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Class A3 4-6-2 in O Gauge from Hatton's


Hattons Dave
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20 minutes ago, atom3624 said:

I hate to say this, particularly in such a bold project, but the build quality and QC does seem a little inconsistent.

 

Al.


Agreed. 
I was thinking of buying one as a Showcase model but have completely changed my mind now.

The price maybe reasonable for an O gauge model but it is still a sizeable amount of money that I’m not prepared to risk.

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Interesting to see how many of you are haveing the same problems with your a3s I have looked at several of them and it is a tooling issue that leaves the marks on the smoke box and sum verry poor quality  control issue's  sum loocos even suffer from I'll fitting parts think Hatton and Heljan should take a good long look at what customers have to say would be great  to hear from Hatton to see what they have to say and any one noticed the a4 is missing the vertical hand rail 

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Re the Smokebox , is the plastic so soft that the broken off smoke deflector has dug into the plastic when it broke/bent over and dented the plastic at the same time ? . The marks appear in line with where the top edge of the deflector would have hit the smokebox. If yes, a very poor quality soft plastic has been used.

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The marks on the deflector version are tooling marks they are on 3 that I've seen only slight on my own tooling does not line up properly  and with all the things that are not correct so much for experts Hatton should have asked me no expert but a nerd on a3s how with all the photos and 60103 in preservation can they get it so wrong 

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I`ve tried to model the draincocks of early A3 versions and as I really don`t know why  Heljan didn`t construct a simpler solution to connect loco with tender but to use srews , I  soldered a pin to a small brass plate and srewed it on the loco and so , though it`s a bit fiddly, I needn`t use the srews anymore.

Rgds

Bernd

 

 

 

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37290233yo.jpg

 

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Just a heads up if any of you are getting an a4 from hattons spoke to them at nec 2day guess what when i sked where the vertical hand rail wos on the a4 the answer wos it wos over looked and its to late to put right not what you would expect for a major project come on hattons you can do better than this its a school boy mistake put it right wail you canand sort the paint job on mallard please for 750 don't wanna be messing around drilling and paying out for hand rail wire and hand rail knobs not every one can do this getting it right even if delayed a few more months would save negative comments

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May be time to recall the a3s as so many people are experiencing valve gear failers  not a good start for what should have been the best mass produced a3 on the market the a4 seems so far set to be the same its a shame when you look at them a bit more time and research would have done the job as look wise thay aint to bad

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My FS A3 so far. 
Never thought I would have to do so much to this loco. 
I agree with everything others have said. I have too many issues to list them all. Most have been resolved with paint, super glue, files, and sand paper. Shame just a little more care it could have been near perfect. 
The next issues are to do with fitting DCC and the running. 

Why did they not consult someone about DCC installations and future loco maintenance?

I still have problems with the rear truck and the motor worm gear also jamming over the drive cog at very slow speeds. Still that’s for tomorrow!

Some pics attached of progress. Note on the pic my cab gauges are not screen printed properly   I have since added some printed ones
I am not convinced that I will be picking up my A4. 
Rgds Brian


 

E9CAC57E-8541-49FE-A437-50F77DD949A8.jpeg

FD6F8343-52AB-465B-842B-180EB65EC712.jpeg

CFAFC69C-53A3-459A-A8A4-BC472B339F28.jpeg

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Considering that Hattons Dave stated the blogs off ,one would expect him to take on board what's being said before production started .I read lots of comments on fb and lots of people pointed out inaccuracies. Did the read what we all put .I think this is a valid point.

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Jay thanks for your kind remarks. 
I have done a few fire boxes in my time some in brass. It’s a bit nerve racking but worth it. 
I just remove as much from the fire box hole as possible using drills starting with a row of small holes and moving progressively on to larger ones. I then finish off with small files of various shapes. For the A3 I made a Plasticard flap with a brass rod to look like a pivot. This was then stuck on in the open position and painted black. 
The A3 cab is easily removed by undoing the 3 screws. I usually make a small light tight Plasticard box representing the fire hole which is not necessary on the A3.  I then fit a small block of a particular type of packing foam I came across by accident When torn rather than cut it gives a very realistic coal effect. The LED is simply pushed into it  
I hope the attached picture helps identify the type. The fire box flap is one that got away and turned up after I made another!

025CB953-2E5F-489E-AAF8-9F7826370220.jpeg.d51abca790330cbb1b040d735e74bd73.jpeg

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Hi guys,

 

Following some discussion about the A4s on the thread recently, I just wanted to clarify a couple of issues.

 

Some of you have identified a missing handrail on the Class A4. This is indeed missing but unfortunately it is too late to rectify this on the production models.

 

Other issues have been raised such as boiler seams and running issues with the valve gear. I want to assure you that this a not a project-wide issue and isolated cases such as those will be dealt with by our returns department, which you can get in touch with on info@hattons.co.uk.

 

Cheers,

Dave

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18 hours ago, jay*bobble said:

Considering that Hattons Dave stated the blogs off ,one would expect him to take on board what's being said before production started .I read lots of comments on fb and lots of people pointed out inaccuracies. Did the read what we all put .I think this is a valid point.

 

If you mean "Did they read what we all put" (Autocorrect seems to be garbling your posts) then the problem is likely to be that if you wait until everyone on the Internet is happy, the model will never be produced as there will always be another "Can you just..." moment. Every model is a balance between perfection and price.

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More on my A3. 

I finally got to the stage of running and setting up the DCC.

SWD never got back to me regarding the ESU chip and software so I used my preferred chip and software from Digitrains namely Zimo and Paul Chetter sound. Which is working well at the moment. I may treat it to a boom box speaker. 

I had problems initially with derailment caused BT the trailing truck arrangement. I sorted  mine out by cutting 2 coils off the spring and limiting the side play by putting a brass spacer either side of the truck. See attached pic. 

The tender is unbelievably heavy and the electrical pickups scrape like rusty disk brakes. When they actually touch the wheels, which they don't always!

With this system some of my pickups were pushing the wheel to one side and onto the plastic chassis side.

Effectively the loco was dragging a brick around!

I have removed all the gubbins from the tender and just added a small weight. I could fit some sensible pickups but they are not necessary as those on the loco are doing an adequate job, especially with the extreme weight of the loco. 

Picture of my chassis as tested attached. 

The loco travels backwards and forwards at speed through Peco points, double slips, Marcway scissor crossing and three way points. 

Incidentally despite the large current hungry motor this is the only loco I have which will not give wheel slip. Either under DCC with maximum gain or DC. In my opinion it is too heavy. Wheel slip can be a safety feature if a loco is caught up some where unnoticed. 

I hope some one at Hattons finds my rambling more important than a couple of handrails and food for thought when designing in the future.

 

Rgds Brian

image.jpeg.fdeda57d0882fe14488663d5b0f406e3.jpeg

image.jpeg

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On 25/11/2019 at 23:19, BRIBRI said:

More on my A3. 

I finally got to the stage of running and setting up the DCC.

SWD never got back to me regarding the ESU chip and software so I used my preferred chip and software from Digitrains namely Zimo and Paul Chetter sound. Which is working well at the moment. I may treat it to a boom box speaker. 

I had problems initially with derailment caused BT the trailing truck arrangement. I sorted  mine out by cutting 2 coils off the spring and limiting the side play by putting a brass spacer either side of the truck. See attached pic. 

The tender is unbelievably heavy and the electrical pickups scrape like rusty disk brakes. When they actually touch the wheels, which they don't always!

With this system some of my pickups were pushing the wheel to one side and onto the plastic chassis side.

Effectively the loco was dragging a brick around!

I have removed all the gubbins from the tender and just added a small weight. I could fit some sensible pickups but they are not necessary as those on the loco are doing an adequate job, especially with the extreme weight of the loco. 

Picture of my chassis as tested attached. 

The loco travels backwards and forwards at speed through Peco points, double slips, Marcway scissor crossing and three way points. 

Incidentally despite the large current hungry motor this is the only loco I have which will not give wheel slip. Either under DCC with maximum gain or DC. In my opinion it is too heavy. Wheel slip can be a safety feature if a loco is caught up some where unnoticed. 

I hope some one at Hattons finds my rambling more important than a couple of handrails and food for thought when designing in the future.

 

Rgds Brian

image.jpeg.fdeda57d0882fe14488663d5b0f406e3.jpeg

image.jpeg

 

Hi Brian ,

I`d like to know, as I use a Zimo decoder too,  concerning "running and setting up DCC", which values you chose for CVs 2, 3, 9 , and 56 ! 

Rgds

Bernd

 

 

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Hi Bernd

My settings for these CV are:-

2 = 10

3 = 10

9 = 0 *

56 = 55


* I use Decoder Pro for my Zymo CV,s

 

PWM is set to 40 MHz. 
Decoder Pro states  40mhz active if CV 9 = 0 (CV112 Bit 5)

Not sure how that fits in with the Zimo documentation. But it works well and came in my Zimo by default.  
Rgds 

Brian

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