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How long should model railway stuff last?


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I must confess to disliking modern museums and their "interactive interpretive experience" type ethos. However, I also have to accept that I'm not a large sample of the potential museum going public and that without visitors, and therefore funding, we're more likely than not to end up with no museums. 

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Triang and Hornby-Dublo designed their locomotives to be easily maintainable.  Triang started out in the days of post-War austerity, when families could not afford 'throwaway' toys, so they were made so that father could get the spares and fix issues easily, or failing that there was the large service dealer network. The X04 motor will keep going almost indefinitely with an occasional service and change of brushes when required.

 

I was somewhat shocked a few years ago when I purchased a Hornby 2721 Pannier tank and read in the service sheet that the motor brushes could not be replaced and a new motor was required after 100 hours' running!

 

Even the 101/Smokey Joe was a step backwards from its predecessor 'Nellie' in the longevity stakes - 'Nellie' had metal gears and a metal chassis. A decade or so ago my 101 stripped its drive gear (albeit after two decades of service), and my father was quite taken aback by how flimsy the chassis was compared with Nellie's.

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4 hours ago, railroadbill said:

I also used to like the Science Museum marine gallery, with it's excellent model collection. I have a feeling there was the bridge of a ship as well with wheel, engine room telegraph and so on. I believe they redeveloped that gallery to replace it with the computer section (which is actually very well done). Liked that when I went there several years ago.

There is an off-site store for the Science Museum at Wroughton Airfield in Wiltshire. There are a lot of exhibits held there, particularly ones that are too big to display in a London museum, such as a Lockheed Constellation and a D-H Trident, among others.  They used (and may still do, pre covid-19) to have open days, managed to go there once. Well worth a visit. probable the boat models have found their way there.

Exhibited there with my old club once, amazing place, well worth a visit.  We were given seats from the UK prototype Concorde to sit on!  Staff looked after us brilliantly and it was, all in all, a Grand Day Out.  I got to sit in the cockpit of the first commercial hovercraft, SRN1.

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3 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

Triang and Hornby-Dublo designed their locomotives to be easily maintainable.  Triang started out in the days of post-War austerity, when families could not afford 'throwaway' toys, so they were made so that father could get the spares and fix issues easily, or failing that there was the large service dealer network. The X04 motor will keep going almost indefinitely with an occasional service and change of brushes when required.

 

I was somewhat shocked a few years ago when I purchased a Hornby 2721 Pannier tank and read in the service sheet that the motor brushes could not be replaced and a new motor was required after 100 hours' running!

 

Even the 101/Smokey Joe was a step backwards from its predecessor 'Nellie' in the longevity stakes - 'Nellie' had metal gears and a metal chassis. A decade or so ago my 101 stripped its drive gear (albeit after two decades of service), and my father was quite taken aback by how flimsy the chassis was compared with Nellie's.

But the flimsy chassis of Smokey Joe etc, is entirely due to the likes of Hornby, who from the mid 1970s had to compete with the Airfix/Mainline stuff, made much cheaper in Asian factories.

 

In the end, they had to join them, by transferring manufacturing to China. Fact is, most people will opt for a cheaper product, if no difference is readily apparent. If it happens to look/perform better - it's all over.

 

It's actually a repeat of what happened of Hornby Dublo vs. Tri-ang - Tri-ang won on price and the Meccano company weren't there on quality control in the end.

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6 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

I was somewhat shocked a few years ago when I purchased a Hornby 2721 Pannier tank and read in the service sheet that the motor brushes could not be replaced and a new motor was required after 100 hours' running!

 

 

I think Hornby are being a bit conservative there. I have a J52 (same chassis) whose instructions reckon a 50 hour motor life. Due to some use in a shop window display, I reckon it's done at least 300 (actually moving) and still works reliably, although I suspect the brushes are a bit thin now. Whilst I'm not keen on something so throwaway, as motors were about 6-7 quid last time I looked, I'm finding it hard to get upset about it in practice. I'm not sure what the going rate is for X04 brushes, but here in Oz, once postage has been added, I doubt if there's really that much in it.

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8 hours ago, PatB said:

 

I must confess to disliking modern museums and their "interactive interpretive experience" type ethos.

 

 

I can see what you mean, but this helps them to fulfil an educational role as well (and for science or industrial museums this is often STEM education, so interactive ‘experiment’ exhibits are good). Perhaps if public museums were funded better (as you mentioned) this wouldn’t have become an issue...

 

As an aside, I notice that some of the recent additions to the NRM’s displays also seem to do a good job of explaining the historical background of the related exhibits (even though the NRM is in the Science Museum Group and this could potentially be seen as a secondary focus) but for some visitors I’m not sure they are as engaging as some of the ‘interactive science’ type exhibits.

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43 minutes ago, PatB said:

I think Hornby are being a bit conservative there. I have a J52 (same chassis) whose instructions reckon a 50 hour motor life.

 

Interesting. Because I would think 50 hours running at a reasonable speed and with proper maintenance and lubrication would be very different from 50 hours of no maintenance, running at a slow crawl on poorly-laid dirty track. So I’m wondering whether they’ve just assumed a worst-case scenario so nobody who buys one can claim it does less.

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The locomotives on Buckingham date back to 1946 for the earliest and the most recent ones are around 50 years old. They all run regularly, with two running sessions a week, pre Covid. They still get run but not as often.

 

A few motors have failed and been replaced but otherwise, they all have their original frames, wheels etc.

 

Some of them have huge amounts of wear in the bearings and coupling rods and I have had to replace the coupling rods on one.

 

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, t-b-g said:

Some of them have huge amounts of wear in the bearings and coupling rods and I have had to replace the coupling rods on one.

In some ways it makes them even more like the real thing :) 

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12 hours ago, Paul H Vigor said:

Must say, having been raised on it, I like earlier electric motor 'noise'! These modern locos remind me of that moment in classic westerns when someone says: "It's TOO quiet!" ;) 


I love the smell of ozone in the morning! Another feature of early motors.....

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21 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Yes, pre-plastic-age things last exceedingly well if not exposed to the damp.


Early permanent magnet motors are problematic, but wound-field motors generally survive well. Some early Mazak castings suffer, but many don’t.

 

Best survivors seem to be high-quality clockwork locos with painted, rather than lithographed, tin bodies, and good-quality lithographed tin rolling stock. There are plenty of these still going strong after more than a century with only very basic maintenance.

 

Sometimes, I run my layout entirely with trains made in the 1950s, and I know guys who run theirs entirely with 1920s or 1930s stuff, and one or two guys who won’t run anything made after the First World War.

 

But, things t unused and un-maintained do need coaxing, usually cleaning and re-lubrication. It is far better to use old crocks, not too often, and always carefully, but use rather than simply store.

 


 

 

 

Ah the Helly 47 banana debacle - poor QC - I still have nightmares.

 

Dust to Dust.

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3 minutes ago, Crisis Rail said:

copious amounts of WD-40. 

Most of which is trying to overcome the effects of the previous application! ;) 

Dreadful stuff for models but brilliant for what it was designed for. 

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The full-on nasal experience is only available when they are lubricated with traditional mineral oils and greases, which unfortunately are usually “shot”, no good as lubricants, and have to be cleaned away.

 

I wonder if you can buy an “essential oil” made from these things, with a bit of powdered graphite and paxolin in it, to go in those fancy oil-warmer thingies.

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Most of the stuff from the 1970’s has been superceded anyway.

 

The “100 hours” motor rarely made it that far, i’d wager much of it was in the bin before 100 hours was up. Whats left makes cheap pickings on ebay, with enough supply of cheap bits to out last the generation that uses them, at which point it wont matter.

 

1980’s Lima, Hornby etc is so standard It will supply the second hand market to suit for years.


The model's that made that supercede them are interesting, in that breakage, cheap quality, lack of easily repairable parts and overall smaller volumes produced will see them deteriorate and spares run out long before their 1970’s-2000 counter parts... Take ViTrains... there are very few parts out there, and not many knackers to feast off... DJ Models could end up the same way... All these “made to order” commissions of limited volumes, or duplicated toolings... what will these look like in 2 decades time ?.. Now who’s betting on a new tooled Class 71, P2, O4, Dukedog, D600, USA tank, GT3 etc in 20 years to supercede them ?

 

 

 

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13 hours ago, melmerby said:

Just compare the "Thinktank" to the old Science Museum in Newhall St. (the only computer was a fox and goose machine made out of telephony parts.)

Chalk and cheese museums for a different age.

I used to regularly visit the old site and was fascinated by some of the exhibits. Most aren't in the new place.

I have been to Think Tank once, I wasn't impressed, there was IMHO only one really good exhibit (Guess:jester:) plus a few other reasonable ones.

They even gave away the Orchestrion that used to play in the old place, the Watt engine doesn't pump canal water around anymore etc.

 

I thought Think Tank was OK- it's the only place I've seen a functioning mercury arc rectifier, but I never visited the previous museum. You just have to ignore some of the dumbed down kiddie focused stuff. It's much better than the Riverside museum in Glasgow - again good exhibits, but a museum is targeted at thick 6 year olds with a 2 second attention span. 

 

For a really good museum, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh is worth a visit. That has some pretty good locomotive models, including a huge sectioned model of a ''Abbotsford' class 4-4-0. 

 

21 hours ago, Phil Parker said:

The Science Museum used to have a huge gallery of model boats but every time I went in it, I was alone. That's a lot of space in central London for one person to wander around looking at display cases.

This is true of all museums though. If you visit the British Museum, there will be huge crowds in the Egyptian galleries and the Elgin Marbles, and you can't get near the Rosetta stone. But the Assyrian galleries next door will be almost empty (even though they are much more interesting, in my opinion) and you can have the Benin bronzes all to yourself. A lot of museum visitors seem to be in and out quickly, looking at the 'big name' stuff and then moving on, but I can't see the British Museum getting rid of stuff just because coach parties don't look at it. 

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16 hours ago, railroadbill said:

I also used to like the Science Museum marine gallery, with it's excellent model collection. I have a feeling there was the bridge of a ship as well with wheel, engine room telegraph and so on. I believe they redeveloped that gallery to replace it with the computer section (which is actually very well done). Liked that when I went there several years ago.

There is an off-site store for the Science Museum at Wroughton Airfield in Wiltshire. There are a lot of exhibits held there, particularly ones that are too big to display in a London museum, such as a Lockheed Constellation and a D-H Trident, among others.  They used (and may still do, pre covid-19) to have open days, managed to go there once. Well worth a visit. probable the boat models have found their way there.

 

What I loved about the Science Museum in the old days was its railway signalling exhibits.  No longer of interest to youngsters it seems, but fortunately John Jolly rescued them for the Mangapps Farm museum.  Well worth a visit although it closed because of Covid, reopened for a couple of months but is closed again at present.

 

Afraid today's Science Museum doesn't interest me, but I have been told it's me that belongs in a museum ...  and I do have a photo of myself at Didcot Railway Centre standing by an entrance door above which is a sign reading "Display of Relics".

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I think it's either time to return to the original topic, or lock the thread.

 

If you want to start a "Why modern museums are rubbish and it was better in the old days thread" that's fine, but let's keep this one on topic.

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15 hours ago, PatB said:

I suspect that much of the alleged poor slow running of old Dublo etc. is more a function of the controllers they're typically used with than any inherent issues with their mechs. After all, they've plenty of weight and the motor designs, while limited by all being 3-pole, are not terrible. Clean, properly lubricated and adjusted, and powered from something that's not an ancient resistance controller (even a basic, Darlington pair job is better) they should be capable of useable low speed, if not the "1hour to cover a yard" that some more sophisticated mechs can achieve. 

 

A problem with modern products seems to be that, even if you expect to replace components over time, and are capable of doing so, spares are harder, or indeed impossible, to get, and difficult to improvise. 

I've found with H-D 3 rail that the locos do run better (at slow speeds, more controllable) with H&M controllers than the original HD one that I've still got.  Cleaned track and wheels, , oiled, and all goes nice and smoothly. 

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1 hour ago, brian777999 said:

Perhaps somebody could manufacture a small black box ''ozone generator"  to be placed under our layouts ? I think it would more satisfying than DCC sound.

I believe you can actually obtain such things. Indeed, not so small, and capable of generating sufficient ozone levels to be hazardous to health. They're used for sterilising medical environments and suchlike. I've also heard of them being used to kill mould and things in small boats. 

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