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Bachmann Old Hall - not so Old Hat?

Silver Sidelines

Entry posted by Silver Sidelines

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After playing with the New Hornby Castle I decided it was time to give my elderly Bachmann Halls a fresh airing.

 

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When I returned to railway modelling back in 2007 I already had Castles and Warships from a previous 'life', but no Halls. This was just before Bachmann upgraded their Hall and at the time I acquired three BR variants off eBay (6969, 6990 and 7915). The plan was to use the Halls on four coach sets on my 'branch line'. However at 1in 50ish the branch line proved to be over steep and the haulage capabilities of the old Bachmann Hall was somewhat suspect. I had to adopt 'Plan B' - double head using small Prairie tanks.

 

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The track was still unballasted and it was an easy matter to move the Nylon rail joiners along the track and to create a suitable section break enabling the pilot engine to be uncoupled from the train engine at the top of graded section.

 

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More recently the layout was extended and the Halls can now be taken round the newly created continuous run. The gradients on the 'mainline' are still quite steep at around 1 in 56 and for one particular Hall (Mere Hall), four coaches were still a problem.

 

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I had already packed the front of the boiler with lead (carefully wrapped in paper or tape to prevent shorting across the split chassis). However the quantity of lead was small and did not offer any meaningful improvement in haulage capacity.

 

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It was time to turn my attention to those front bogie springs.

 

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These springs are easily removed and their removal seems to me to provide an instant increase in haulage power without any discernible degradation in running qualities.

 

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However not all the Bachmann springs were the same! The spring out of 7915 (Mere Hall) was twice as long (and strong) as the springs from the other two Halls, hence the inferior haulage capacity.

 

Problem solved, all three Halls will now haul four Bachmann Mk1s or Colletts up the branchline as originally planned.

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steve22

An informative article that will be of use to others, no doubt. Good close up photography too. Thanks for this.

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Silver Sidelines

An informative article that will be of use to others, no doubt. Good close up photography too. Thanks for this.

Steve, thanks for the encouragement. The Bachmann Halls have been around a long time and I did wonder whether I was going back over a topic that was already well publicised.

 

Ray

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