The Humble Hornby 0-4-0

[Pmorgancym]

With my Father in law having laid some track.  I thought I'd switch out his dcc system for my gaugemaster combi and run some of my stock thats spend far too long in boxes. 

Ranging from an ancient Bachmann 04 (an ok runner if slightly noisy after 20 years in a box) to a Hattons Barclay.   

However oddly the star runner was an Hornby 'Kelly's Paperworks' 0-4-0 that I got for subscribing  to BRM.   Slow speed almost as good as the Barclay but a longer wheel base so no stalling, these things have certainly come on since my first Smokey Joe.

[Steamport Southport]

Yep. I got one recently as the free Collectors Club model.

 

A little beauty. I'm thinking of getting one of those Christmas sets for my niece and nephew to put around the tree now.

 

 

 

Jason

[Chrisr40]

I think they changed the motor a few years back and now they are excellent runners, with warp speed optional as dictated by the user rather than default.

[30801]

35 minutes ago, Chrisr40 said:

I think they changed the motor a few years back and now they are excellent runners, with warp speed optional as dictated by the user rather than default.

 

They used to have an expensive looking motor, run at 300 mph and grind their gears into white powder.

 

Now they have a generic Chinese motor that must cost all of 4p but run really nicely.

Go figure.

[Ruffnut Thorston]

I think you will find that the gear ratio has also changed, to tame the “Scalextric” speed...stop or whooooosh!

 

 

 

 

[The Johnster]

They couldn't have made this chassis worse, and the various 0-4-0s probably account for half of Hornby's loco sales, though perhaps not so much amongst 'our' demographic.  Sadly, there is a lot of old stock out there and of course 'Bay is teeming with them, most of which will be the Scalextric chassis, and there is very little way to tell the difference by looking at the model.  The current production seems to be getting a reputation for quality and smooth running at low cost, but smaller driving wheels would improve matters further, both in terms of appearance and of slow control.

 

Many years ago, nearly sixty in fact, a friend had a Polly, or Connie, or Nellie (it was blue, whichever one that was) on his layout and my recollection of it was that it would go like a stabbed rat if you wanted but could still be controlled down to a reasonable and well behaved speed.  I always thought that this rather plain but robust and well made chassis had a lot more going for it than the later Scalextric 0-4-0s, and the driving wheels were a more likely size for this sort of loco as well.  

 

6 hours ago, 30801 said:

Now they have a generic Chinese motor that must cost all of 4p but run really nicely.

Pretty much all RTR is driven by generic Chinese motors that must cost all of 4p but run really nicely; they are engineering miracles and we are lucky to have the benefit of them.  I say this as a veteran of the late 70s and the 80s when all was plastic pancakes that intruded into cabs, with plastic spur gears that split and could be seen spinning around, and traction tyres to destroy any chance of decent pickup. 

 

The 'new wave' models of the late 70s changed the game in terms of scale, detail, finish, and visible daylight beneath boilers, but cab details on tank locos were still rare (IIRC Hornby's red liveried JInty was the first), and was only possible on some tender locos because of tender drive.  The plastic pancake was a common solution to the 'space under the boiler/cab detail' problem.  They were placed in fireboxes or tenders, and were pathetically weak cf an X04 or HD ringfield.  To get any sort of power out of them, they had to run very fast, which required spur gear trains to achieve acceptable slow running, though it didn't always, which induced friction, and traction tyres for haulage, which induced more friction and ruined pickup performance, especially as it often lifted the other current collecting wheelsets off the track.  While this era was the genesis of modern hi fi volume production RTR, it was not the hobby's finest hour; performance was sacrificed for detail, which I reckoned was the wrong way around.  A well performing loco to scale dimensions can be worked up, but a well detailed loco that performs so badly that a market for retrofit etched chassis kits has grown up will always be a well detailed loco that performs badly to those of us without the skill, or the tools, or the space to build retrofit etched chassis kits.

 

Where traditional open frame motors persisted, such as in Airfix's large prairie and the 14xx, and the Hornby generic 0-6-0s, better performances in terms of haulage and slow running could be found, but detail was compromised with boiler skirts and such.  We have the Chinese cheap as chips throwaway can motor, small, powerful, adaptable, smooth, and silent, adaptably driving through spur gears or worm and cogs, to thank for our modern hi-fi RTR models; it is not an exaggeration to call it the unsung hero of our modelling world.  Long may it survive!  Modellers with very large layouts that can run steam era expresses of 14 bogies at scale speeds or 60 wagon freights complain that it is not strong enough for this work, and it isn't, but this is of no matter to the huge majority of us.  An answer might be to use 2 motors in one loco; they are small enough to get 2 of them in most pacifics and large 4-6-0s.

 

To summarise, let's hear it for the 4p motor!

[DCB]

At 4p a throw one could use 6 motors in a class 37 and have real springing.  But no. They wont do it RTR and the gears would be probably £15 a throw so £90.16 to retrofit it.    The slow running may have come on a bit since 1959 but I believe the first Nellie/Polly/Connie had the TT single start worm. All mine were two start but Romford 30:1  40:1 etc gears are a straight swap making fitting Romforf wheels very easy.   The old Dock shunter was always a good slow runner with no coupling rod friction my first oine would really crawl, we are talking 1967 here.   However a K's 5 pole armature and Romford gears and wheels turned slow running into stupidly slow running.

The current plastic Hornby generic chassis may be OK but why the non see through wheels? Polly got see through spokes circa 1960 so why regress?   I tried to separate the tyre from the disc with little success and ended up with Romford wheels on a plastic chassis. Actually Romford flangeless with Marklin Tyres before I saw the light and binned the chassis in favour of a brass one

[The Johnster]

12 hours ago, DavidCBroad said:

 The old Dock shunter was always a good slow runner with no coupling rod frictio

Mine, recently acquired, still is, and I'm fussy about slow running!  I'm considering a Polly type chassis for it for appearance, possibly bodged into some sort of jackshaft drive.