At last - school hols are over! We have had a lovely time but has not left much room for playing with trains. So have eased myself back in and with surprising success. I started my original Hunslet 4-6-0 about two years ago and fairly quickly had myself a nice looking loco which ran very well - backwards! It would lock up solid going forwards. After much head scratching I did the obvious thing and popped it in the display cabinet for another day which (two years later), was today.

I suspected the gearbox - the usually very study Markits sort, so stripped this down and did a better job of shimming the idler gears. Eventually and with much bad language it all went back in with the shims in place. It then went forward but with the noise of a very angry bird coming from somewhere but still perfect backwards. i then started to get clever and ran just the chassis on the rolling road and used an old classic car trick and put the handle of a screw driver in my ear and prodded various bits of Hunslet. This picks up vibrations from a more specific area which in this case turned out to be the back of the motor. I started to get suspicious about the flywheel so ran a spot of oil down between it and the back of the motor and the difference was remarkable. What was happening was I had fixed the flywheel to close to the motor so when it went forwards the end float of the shaft tightened pulling it into the back of the case. A bit of attention with the 80 watt soldering iron soon softened the loctite and was able to slide it back a touch. It is now running beautifully in BOTH directions!

Guess I have to finish it off properly now - Fit couplings, fix coupling rods in place properly, touch up various bits of paint and sort out that very badly painted loco number. Fitting pick ups to the pony truck ought to be in there somewhere as well.

Here is a pick of it running happily on the rolling road. I was going to show one of just the chassis and the monster Mashima I have squeezed in but forgot and screwed the body back on. Am not pushing my luck with taking it apart again just yet!