Recently I have had some success. I had commented on the Forum that I had a runaway problem with one locomotive which the recommended solutions did not solve. I had also had a problem with the lights of another locomotive, i.e., the front headlight came on at power-up and did not go out irrespective of the direction in which the locomotive was running. Both had Zimo MX632 chips which I had bought on-line from the U.K. I took the matter up directly with Zimo and, after an exchange of e-mail correspondence suggesting the known solutions and possible causes, they said that to be sure that the chips were at fault, the faults had to appear on a decoder tester. So I bought a tester and, to be sure, the faults appeared and then Zimo admitted that the chips might be at fault. I sent them to Vienna and in a fortnight I had them back reset and with updated software. The cost was about 20GBP. I reinstalled them in the locomotives and so far everything seems to be O.K. I must say that the correspondence with Zimo was very fluid, with immediate responses to my messages.

One of these locomotives was given to me about two years ago, but the other was purchased about 40 years ago and I intended to have it running chipped whatever the effort. I finally had it running with a rake of four coaches.

Apart from this, I have a lot of old Lima stock; some I know is around 40 years old and the rest is probably more than 30 years old.

As a result of information received from the web and other sources regarding tension lock couplers, I have replaced these on all the modern stock having NEM pockets, both OO and H0 scale models, with Kadees, with a notable improvement in performance.

However, the old Lima stock does not have pockets, but a rigid flat bar extending directly from the bogie. It occurred to me to consider the possibility of fitting Kadees to this stock, firstly to make all stock compatible and also to extend the versatility of the layout. It has only one double loop, going alternately over and under the bridge and passing through both stations, or two individual loops, which cross each other, with one missing out both stations and the other calls at only one station. The layout has, nevertheless, nine sidings which with Kadee couplers and some strategically placed decoupling magnets could provide much more scope for play.

So I removed the bogie from one of the coaches, cut off the original coupler and fitted a Kadee nº 5. I than coupled it to a modern Hornby coach and tried them on part of the layout having a slope, so that they could run free around the tight curves, which they did without any trouble.

However, I had placed the new coupler slightly farther out than it should be, so I removed the other bogie and fitted the coupler closer in. Since it seemed to work, to-day I have modified both bogies of another old H0 coach (Paris-Nice Mistral) and hooked it up behind a two Hornby Gresley coaches hauled by my City Class locomotive (another relic recovered as mentioned elsewhere) and they did various runs around the double loop without any trouble. I now have to test them in the other direction.

This situation has led me to consider whether the Lima locomotives could be modified because, in the negative case, there would be no point in modifying the coaches. However, it appears that both locomotives have sufficient space to take a Kadee gearbox. So I am going to have a closer look into the matter.

I hope you all have had a good Christmas and wish you a favourable New Year for modelling. I also hope that the York members have not suffered with the floods.