Revitalizing Wrenn locos.

[pacerfan]

Do you have working Hornby (Binns Road) re-magnetiser? and have you ever found the spec, or circuit, they used.(there once was a full handbook with them, but Hamblings had lost theirs in the move from number 10 Cecil court to number 22..!..)

 

 

I worked at Hamblings, who had one, but it was riveted closed, and un-openable, so without a circuit I never found the coil details or the value of the capacitor.used.

 

Mention was made of a coil of 20,000 turns, and a capacitor of 20,000 micro farads, very large for the 1950's. Another electronics expert said there were two coils, one discharged into another like an Tesla coil in reverse, to create a huge current for a moment, but I am still in the dark as to how the massive pulse was made.

 

I was told that Mr Graham Farish designed and built the unit for Hornby, as he had a radio spares factory at Bromley and had made magnetisers for Lowther Loudspeakers, who were nearby, and these magnetised liquid Alnico as it was cast, resulting in "super magnets" for the 1940'50 period.

 

 

I did build my own unit based on a coil from a radar set and modern capacitors discharging, but the field is nowhere as good as the factory unit, and some idea of what they used would be useful, even after all these years, mainly as a matter of curiosity.

See this thread for schematic of Meccano remagnetiser: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/118104-re-magnetisation/