wormgear on the same shaft with a spur gear which then drives the axle spur gear.
Dave also discovered that the countershaft (the one with the wormgear and the small spur gear) was ripping the bronze bushings apart. So I replaced the bushings with ball-bearings, no more bearing failures.
There is more to this story, but the point is that without Dave, I may not have the solution to the problem even today. But Dave and I can converse and agree on the definition of the problem and possible solutions.
Dave did this for Bachmann on the first edtitions of the Shay and it was misunderstood as being a criticism. This impression continued for a long time. One day I received a call from Dick Maddox, explaining to me that he/Bachmann were getting ready to sue Dave Goodson, basically for denegrating their products. Dick and I talked about this scenario for awhile where I explained that Dave was trying to help. Dick asked if I thought he could talk to Dave. I said of course and they did. Later on comment came back again and again, Dick said I seem to have bneen listening to the wrong people (his people). The point here is that Dick moved on and the “people” are still there, continuing the defamation.
More later.
Barry
