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Farish refurb Class 31


TomE
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21 hours ago, meatloaf said:

Only other thing i wondered is the domino headcode light seems a little dim

 

It should be dim, they were only 60W incandescent bulbs behind opaque white discs, that wouldn't show up on a reasonably bright day.

Most model renditions are far too bright....

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On 12/12/2020 at 19:41, Izzy said:

 

Pity it didn't glue into place like other bits, oh hang on, on mine they keep falling off......sandboxes and footsteps on the bogies....Ah.

 

It does make the basis for a good model there is no doubt. The running quality is certainly superior to those that went before, none of the body wobbles the china versions had. I got fed up waiting for Farish to produce a Skinhead so....

 

Izzy

Yep, my BR Blue 31 from the previous run is a lovely runner and looks good but does like to shed detail bits from the bogies.

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I ought to know the answer to this but were there any significant external visual differences between the 31/1s and the 31/4s?  Could I get away with renumbering a Farish 31/1 into a 31/4?  (I realise there were some general oddities in the refurbished 31/1 class, doors welded up in different ways, bufferbeam cowling etc)

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You would have to use one of the early 31/4 numbers as some of them were dual heat. Later conversions had headlights. Depends on what time frame you want to model. 31401-424 were dual heat at some point without headlights and glass dominos as per 31131. The eth box was mounted just to the left of the right hand side buffer.  

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1 hour ago, fezza said:

I ought to know the answer to this but were there any significant external visual differences between the 31/1s and the 31/4s?  Could I get away with renumbering a Farish 31/1 into a 31/4? 

 

I was under the impression that most differences were internal. But probably best to get as many pics as you can of the actual loco you want to replicate/renumber to for the timeframe and base you model on that. There's always the possibility of some small unique external differences/fittings that you could easily add to match up.

 

 

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Out of interest, how does this model look under the shell? I've read some comments in places implying it has a coreless motor now, which I wonder if are really true, as that'd have been a bigger change than just adding the sound gubbins I'd have thought.

 

Cheers,

Alan

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12 minutes ago, Dr Al said:

Out of interest, how does this model look under the shell? I've read some comments in places implying it has a coreless motor now, which I wonder if are really true, as that'd have been a bigger change than just adding the sound gubbins I'd have thought.

 

Cheers,

Alan

Mine seems to have a English Electric 12SVT under the bonnet, certainly sounds like it.

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1 hour ago, Dr Al said:

Out of interest, how does this model look under the shell? I've read some comments in places implying it has a coreless motor now, which I wonder if are really true, as that'd have been a bigger change than just adding the sound gubbins I'd have thought.

 

Cheers,

Alan

 

Hi Alan,

 

The instruction sheet with the model specifies it having a coreless motor.

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

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46 minutes ago, Ben A said:

 

Hi Alan,

 

The instruction sheet with the model specifies it having a coreless motor.

 

cheers

 

Ben A.

 

 

Interesting - if anyone is fitting DCC or suchlike and has a moment to take a chassis exposed picture, that'd be very interesting to see what this generation of chassis look like.


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Alan

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8 minutes ago, Dr Al said:

 

 

Interesting - if anyone is fitting DCC or suchlike and has a moment to take a chassis exposed picture, that'd be very interesting to see what this generation of chassis look like.


Thanks,
Alan

 

 

Have a look in the review pic used here...

 

 

The motor is within the chassis block.

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The only problem I've found is that it seems to stumble a little on large radius insulfrog points when crawling. Pickups seem okay so not sure if the wheel gear casing is touching the diverging track (like the 47s did a while ago) or it is a back to back issue. Need to investigate more. 

 

General running is typical Farish. Two are perfect. One is a sticky for no obvious reason and may need to go back... the joys of mail order... 

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A strange one this for me. I had Railfreight grey on preorder and was genuinely excited to receive the model, only to be left feeling underwhelmed. I agree some of the front end detail is subtly moulded to the point of undernourishment - it doesn’t have the star quality of other newish Farish releases such as, say, the Class 40.

 

I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong - it certainly looks like a ped and runs beautifully. 

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2 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

 

Have a look in the review pic used here...

 

 

The motor is within the chassis block.

 

Very interesting, thanks Andy for the pointer.

 

Looks a much lower profile drive to get the DCC gubbins in, so I can well believe it to be a smaller diameter coreless motor. Interesting, one wonders if the class 14 will get the same motor change also.

 

Cheers,

Alan

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A quick note on price- RRP

 

Farish 31   RRP 149.95 analogue 264 sound

 

Hobbytrain DB diesel Vectron (nearest equivalent diesel) RRP 150 analogue, 245 sound

 

Farish have now caught up to the German prices......

 

Wasn't it said some time ago that Bachmann considered we were paying too little in the UK compared with Liliput?

 

Just A thought

 

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The good news is Kato and Dapol are  producing higher quality products at lower prices than Farish. Looking at all the unsold stock (especially £170  dmus and £42 coaches) the Farish price hikes are clearly unsustainable. 

 

I love 31s so I took the hit but I haven't otherwise bought much Farish at all this year. 

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1 hour ago, fezza said:

The good news is Kato and Dapol are  producing higher quality products at lower prices than Farish. Looking at all the unsold stock (especially £170  dmus and £42 coaches) the Farish price hikes are clearly unsustainable. 

 

I love 31s so I took the hit but I haven't otherwise bought much Farish at all this year. 

 

I respectfully disagree that Dapol products are anywhere close to, never mind of higher quality than Farish products. In my own personal experience speaking of locos, diesels may in some cases be close, but Dapol steam is now light years behind Farish, and all from old tooling. If you want a more relevant price comparison for steam, look at the RRP being shown for the Dapol BoB if we ever actually see it.

 

As to pricing, the Farish rolling stock we are seeing now is of the utmost quality, and taking Thompsons as an example I have no problem paying £35-£40 for models of that quality. Sure, the Dapol Gresleys are cheaper, but then the tooling is over 10 years old, and remember when they were launched RRP was £25 or a whopping (for the time) £35 for the buffet car!

 

Roy

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Of recent Dapol products, only the class 68 comes close to the Farish class 40 as far as being a state of the art combination of chassis design, DCC sound ready and body shell detail.

The 50 is a step below in my eyes - the headcode panel is poor compared to the Farish 31 for example.

The Dapol Gresley coaches were expensive when they first arrived, but their competition was the old solid body shell Farish Mk1. It's more interesting that the Dapol Maunsell coaches have managed to maintain a similar price point where as Farish have more than doubled in price.

 

I gave my Rail Freight grey Class 31 a test run last night. Slow speed running wasn't as good as I'd expected (Poole era trainset controller), but will hopefully improve when I fit a decoder. It was very smooth at mid-high speeds, and even at full speed was super quiet. I'm now half wishing I'd gone for the sound fitted version so a Legoman Biffo decoder might go on my shopping list next year!

 

I agree with the comments about the body shell. I don't think the new release, or the previous "blue-ribbon" version was actually that much of a step up from the old Poole era body shell - certainly not in the same way as the class 37 or 40 were. Fingers crossed for a Next18 sound ready chassis for the class 37 next!

 

Steven B.

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Interesting  - my RF grey is the worst performer of the three too - a batch issue. 

 

I suppose one can argue over detailing but the running qualities of my Dapol 52s and 50s are noticeably better than Farish 47s and 25s. The Farish 31s are generally good but there seem to be some rogue runners here too. Not great at the Farish prices now being charged... 

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IMHO, the problem with Farish is that they have fooled a lot of us in thinking "quality" is synonymous with detail. In my view, that simply isn't the case. Only the visible part of quality is achieved. The mechanisms are not "quality" as long as they remain prone to split gears. I have approximately 10 faulty Farish items with this issue — including two 24s, two of the previous 31s, a 158, 3 of the previous 20s and a B1. That's about £400+ if I get them all repaired — money that can't be spent on new items.

 

There doesn't appear to be a consensus on what exacerbates the problem. One of the 31s was itself a replacement for another one which had split gears on delivery. All I can tell is that all were purchased either in (the majority) or before 2011—a particularly cold winter. I've had no problems as yet with the current 20s or 31s (that is, the not the one just released but the non-sound ready Blue Riband model.)

 

I'm moving my N gauge interests largely over to European prototypes: they're no longer much dearer, and the quality of the mechanisms is better. Some even have properly machined metal gears. And they uncouple correctly over ramps too. Given what Farish are charging for locos nowadays, how much more would it cost to get properly machined metal gears instead of failure-prone plastic? I'd be prepared to pay more for a better quality mechanism but not for better detail on the "same old".

 

NB Previous = Chinese chassis, Poole era body tooling.

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13 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

IMHO, the problem with Farish is that they have fooled a lot of us in thinking "quality" is synonymous with detail. In my view, that simply isn't the case. Only the visible part of quality is achieved. The mechanisms are not "quality" as long as they remain prone to split gears. I have approximately 10 faulty Farish items with this issue — including two 24s, two of the previous 31s, a 158, 3 of the previous 20s and a B1. That's about £400+ if I get them all repaired — money that can't be spent on new items.

 

There doesn't appear to be a consensus on what exacerbates the problem. One of the 31s was itself a replacement for another one which had split gears on delivery. All I can tell is that all were purchased either in (the majority) or before 2011—a particularly cold winter. I've had no problems as yet with the current 20s or 31s (that is, the not the one just released but the non-sound ready Blue Riband model.)

 

I'm moving my N gauge interests largely over to European prototypes: they're no longer much dearer, and the quality of the mechanisms is better. Some even have properly machined metal gears. And they uncouple correctly over ramps too. Given what Farish are charging for locos nowadays, how much more would it cost to get properly machined metal gears instead of failure-prone plastic? I'd be prepared to pay more for a better quality mechanism but not for better detail on the "same old".

 

NB Previous = Chinese chassis, Poole era body tooling.

 

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.

 

Of the more modern diesel and steam locos I have never had a split gear, and in other respects I have had only a handful of issues including a couple of can motor failures (easily replaced) and a WD where a Gaugemaster chip blew and took the motor with it. In my experience failures of any kind with Farish locos are very rare and the more recent diesels, the later tender-drives and those with coreless motor loco-drive have very good mechanisms indeed, and perform just as well as they look. I am certainly not "fooled" by the detail, if they didn't run well I wouldn't buy them.

 

The recently released Farish 8F is a case in point, it exudes quality, and for the price is excellent value. Indeed, (and respecting your choice to change to continental models) how many continental steam locos have pre-fitted speakers and are Next 18 plug and play sound enabled for £144 discounted?? 

 

As to metal gears, it is a fallacy that metal are better than materials like Delryn, Nylon etc. The best combination is very often a brass worm and drive gears made of some such dissimilar material. Metal on metal, especially the same metal (e.g. brass) can often wear terribly. I had a Farish Duchess from way back when that had a brass worm completely worn away by the brass gear to the point where they would not mesh at all!

 

Regards

 

Roy

 

 

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On 16/12/2020 at 18:15, jonas said:

A strange one this for me. I had Railfreight grey on preorder and was genuinely excited to receive the model, only to be left feeling underwhelmed. I agree some of the front end detail is subtly moulded to the point of undernourishment - it doesn’t have the star quality of other newish Farish releases such as, say, the Class 40.

 

I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong - it certainly looks like a ped and runs beautifully. 

 

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On 16/12/2020 at 18:15, jonas said:

A strange one this for me. I had Railfreight grey on preorder and was genuinely excited to receive the model, only to be left feeling underwhelmed. I agree some of the front end detail is subtly moulded to the point of undernourishment - it doesn’t have the star quality of other newish Farish releases such as, say, the Class 40.

 

I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong - it certainly looks like a ped and runs beautifully. 

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.

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