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Farish refurb Class 31


TomE
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33 minutes ago, Crompton Power said:

I certainly agree with jonas, runs really well and looks correct in my eyes. Again I couldn’t put my finger on it, I even dug out the 31 I resprayed into RF Grey many years back for a comparison.

I didn’t appreciate that the cab windows on the old version were too small, for its day it was a welcome addition from Farish.

 

image.jpeg.9f8a61bae1087abf3ab48107c9cfaf17.jpeg

image.jpeg.41b1d4410e71dd1f741bb9341b28dcc5.jpegRegards,

 

Keith.


That’s really interesting seeing the comparison between the two models, thanks for posting that.

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On 17/12/2020 at 17:32, Roy L S said:

 

Hi D9020 Nimbus

 

From what you say then (unless I have misunderstood in which case my apologies) almost all of the models you have had issues with are 9 years old or greater? I am not honestly sure how this informs any conclusion on the quality of modern models Farish such as the Class 40 and new chassis 31 or for that matter the many steam locos that have been produced since? The last Farish models I had a split gear problem on was one of my Peaks, and before that one of the first 66's and yes, the problem then was well reported and pretty bad, but that was a long while ago.

 

 

 

 

I have had two split gears on my four A2s, and two on my ONE Class 25/1.  The problem hasn't gone away.  From the same factory I sent back to Germany a Liliput railcar with a missing connection between the circuitboard and the pickups....

 

Then again I have worse than average luck with Farish.

 

 

Les

 

 

 

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On 17/12/2020 at 11:54, fezza said:

The good news is Kato and Dapol are  producing higher quality products at lower prices than Farish.


Kato’s foray into the UK N Gauge market is as yet unproven (although no reason to expect it won’t be successful) and the only Dapol model that comes anywhere close to the standard of recent Farish is the Class 68. The mechanism of the Class 50 is on a par, but it is let down by a body moulding riddled with basic shape errors. Nothing else in the Dapol catalogue is even close in terms of accuracy, finish, build quality or reliability, not in my experience anyway. 
 

I would say the only company really challenging Farish at the moment is Revolution. 
 

Anyway, back to the 31, and I am absolutely loving the sound fitted version! 
 

 

 

Tom. 

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13 hours ago, TomE said:


Kato’s foray into the UK N Gauge market is as yet unproven (although no reason to expect it won’t be successful) and the only Dapol model that comes anywhere close to the standard of recent Farish is the Class 68. The mechanism of the Class 50 is on a par, but it is let down by a body moulding riddled with basic shape errors. Nothing else in the Dapol catalogue is even close in terms of accuracy, finish, build quality or reliability, not in my experience anyway. 
 

I would say the only company really challenging Farish at the moment is Revolution. 
 

Anyway, back to the 31, and I am absolutely loving the sound fitted version! 
 

 

 

Tom. 


Mine arrived yesterday too. Much agreed, it’s excellent.

 

 

Tom - Do you have a link to your layout?

 

Nick

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3 minutes ago, Cowley 47521 said:

Tom - Do you have a link to your layout?


Hi Nick. 
 

Thread here

 

It hasn’t been updated for a little while, something I must rectify! 
 

Tom.

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21 hours ago, TomE said:

Nothing else in the Dapol catalogue is even close in terms of accuracy, finish, build quality or reliability, not in my experience anyway. 

I don't think Dapol locos get split gears. Farish do. So I think Dapol's reliability is better than Farish. I have only one Dapol loco that developed a fault (and was replaced by the shop) but umpteen Farish locos that have developed split gears. You must have either been very unlucky with Dapol, or very lucky with Farish!

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Whilst Dapol have largely managed to avoid split gear issues, their quality control tends to waver about all over the place, livery errors especially wrong fonts for numbering plus paint shades which are just plain wrong are all too frequent. 

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36 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

Whilst Dapol have largely managed to avoid split gear issues, their quality control tends to waver about all over the place, livery errors especially wrong fonts for numbering plus paint shades which are just plain wrong are all too frequent. 

Not to mention the amount of Dapol locos on the second hand market with burnt out lighting, the dodgy wiring , the loose DCC sockets etc etc...

 

I’ve found Farish almost bomb proof in comparison!

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7 minutes ago, jonas said:

Not to mention the amount of Dapol locos on the second hand market with burnt out lighting, the dodgy wiring , the loose DCC sockets etc etc...

 

I’ve found Farish almost bomb proof in comparison!

 

Would that I have- with a fleet of well over 150 locos there is little to choose between Dapol and Farish in terms of reliability.  I send the same number of Farish locos off for major repair as I do Dapol.  The issues are different but not fewer.

 

Les

 

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18 hours ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

I don't think Dapol locos get split gears. 

 

While far less common (not that it's very common on Farish now either) this is ultimately untrue - I've seen several Dapol 73s and 66s with split gears.

 

Farish have quietly moved to white nylon gearing in recent times - no comment or shouting about it, but I suspect this is the final act in ending the remaining split gear occurrences. All my most recent Farish diesels have white gears - I'd presume the 31s are the same.


Cheers,
Alan

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Is there any significance in the gears being white nylon rather than say black? I know delrin/acetal is mostly white, are they now that rather than another particular nylon mix. Or is it just to distinguish the older spec from the new when problems arise, and easily show whether the new suffer any issues or not as the case may be.

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20 hours ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

I don't think Dapol locos get split gears. Farish do. So I think Dapol's reliability is better than Farish. I have only one Dapol loco that developed a fault (and was replaced by the shop) but umpteen Farish locos that have developed split gears. You must have either been very unlucky with Dapol, or very lucky with Farish!

 

Not the case in my personal experience. I've owned perhaps 20 Dapol locomotives over the years, and in buying each and every one I've had to test run in shops through several models before finding one I was willing to take home. I've seen more than enough models fail on the shop test track before money has changed hands. And even then, several I deemed buyable have still ended in terminal failures while running in, let alone being released to exhibition service. Though if I'm honest, those which have survived to exhibition service have been very good. However my Farish count is over 40, and I haven't had one single Farish loco fail before going out on the road. And those which have failed have been easily repaired and returned to service as it has either been traction tyres giving up the ghost, split gears and two motor failures (both over 200 hours running, and one entirely my fault for overtightening mounting screws) which were easily replaced. The Dapol failures have been much more critical, being motor burnouts that have gone as far as to melt bodywork, smoke effects released from PCB failures, or out of sync gearing/quartering that has noodled flimsy valve gear, as well as irritating things like those silly tender connecting wires snapping or not being soldered properly in the first place. Then there is the basic design, Farish models are by and large relatively simple and logical to disassemble to get things repaired or replaced and back running. Dapol steamers in particular on the other hand with their convoluted Dave Jones monkey puzzles are quite something else to attempt a repair.

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23 hours ago, Crepello said:

That's a great job you've done there Marke. What was your method? 

Nice station too.

 

15 hours ago, montyburns56 said:

 

He ran it upside down and the headbox just fell off.

He used hair clippers, best method to effect a skinhead :D

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Thank you for the positive feedback. Regarding my method I can summarise it as follows:

- I removed all glazing including the perspex light guides that link to the roof mounted headcode boxes

- I then removed as much of the headcode boxes as possible with a sharp craft knife / files

- I used a square styrene section (plastic card from the Evergreen range) to fill the hole, roughly cut to shape before installing and secured with epoxy glue from the inside of the body shell

- I then further filed this to match the curve of the roof, and filled any small gaps using Deluxe Materials plastic putty.

- further filing to refine the shape to achieve the doomed roof end look of the skinhead 31s. 
- I used a separate section of filed plasticard to create the roof mounted horn enclosures. (In fact I made these by laminating two thinish sections, curving the sections over a curved file handle). More filler needed to get a neat finish after fixing these to the cab roofs.

- once I was happy with the roofs I masked off the rest of the body to leave the two cab roofs exposed and applied a spray undercoat (Tamiya Fine Surface Primer - grey). 
- after correcting obvious imperfections after applying the undercoat, I brush painted Precision Paints Pre 1985 BR blue which I found to be a pretty good match for the Farish BR blue.

- on the cab fronts I removed the mounded handrails and used 0.35 nickel silver to create separate handrails following the revised arrangement used on the Skinhead cabs. Precision paint BR warning yellow to touch up the front ends, again a reasonable (but not exact) match to the Farish yellow 

- the marker disc are from n-brass

- bespoke loco numbers from Railtec 

 

Hope this is clear. Will try to add a couple of photos ( and my apologies if any end up upside down - I can see no way to rotate the images even though they are the right way up in my photo library). 
 

Mark

 

 

0E2A1165-D048-472B-99F5-E6C56D0E8D14.jpeg

A62AF05D-7F41-44C6-B0EC-D2F145A0E714.jpeg

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Liking the skinhead mod above, great work - has anyone installed a driver in one of these 31s yet?  I took the bodyshell off the other day to install a sound chip and noticed the cab was sort of stuck into the top of the shell, wasn’t sure if this comes away easily to access the cab so thought I’d ask here before breaking something….

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