Roxey Mouldings S7 3ft 7in Carriage Wheelsets

Rob Thompson (photo by the author)

At the Reading Trade Show early in December last I noticed, to my surprise, on the Roxey Mouldings stand a box labelled ScaleSeven Wheels. In it I found a number of packs of 3ft 7in Disc Coach Wheels, each pack containing two axles plus bearings priced at £14 per pack.

The ScaleSeven Committee had been discussing with Dave Hammersley of Roxey for some time about the possibility of producing ScaleSeven wheels similar to their Finescale wheels but it had been under the impression that nothing was likely to happen. However, on talking with Dave, it transpired that his supplier had decided to produce a limited run of these coach wheels as a trial mainly using the information from the S7 Wheel and Tyre Standards.

 

I decided to purchase a pack of wheels to do a review of them both for my own benefit, to advertise them to the ScaleSeven Group and as an encouragement to a new manufacturer of S7 supplies.

These wheelsets are all turned steel, including the axle, with plastic insulation inserts between the axle and each wheel. On my layout both wheelsets individually showed excellent rollability, a very gentle push encouraging the wheelset to roll about 10 feet through both a three-throw point and a double slip. The concentricity of the wheels was very good and they are of a nice weight which gives the impression that they will add something to coaches fitted with them.

I also tried them out as replacements for some Mansell wheelsets in a 4-wheel coach under construction and again the running was true but was slightly more free when running in a set of bearings from Slaters than when in their own, but they had not been lubricated.

These wheels are provided with their own bearings which are externally longer and of different external and internal diameter to those available from other manufacturers. This is not a problem but I suspect there may need to be care fitting them into some axle boxes.

Finally I subjected them to a measurement test using an electronic caliper and as a comparison I also measured a Slater’s Mansell wheelset straight from a new pack. The results from this can be seen in the table below:

	S7 Standard Dimensions	Roxey 3ft 7in Coach Wheel	Slater’s 3ft 7-1/2in Mansell Wheel
Wheel Diameter		24.95mm (= 3ft 6-3/4in)	25.35mm (= 3ft 7-1/2in)
Tyre width (coach)	2.90–3.00mm	2.94mm (ave)	2.97mm (ave)
Flange depth	0.66mm	0.69mm (ave)	0.82mm (ave)
Back to Back	31.20–31.30mm	31.21mm (ave)	30.92mm (ave)
Axle length	—	48.10mm	47.75mm
Axle diameter	—	4.72mm	3.11mm
Stub Axle length	—	5.32mm	5.61mm
Stub Axle diameter	—	1.88mm	1.70mm
Bearing length	—	5.05mm	4.80mm
Bearing o/s dia	—	2.43mm	2.54mm

 

Conclusion

These are a very good wheelset, accurately manufactured, and will serve their purpose very well. As to the key S7 standards they proved to be slightly more accurate than the Slaters set I measured. I can recommend them although they are, in my opinion, a little on the expensive side.

 

 

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