Very Cool Clockwork Video

That is very cool!  Made me smile.  Thanks!

Love the Engine and the music.

Many thanks,

Billy C

Very nice.

High-speed rail!

It always amazes me how these little guys can whip around a tight layout and not come off the track.  Pretty high center of gravity with that cast iron boiler, but they sure can hang in there on the curves.  Comical.

I see my latest project has surfaced... 

Thanks to all for the kind comments.  Gary, I appreciate the additional insight on the Flyers; I really do need to buy some books and further my knowledge about the variations and types.  Always good to learn something new!

To give a little background on this AF, I recently bought a small group of locomotives from a gentlemen (who had a wonderful story about how he acquired them... but I'll save that for another time).  The group included a couple of Ives locos and the AF with a badly broken body.  The Ives were the first to make it on the rails, but I needed a body for the Flyer motor.  I found this body for a fair price, and although I knew the motor wasn't correct, it would fit.  Since the body was rusty with a broken coupler stud and the motor wasn't correct, I decided to add a little extra gold trim to further customize it.  The resulting locomotive is a nice runner for the railroad when paired with a #120 tender.

So there you have it, the final loco project from the "Andy's Ives" exhibit in my collection.  Now, I just need to get started on building the new shelf to display them...

Is there any speed regulation in a clock work locomotive?

Yes, nearly all of them have a governor of some sort.  A windup loco without a governor will run amazingly fast.  Most have a variation of a centrifugal governor, where a spring loaded weight moves outward and starts dragging on a drum to keep the locomotive from exceeding a certain speed.  The majority aren't intended to be adjustable, although some British clockworks (referred to as "Controlled Clockwork") had adjustable governors.  Some of the cheaper American Flyer locomotives used a crude escapement, but they aren't nearly as effective as a centrifugal governor.

A Marx centrifugal governor retrofitted into an Ives motor:

An American Flyer escapement in the lower right corner of the motor:

Finally, a governor out of a Walker-Fenn controlled clockwork locomotive:

Thanks.  That was very interesting.