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New Hornby Rocket


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I received my R3810 pack yesterday courtesy of the big H.

 Mrs. 45568's reaction on seeing it was' you should get another to put on display!'.

 I have quickly tested it today and all seems to be fine. all in all an exquisite piece of model engineering. Thanks to the development and production teams at Hornby for delivering such a little marvel.

 I was tempted back in the day by the original 'Rocket' set, and have, over the years, kept an eye out on Ebay for a good example. I do not need to now.

Cheers from Oz,

Peter C.

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My Hornby Stephenson's Rocket train arrived today from Kernow Model Railway Centre. A quick test on DC showed it to be a bit of a rocket, but it worked fine. Then I set about finding a decoder for it. 

A DCC Concepts 6-pin wired harness decoder was tried and worked fine, but would not fit into the barrel. A rethink was in order. I had a Bachmann direct plug in 36-568 decoder (actually a rebadged Zimo) and I know these work rather nicely in other installations. This decoder has rather long and soft pins, so having tested it and established it worked nicely in Rocket, I very carefully bent the pins over into a 'U' shape, using a metal ruler and a flat file to keep the pins straight and parallel. This allowed me to plug it so it sat straight over the Hornby socket and pcb, becoming so compact that not only did it all fit back into the barrel, I was able to stow the blanking plug in there too so it doesn't get lost.

The first two photos hopefully show this more clearly than my words can. I know the tender is off the rails as I was trying to get a better angle for the decoder view. The third photo shows the whole train in service, after a lot of cursing while trying to couple it all up without accidentally uncoupling the previous vehicle at the same time. Shaky hands didn't help! I have made no attempt to make it a scene from Stephenson's time, with much more modern stuff in view. :D 

I hope this may help anyone who has had difficulty with selecting a suitable decoder for their 'Rocket'. It opens up the field a bit.

One other observation with mine: the stiff wires between loco and tender have a tendency to lift the leading tender wheels off the track. I'll have to see if I can come up with a reliable fix for that.

50139706707_017a009e3d_k.jpg
P_20200722_133733_vHDR_Auto by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr

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P_20200722_133810_vHDR_Auto by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr

50138928003_4baf21e488_k.jpg
P_20200722_141053_vHDR_Auto by Jeffrey Lynn, on Flickr

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42 minutes ago, Butler Henderson said:

Kernow have tweeted they are getting a further delivery of R3810s tomorrow. Presumably that goes for other stores as well.

 

I had an email earlier today, informing me that my replacement is now packed and in the post room.

 

Julian

 

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On 11/07/2020 at 14:48, Legend said:


Actually  you can run it on layout with these couplings . I ran it for quite a while with no uncoupling Issues . They are extremely frustrating getting them fitted in the first place but they do the job . I don’t think you are meant to be shunting with this loco. Taking it off the layout I ran it onto a spare section of track to avoid having to couple/uncouple again . The whole thing is now displayed in a bookcase still on the track! 

 

Indeed, the fitting of the couplings is pretty annoying! Once fitted, I tend not to unfit them if this can be avoided...

 

Cheers

Mark

 

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Hello everyone,

 

I feel a fool to have tried to ignore this model and restrain myself from purchasing it when it was announced, I just have to get one now. Can anybody let me know if it will fit in a standard OO Picture Pride display cabinet with glass shelves please, alternatively does anybody know whether it's taller than a Hornby A1 as mine just fits in with a centimetre to spare? - It won't dissuade me from getting one if it doesn't fit but I am curious to know especially considering I have a few weeks to wait before I can afford one!

 

Many thanks and kind regards,

 

Otis 

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1 hour ago, Otis JB said:

Can anybody let me know if it will fit in a standard OO Picture Pride display cabinet with glass shelves please, alternatively does anybody know whether it's taller than a Hornby A1 as mine just fits in with a centimetre to spare? 

 

I can tell you it's 60mm from the railhead to the top of the chimney crown. You'll have to work the answer out from that. 

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On 22/07/2020 at 19:11, Butler Henderson said:

Kernow have tweeted they are getting a further delivery of R3810s tomorrow. Presumably that goes for other stores as well.

Or maybe not. Noticed Gaugemaster had issued a refund for the one I returned so rang them and was told they are not expecting any more. Order duly placed with Kernow.

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18 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

I can tell you it's 60mm from the railhead to the top of the chimney crown. You'll have to work the answer out from that. 

 

Thanks a bunch Andy, it will fit with millimetres to spare!

 

Cheers,

 

Otis

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9 hours ago, Otis JB said:

 

Thanks a bunch Andy, it will fit with millimetres to spare!

 

Cheers,

 

Otis

 

Have a care, Otis, with only millimetres to spare, the back-blast down the chimbley might set fire to the driver's trousers!!

 

Julian

 

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1 hour ago, jcredfer said:

 

Have a care, Otis, with only millimetres to spare, the back-blast down the chimbley might set fire to the driver's trousers!!

 

Julian

 

 

Haha will do thanks Julian!

 

Otis

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On 29/07/2020 at 05:20, aaron3820 said:

So someone asked why I wanted to know how to take apart a Rocket. Well......

A few queries if thats okay

 

How did you remove the pins holding the coupling rods to the driving wheels?

Is it actually necessary to remove the driving wheels from the chassis to get the body off?

When the body fixing bolt was removed did the body then freely come off?

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I used a small pair of smooth needle nose pliers to loosen off the nut then threaded it off by hand when it was loose enough. 
 

You don’t need to remove the driving wheels but I found it easier to work with them out of the way. 
 

The body retaining bolt was actually just floating around freely, the threaded section in the body had actually cracked and broken apart. The body on mine came off fairly easily it must be said, I used the funnel very carefully to help rock the body front and back a bit to get some leverage. It helps if you remove the trailing axle. 

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Very carefully eased the Kernow supplied Rocket sufficiently out if its packaging enough so that I could couple up the tender and pushed a tiny length of wire insulation onto the tender coupling peg to keep it coupled. What a difference to handle, it's like holding Bachmanns Wickham Trolley rather than two parts that will uncouple with ease and then possibly snap the wires. Running round okay bar I had to ease the pick ups on the trailing wheels to get them to rotate.

Edited by Butler Henderson
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2 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

Very carefully eased the Kernow supplied Rocket sufficiently out if its packaging enough so that I could couple up the tender and pushed a tiny length of wire insulation onto the tender coupling peg to keep it coupled. What a difference to handle, it's like holding Bachmanns Wickham Trolley rather than two parts that will uncouple with ease and then possibly snap the wires. Running round okay bar I had to ease the pick ups on the trailing wheels to get them to rotate.

 

That's a very good idea BH.  I had mine from Kernow and it arrived with a disconnected wire ready installed.  Kernow were their normal first class selves and requested that the faulty model be returned and replaced it with a new one.  

 

If the packers find it difficult to pack without snapping one or more leads, quite how the recipients are meant to unpack it with nil experience is quite a question.  Your solution, applied at the manufacturer's stage would have saved many people disappointment from the customer view and a similar number of distributor replacements.

 

I will certainly adopt your solution before completely removing the model from the very tight packing.  Thank you BH

 

Julian 

 

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Turns out I have yet another faulty one, wrongly wired DCC socket to sort out. Was a novel experience seeing a loco running smoothly along the SPROG programming track. Decoder is okay, checked on the decoder tester, an ESU lokpilot micro with cabled 6 pin plug (ref 59826). Had to trim the length of the plug pins slightly, cut down the non plug leads and coiled the rest up on the water tank.

IMG_20200804_221054560~2.jpg

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7 hours ago, scumcat said:

Maybe that is what was wrong with mine, ran fine on dc, then fried 2 Hornby 6 pin decoders after that it wouldn’t run, I’m not experienced enough with dcc diagnostics to be able to know the problem. It has gone back to Hornby.

As there are no lights fitted the the top two terminals should have no wires connected to them. Not sure why that would cause yours not to run again (on DC with the blanking plug put back in I presume)

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8 hours ago, Butler Henderson said:

As there are no lights fitted the the top two terminals should have no wires connected to them. Not sure why that would cause yours not to run again (on DC with the blanking plug put back in I presume)

For pickups on the tender I believe

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, what a nice little model. Except when I ran mine for the first time today, it would only run backwards, as running it forwards means the motor doesn't engage with the gears. Will look through the thread to see if there are any other similar problems. Pity.

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2 hours ago, zoomer1979 said:

Well, what a nice little model. Except when I ran mine for the first time today, it would only run backwards, as running it forwards means the motor doesn't engage with the gears. Will look through the thread to see if there are any other similar problems. Pity.

The problem is the chassis has been subject to "design clever" and the gears between the motor worm and the gearwheel on the driving axle are loose on a metal rod that is held in place by diecast mouldings on the inside of the body. Body not fitted 100%  right or a faulty moulding on the inside of the body and meshing problems will arise. Despite my precautions on keeping the drawbar attached mine still suffered the broken wire issue and having decided their is plainly something seriously wrong with the design it is now completely knocked down. Assuming it goes back together as a working model rather than a boxed static which it seems a significant number are only suitable for I will post details of how to reassemble it along hopefully some improvements along the way.

Edited by Butler Henderson
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