Hope renewed
Entry posted by petertg
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I have decided to add a new piece to my blog although, after reading all the blogs where people build all their own stuff I get the impression that, in football terms, you all are in the Premier League and I am low down in a half-holiday league (if such thing still exists).
However, being no angel, I will rush in. I want to update my DCC equipment but I can't make the investment until it is reasonably possible to play trains with what I have got and it seemed that the track was still full of surprises, nothing better to get my Hornby 2-6-4 Stanier Tank which has obstinately refused to work well and which, as mentioned in a previous post, Hornby told me that it was probably helping me to find track faults. Close investigation confirmed at least two conflictive spots: one, when running clockwise it at the end of a long downward incline ending in a curve and two consecutive sets of points, the second set curved, the other, also with clockwise running being at the end of an upward 180º curve ending in a set of points on the flat. Already last year I had softened the transition from ramp to flat because the front bogie of the tank engine was left hanging in the air when it got to the points but it still wasn't enough.
So, yesterday I set about solving the problems. It seemed that the derailing when entering the double set of points was due to a difference in rail height and placing shims under the underlay seemed to clear the problem there. The solution to the other problem seemed to make the upward ramp slightly steeper so that the locomotive could enter the points on the flat while the transition from ramp to flat was less acute. I pulled up the track (probably the fourth or fifth time this curve had been lifted) tested the ground with a spirit level and inserted a flat piece of cork where the curve ended and relaid the track to-day. This afternoon I have spent about four hours or more running the tank engine, I must have rerailed it more than twenty times what with one thing and another, finding that in spite of the shims it still derailed at the end of the downward curve. Finally a very close inspection revealed that when set one way, the points did not close properly because the point surface mounted motor was slightly out of place. At other points, where the thing was derailing the second time round, having passed the first time O.K., I came to the conclusion, correct or not, that on the first passage it was dislodging the spring clips used to communicate the insulfrog and the second time round it hit it. So, I removed the clip in two places, seemingly without any adverse result. The Stanier now seems to perform reasonably well (fingers crossed and touching wood), apart from stopping at times and refusing to start unless reinitiated.
Finally a photograph of a thing I have been after for over two years and finally obtained: a double deck bus, back loader, in Leeds City Transport livery, with the added incentive of being a model of a bus on which I had actually travelled in my youth.
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