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Hornby - New tooling - Ruston 48DS 0-4-0

Andy Y

By Andy Y,
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Hroth

Hroth

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1 hour ago, davknigh said:

How much does the Ruston weigh, please?

 

Cheers,

 

David

 

The prototype manufacturers factsheet was posted earlier in the thread.

 

On 07/01/2019 at 13:13, Ruston said:

Haulage capacities at the bottom. (click on pic for full size)

post-494-0-29090000-1546866705_thumb.jpeg

 

The model?  tens of grams, I'd suspect!

 

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SDJR7F88

SDJR7F88

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15 hours ago, No Decorum said:

Callum, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’ve done an outstanding job of showing off the loco’s capability. Tremendous slow control and very smooth. All I could spot were the wheels of the match truck seizing now and again. A bit of weight should sort that out. Hornby seems to have produced another winner.

Thanks ever so much! And glad the video was of help. Yes, spotted that when editing, maybe a load might help... Still can't believe how well this thing runs both with and without the wagon :)

once again many thanks 

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davknigh

davknigh

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Posted
13 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

The prototype manufacturers factsheet was posted earlier in the thread.

 

 

The model?  tens of grams, I'd suspect!

 

Sorry, I should have made it clear that I meant the model.

 

Cheers,

 

David

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JSModels

JSModels

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I bought one of these yesterday, and took it to the club this afternoon. Here are my initial thoughts/impressions:

 

The loco is really nice, and seems well put together. The detail and the livery look superb. The motor & gears, DCC socket, etc. are all contained under the bonnet, and don't intrude into the cab at all, which was surprising. It also weighs more than I was expecting, which is good. There were some huge blobs of white grease behind the wheels that needed removing, someone in the factory must've got carried away with the grease-gun!

 

The truck is another matter; it's quite basic in terms of detail. I think it's quite an old moulding (it doesn't have NEM pockets, but older-style couplings) and the pick-ups are pretty basic too (more on those later). It's also far too light to achieve decent pick-up.

 

My first job was to fit a DCC chip - what a %&*£ache that was!

 

The truck is attached to the loco with a rigid bar, not by couplings as on the photos I'd seen of the prototype/decorative samples. Not an issue for me, i think the bar is better, but it is rigidly fixed to the loco & only flexible at the truck end - may be an issue on very tight curves, but my shunting-puzzle layout is pretty much dead straight. A bit of a tug separates the coupling bar from both the truck and the loco, and the wires simply unplug too.

 

Getting the body off is achieved by undoing 4x screws on the underside, and is pretty straightforward, except that the two tiny 2-pin sockets for the wires to the truck project out slightly & foul on part of the body. In the box is an additional separate instruction sheet warning you about this, so someone obviously discovered this as an afterthought to the main instructions! The sockets are simply glued into place, but the bond on one of mine was broken, and the socket held in position by nothing more than the wires. The second one broke free as soon as I tried to get the body past it; if yours aren't hanging loose from the factory, they will be after you've taken the body off, as it's impossible to remove it with them glued in place. Oh, and there's a red blanking panel fitted in the coupling socket on the front of the loco - that needs to come out to get the body off, too. The 4x lifting eyes fitted around the lower body are easily bent during all of this, but they're metal rather than plastic & did bend back.

 

The supplied blanking chip is half the length of a standard 6-pin chip, and half the thickness. Replace that with a chip that's effectively 4x the size of the blank, and getting the body back on is a challenge to say the least. If the chip is not in exactly the right position the body just won't go back on. It took 5 or 6 attempts for me, and took out one of the sand-pipes in the process (though these do simply clip in place & re-fitting it was simple, once I'd retreived the tiny piece of black plastic from the dark-blue carpet!).

 

(FWIW, the chip I fitted was a Bachmann one I had floating about (one of the ones with the light blue shrink-tube on); the chip sits on top of the metal-bodied motor, so does need some form of insulation to stop it shorting out. It seems that Hornby's standard 6-pin chip has the plug on a flying lead, so the connector would be the only thing on top of the motor, and the chip itself would presumably tuck into the floor of the cab?)

 

Trying it out on the layout, I wasn't overly impressed. The track wasn't super-clean, but even so I expected better from 8-wheel pick-up. A quick inspection of the truck revealed the problem; of the four wheel pickups, NONE were actually touching the wheels!!! A few seconds work with a screwdriver & tweezers, and all four were making good contact.

 

That improved the running slightly, only now the rear axle of the truck was just dragging, and not rotating... A bit of weight on the truck sorted that out, and from then on the loco ran pretty much as expected.

 

I plan to replace the Bachmann chip with a better one, with a stay-alive (there's room for the stay-alive in the bottom of the cab). Hopefully I can then run the loco on it's own, without the truck - but if I need to keep the truck too, then so be it. It will just need some weight adding to it.

 

Ruston48ds_02.jpg.3555b0dd36a14afdf963f283f6e61045.jpg

 

Apologies for the lack of any other photos; I was so frustrated trying to get the body off, get the chip in, and the body back on, I never thought to take any!

 

JRB

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Invicta

Invicta

Posted
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4 hours ago, mikesndbs said:

 

Looks brilliant there mate, what was involved in getting the match truck separated? 

Haven't tried it with mine yet, but seems to be just a case of unplugging the power lead from the buffer beam and pulling out the rigid drawbar from the NEM socket to replace with a conventional coupling- it comes with a bag containing a pair of tension-locks for the loco, a spare for the wagon (which has the old Airfix/Dapol-style of clip rather than a NEM pocket) and a blanking plate for the loco buffer beam.

 

It's a lovely little thing- I'm very impressed!

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Invicta

Invicta

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27 minutes ago, jrb said:

 

The truck is another matter; it's quite basic in terms of detail. I think it's quite an old moulding (it doesn't have NEM pockets, but older-style couplings) and the pick-ups are pretty basic too (more on those later). It's also far too light to achieve decent pick-up.

 

 

 

It looks like it's the old Airfix/Dapol Conflat tooling, with the chassis doctored to mount the pickups

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Graham_Muz

Graham_Muz

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5 hours ago, mikesndbs said:

 

Looks brilliant there mate, what was involved in getting the match truck separated? 

 

As others have already said, it’s a fixed bar but simply pulls out of the NEM socket. The wire also simply unplug 

 

Little covers are also provided to fit the NEM socket to fill the gap in the buffer beam which is a nice touch. 

 

The loco runs very well without the match truck through all the trackwork on Canute Road Quay even the short radius points and inset track. 

 

Hornby have done an excellent job with this and is bound to be a winner! 

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34theletterbetweenB&D

34theletterbetweenB&D

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4 minutes ago, sb67 said:

 ...I wonder if a van body could replace the conflat?

Per 'Invicta' above it is easily identified as having its origins with Airfix GMR. There's certainly the five plank general merchandise open body that has the same clip fittings (again originated with Airfix GMR) and I think there's a BR standard 12T van body with the same clips in Hornby's range. But any 17'6" frame wagon body could just be glued on...

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PhilJ W

PhilJ W

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4 hours ago, Invicta said:

Haven't tried it with mine yet, but seems to be just a case of unplugging the power lead from the buffer beam and pulling out the rigid drawbar from the NEM socket to replace with a conventional coupling- it comes with a bag containing a pair of tension-locks for the loco, a spare for the wagon (which has the old Airfix/Dapol-style of clip rather than a NEM pocket) and a blanking plate for the loco buffer beam.

 

It's a lovely little thing- I'm very impressed!

 

3 hours ago, Invicta said:

 

It looks like it's the old Airfix/Dapol Conflat tooling, with the chassis doctored to mount the pickups

Thats a shame as I intend to fit Kaydees. Hopefully I can fit pick-ups to another wagon fitted with NEM pockets.

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