Hi All

Since building the circuit of track and starting running trains I have had problems with derailments. Upon careful examination of the track I discovered that the alighnment of track section joints was not as good as I thought.

By running a train around, whist running in the locomotive I found that it derailed at a point, I then carefully examined the track near the site.

I found that small blobs of solder on the inside of the rails, this is much more critical when the track radius is sub 600mm radius. These blobs were removed by applying the soldering iron to the outside of the rail, and then by using a solder sucker to the inside of the rail when the solder was molten. The process of finding small problems with track and the rectifying them is called fettling.

I also had problems with electrical pickup on the aluminium allow runners of the removable cassette. When I closely examined the inside edge, I found that there was a bur. The locomotive wheel was only in contact with a strip less that 0,2mm wide. This problem was rectified by using a needle file to remove the bur and apply a small radius to the edge of the aluminium section.

The above processes took several hours but the time was very well spent as I can run a train around the circuit for one hour without any derailments, even on the very tight curves into the cassette fiddletyard. This has allowed me to run in the new 04 locomotive prior to insulating the DDC decoder. This is essential as doing so will invalidate the Farish warranty as the installation required that the locomotive is modified.

Lisa