Hi Marc,
I have an Agenoria (now part of the EDM range) Penrhyn 'Port' class and a Penrhyn 'Large Quarry' class, both of these in real life have a 4ft wheel base, the Alice class has a 3ft 3in wheel base. I have a small quarry layout in O14 which has curves with a radius of 250mm and the little 0-4-0's navigate these with no problem although I've had to employ some gauge widening. The biggest issue is that these little Hunslets had quite a long overhang, overall lengths for these locos was 13ft for the Alice class and 13ft 10in for the Penrhyn loco's, which poses a problem for coupling. Slate wagons and waste wagons tend to have very little overhang which means on tight curves your couplings must have enough side to side movement to accommodate the difference in overhang. The Penryhn used a centre buffer whereas the Dinorwic Quarry used dumb buffers on their loco's which provides an even bigger challenge especially when propelling stock due to potential buffer lock on curves, especially reverse curves. Being 0-4-0's and having a relatively short wheel base means these little loco's will navigate around perhaps unprototypically tight curves, I think the real issue is how to couple your loco's to your stock.?
Regards,
Mark.
