My Hornby Networker came to me rather broken. I fixed it up with some needed spare parts, but it never really worked properly, needing continual assistance to get to the other end of my workbench, let alone running on an actual layout.
I gather that's not unique to mine -- they have a reputation. Mine might be a particularly bad example, or it might be typical. The entire unit is a high-friction mess, with every single axle having both pickups and a bad quality sleeve bearing on the axle. The
A while back I acquired a Hornby Class 50. It caused a dead short on DCC. It got put on the 'Locos needing attention' shelf, and promptly ignored for a few months.
Accurascale then announced a Class 50 -- but skipped this specific variant (TOPS pre-refurb) in their announcement. So I decided to see what was wrong with this one, and if it could be fixed...
There's a lot of pointless stuff on the circuit board which is not necessary with DCC, so I went through it, worked out what it
This Lima class 73 has received a (believed 6v) motor salvaged from a CD drive, a Scalextric drive pinion, and a DCC Concepts 8 pin socket harness. Plus a drive gear with 70% more teeth which means the rear axle is actually driven now.
It's a vastly different beast now. It picks up immediately, and runs much more quietly. This is despite the fact I still have work to do on it -- it could use a full set of pickups on the trailing bogie for a start, and it's still rolling on the orig
I seem to end up with a lot of other people's broken locos while I'm looking for eBay "Bargains". This slightly sad looking Bachmann Class 44 Peak is one such loco. When I got it, it had the wheels turning in opposite directions. I shot some video of why it was doing that, what parts it needed to fix it and how to fit them, and how it runs afterwards.
Years ago I picked up a load of Airfix Mk2D coaches on the cheap.
Being cheap, most of them were Brake Second Opens, and most of the rest were First Opens.
Many of them were also in poor condition. One turned out to have broken/missing bogies and gangways. There's a distinct lack of stepboards, buffers, and so on.
There are also shortcomings in the original Airfix representation -- such as the FO having 2+2 seating, but at the correct 7-bay pitch. It should be 2+1 for a proper FO...
