GWR Chris

On my 48XX I didn't need to remove the whistles to get in the cab. Unfortunately the cab was a bit stuck in place so I thought I did need to remove them; now they are going to need glueing or replacing. Hope that's helpful.

I am very pleased with mine. Digitrax DZ126IN after rediscovering the Digitrax on-line manual and setting CV 57 to 5, CV 55 to 100 and CV 56 to 30. I'm sure I can do better with some more trial and error, but it's now running sweetly and, of course, it looks the bees knees. I hope this is helpful to others. I should say that for a while I thought I'd got a dog, then I thought I'd better try it on DC (PP3 and two light bulbs in series!!) and it seemed to run smoothly. Never had this problem with Digitrax decoders on Hornby or Bachmann, so it would be nice if Hattons added a note about decoder settings, as suggested in an earlier post. I am an average modeller, who likes to add detail to make my models believeable; I'm very pleased with mine for less than £100 (especially as it's a present from her outdoors!) Chris

Hello, this is a very worthwhile topic. I made a number of mistakes when first assembling Slaters and Parkside wagon kits. These related to axle lengths and variations in the moulded underframes on the kits. One thing I learnt early is that different manufacturers use different axle lengths. The standard finescale OO wheelset is 26mm pin point to pin point (51L Wizard/Romford/Alan Gibson). Bachmann wheelsets are 25mm. I found the wheel diameter to be bigger than the standard 12mm too. Incidentally, Peco wheels are about 24mm and Ratio plastics about 27mm pin point to pin point. The kits generally assemble to be about right for 26mm wheelsets without adjustment (just the usual rubber band round the axle boxes while the glue sets). However some Slaters kits need the ends of the underframe pared down so the axle boxes are not too far apart. I find they need to be 23mm across the frames (ie back-to-back of the axle box plastic assembly). I didn't do this the first time and had the axle boxes leaning in at an alarming angle to meet the wheels! Not a success ... Looking forward to seeing some pics. Chris