Class 205 in Conjunction with Kernow Model Shop

[John M Upton]

Also the fade out was a sticky vinyl label that butted up to the vertical end of the painted section and it used to fade really badly (or fall off an get wrapped around the carriage washing machine brushes!) so the contrast between that bit and the rest of the yellow is very much correct.

 

Mine has arrived, sort of...  Red card of death from those muppets at the Royal Mail (my local postmaster informs me the local sorting office is apparently the most millitant and worst ranked for service one in the country outside London and boy does it show!) and with the Easter weekend here I won't be seeing it again until at least Tuesday...

[southernelectric]

As a BR blue modeller I'm feelin all left out!

 

Does anyone know when the blues are due? I've a couple preordered.

 

Neil

 

I have a blue one on pre-order too. Kernow told me at Ally Pally last weekend most likely going to be next year before we see them :-(

[The Evil Bus Driver]

I have a blue one on pre-order too. Kernow told me at Ally Pally last weekend most likely going to be next year before we see them :-(

 At least that gives me time to get the money together for a couple.

[RFS]

Got my units yesterday after returning from visiting daughter in Australia - what on earth did you guys do to the weather whilst I was away??

 

Anyway got a decoder fitted to the first unit with the usual faff of getting the body off and then started testing, but soon got two problems.  Firstly, the lights in the motor coach keep going off - sometimes for a long period, but those on the trailer are always on.  I suspect it's the copper strips to the ceiling that need adjusting but I've not checked that yet.  But far more seriously the unit keeps derailing: it's both inner bogies and happening on various points, including taking the straight road.  I've checked the back-to-backs and also that the close-coupling mechanisms were both working freely, but to no avail. The bar coupling is a very tight fit but I can't see why that would cause this problem, but changed to a different one without success.

 

So I tried a pair of Roco couplings instead.  With these the unit operates perfectly, including at full speed through complex points.  I lose the internal lighting which is not really a problem for me, plus the illuminated headcode on the trailer coach.  But now I have a real dilemma, since with these couplings the coaches look like this:

 

 

On straight track the rubbing plates are touching and the join looks so much better!  I have two units (1108 and 1115) and if I run them in multiple with the motor coaches on the outer ends I retain the illuminated headcodes at each end. I've turned off the internal lighting in the motor coaches using the under body switch.  I think I'll stick with these couplings, but I wonder if anyone else has had this derailing problem?

Edited March 30, 2013 by RFS

[Martin_R]

I've also had numerous problems with Bachmann conductive couplings going right back to the earliest Class 150's so I resorted to home made PCB strip couplings and I never have problems now. My Thumper now has this type of coupling and gives no problems running in either direction through quite complex pointwork.

[Flood]

Well I've got next to no money at the moment so the longer the all blue DEMU takes to arrive the better for me. I have got one on order but I may well give Kernow a ring in the next few months as my card is due to expire and I don't want to miss out when it does arrive.

 

In the meantime I've been sorting out my centre coach. I'm not that bothered about lighting but I'm sure I could work out an arrangement if I really wanted to. You don't need to do much to the trailer of a 2 EPB: remove the pickup gear and the bogie guards (or change the bogies), take off the angled light grey thing (whatever it is) half way along the chassis, move the square shaped connector on the front nearer the cab centre line and add a new curved connector where the square one was (the Replica MLV detailing pack comes in handy).

 

The body now looks like this:

 

 

I haven't painted the front blue yet as when they were in all blue you could still see the original 12xx number underneath the paintwork. If Kernow and Bachmann are making 1120 with the revised conduit I can only make 1402 (1204 would be on the DTSO), if they don't change the roof conduit I will make one of the other three.

[Brian Kirby]

I enjoyed watching "The Great St.Trinian's Train Robbery" film again yesterday afternoon on ITV3. Did anyone notice that the 205 DEMU had black triangles at BOTH ENDS? This goes against operating practice, but i reckon the one on the DTC was added for film continuity, and so as not to confuse the audience with a different looking end, which might be interpreted by some as a different train perhaps?

 

                                           Cheers, Brian.

[Matabiau]

I have just prised my Connex 205 open to install a DCC chip only to discover that the moulding of the running boards on the chassis is very poor. The surface is mottled and there are chunks missing. This is clearly a moulding fault and not subsequent damage as they are painted over.

 

 

 

Has anyone else seen this on their models?

[Jack]

I enjoyed watching "The Great St.Trinian's Train Robbery" film again yesterday afternoon on ITV3. Did anyone notice that the 205 DEMU had black triangles at BOTH ENDS? This goes against operating practice, but i reckon the one on the DTC was added for film continuity, and so as not to confuse the audience with a different looking end, which might be interpreted by some as a different train perhaps?

 

                                           Cheers, Brian.

 

According to 'BR Southern Region in Colour' some Hastings units were used as depot shunters, made up for pairs of driving trailers, hence the arrow at both ends - could this be one of those?

[Gwiwer]

1102 was used in the film, not a hybrid of Hastings vehicles.  I support the suggestion that it gained an extra triangle so as to look the same at both ends.  Movie people are fickle like that and seldom understand the ways of rail.  If you look at the movements permitted any staff member with safeworking training would have apoplexy.

[SRman]

One of our local friends was a driver on one of the J94s in the movie. He had to stay out of camera view while the so called schoolgirls in mini skirts and fishnet stockings sat above his head ... he claims it was "a little distracting" at the time!  

 

He also says that the safe working was pushed to the limit and beyond, notwithstanding that some of the sequences were speeded up in the movie itself. They had one or two minor derailments and miscalculations during the making of the film!

 

Jack: A minor correction (being pedantic here) - the Hastings shunters were Driving Motors. If they were Driving Trailers there would have been no power! I think we all knew what you meant though!

[Jack]

1102 was used in the film, not a hybrid of Hastings vehicles.

 

I sit corrected ...

 

Jack: A minor correction (being pedantic here) - the Hastings shunters were Driving Motors. If they were Driving Trailers there would have been no power! I think we all knew what you meant though!

 

Yeah, wot 'ee said ...

[Dogmatix]

Now that I've got my green Thumper with sound home and tested it, I find two problems: firstly, as described by others, the body sits raised at the motor end of the power car (and thus slightly lowered at the other end); and secondly, whenever I put the power car on the track or it is on the track when the layout is powered up, the whistle sounds. Or the doors slam. Or both. OK, the sound is not so much a problem, but the raised body is annoying. I have no desire to pay postage to send it back across the North Sea to Cornwall, so I'll have to dig out the instructions I remember seeing for lowering the MLV to its correct height. How Bachmann and Kernow could let this happen I don't know.

 

By the way, I remember talk of Kernow commissioning a 3H unit, or at least a centre car for 2H-to-3H conversion. Is this still on the cards? Using a 2EPB driving trailer, as suggested above, would seem a rather expensive solution...

[Stevelewis]

Now that I've got my green Thumper with sound home and tested it, I find two problems: firstly, as described by others, the body sits raised at the motor end of the power car (and thus slightly lowered at the other end); and secondly, whenever I put the power car on the track or it is on the track when the layout is powered up, the whistle sounds. Or the doors slam. Or both. OK, the sound is not so much a problem, but the raised body is annoying. I have no desire to pay postage to send it back across the North Sea to Cornwall, so I'll have to dig out the instructions I remember seeing for lowering the MLV to its correct height. How Bachmann and Kernow could let this happen I don't know.

 

By the way, I remember talk of Kernow commissioning a 3H unit, or at least a centre car for 2H-to-3H conversion. Is this still on the cards? Using a 2EPB driving trailer, as suggested above, would seem a rather expensive solution...

Many  sound  fitted  locos etc  do  sound  a  whistle are let  off  steam  or  ring  a bell when  power  is  first  applied  to  them.

 

All my Bachmann Tsunami fitted  0n30 loco do!

 

It indicates  that  the  sound unit is  working!

 

Have  you  any comments  on  the  sound in the  205, there  were some  earlier comments  that  it  was not really  that  good, so any  thoughts are  welcomed

[Gwiwer]

I remember talk of Kernow commissioning a 3H unit, or at least a centre car for 2H-to-3H conversion. Is this still on the cards?

 

 

It's been said before but Kernow MRC have from the start maintained in public that "Any future 3-car version will depend upon sales of the 2-car versions".  In other words no decision made, nothing promised nor set in concrete but not entirely off the agenda.  I'm sure they are very much aware of what level of interest exists in a 3-car version but as with the 2-car ones the split between liveries, numbers and detail configuration would dilute the potential sales figures for each individual release.  

[SRman]

Now that I've got my green Thumper with sound home and tested it, I find two problems: firstly, as described by others, the body sits raised at the motor end of the power car (and thus slightly lowered at the other end); and secondly, whenever I put the power car on the track or it is on the track when the layout is powered up, the whistle sounds. Or the doors slam. Or both. OK, the sound is not so much a problem, but the raised body is annoying. I have no desire to pay postage to send it back across the North Sea to Cornwall, so I'll have to dig out the instructions I remember seeing for lowering the MLV to its correct height. How Bachmann and Kernow could let this happen I don't know.

 

When you run it with sound, before turning everything off on the layout, make sure that you deselect any sound functions that you used, e.g. make sure that functions 3 and 4 are not selected when you turn off. Then turn the layout back on or remove then replace the unit on the track and see if the sounds still go off. I suspect that the decoder is simply remembering its last state and when you turn on again it plays the sounds associated with the 'remembered' settings.

[tender]

Now that I've got my green Thumper with sound home and tested it, I find two problems: firstly, as described by others, the body sits raised at the motor end of the power car (and thus slightly lowered at the other end); and secondly, whenever I put the power car on the track or it is on the track when the layout is powered up, the whistle sounds. Or the doors slam. Or both. OK, the sound is not so much a problem, but the raised body is annoying. I have no desire to pay postage to send it back across the North Sea to Cornwall, so I'll have to dig out the instructions I remember seeing for lowering the MLV to its correct height. How Bachmann and Kernow could let this happen I don't know.

 

By the way, I remember talk of Kernow commissioning a 3H unit, or at least a centre car for 2H-to-3H conversion. Is this still on the cards? Using a 2EPB driving trailer, as suggested above, would seem a rather expensive solution...

 

Did the Green Thumper (without yellow V) ever appear as a 3H unit? I'm no expert in this field, maybe someone more knowledgeable can advise.

[SRman]

Some units, at least, were augmented to three cars before application of the orange 'V'. In fact, unit 1115 (one of the Kernow issues) appears to be one of those. The book Southern Region DEMUs (Kevin Robertson and Hugh Abbinnett, 2012, Ian Allan Publishing) shows two pictures of that unit dated February and April 1960 as a three car unit with no 'V' on the front of the DMBS.

 

EDIT: Before anyone jumps up and down and complains that Kernow got it wrong, the units did, on occasions, temporarily lose centre cars for various reasons (such as works attention). I believe I read somewhere that Kernow had a photo of 1115 with the orange 'V' running as a two-car unit. Certainly a few others were temporarily run as 2H when they were supposed to be 3H, even back in the 1960s.

Edited April 11, 2013 by SRman

[Gwiwer]

From memory and a little background knowledge of the fleet the application of the orange V and the insertion of the centre trailer occurred over much the same period of time as units were released to go back through Eastleigh.  I believe some ran for short periods of time in plain green with three cars and am quite certain that with Kernow's normal attention to detail they would not have released a commissioned item with a non-matching livery-to-number variant.

 

The orange V model was a later addition to the commission 9and hence its product code is the highest number of those announced) because they were unable to locate photographic evidence of a 2H in that livery at first.  When a suitable photo came to light the unit was commissioned and I believe the photo was of 1115 as a V-livery 2H.

 

How ironic then that the unit commissioned last arrived first!  But as the Good Book says "The first shall be last ......... " 

[Bill]

My Thumper (the plain green front version) arrived over the week-end and I had the opportunity to run it working today - It is a truly lovely model and looks and works very well indeed.

With it there was a package containing two draw bars (one and a spare) to connect the coaches and a large black thing with two screws.

Does anyone know what the large black thing is and not unsurprisingly what it represents, and where it might possibly go on the model?

Thanks in advance...

Also I wish it was the sound version in order to distinguish it from a growing flock of EMUs -

[Gwiwer]

The black box and fixings are for a speaker, should you wish to fit your own, which goes inside the motor coach in a pre-moulded location.  It is not otherwise required for operation of the unit.

[bigherb]

 the body sits raised at the motor end of the power car (and thus slightly lowered at the other end); annoying. I have no desire to pay postage to send it back across the North Sea to Cornwall, so I'll have to dig out the instructions I remember seeing for lowering the MLV to its correct height. How Bachmann and Kernow could let this happen I don't know.

 

By the way, I remember talk of Kernow commissioning a 3H unit, or at least a centre car for 2H-to-3H conversion. Is this still on the cards? Using a 2EPB driving trailer, as suggested above, would seem a rather expensive solution...

Mine does as well.

page 13 of the Bachman MLV thread gives details on how I cured it on the MLV although the trailing bogie doesn't have the same problem as the MLV

I haven't done any thing to the Thumper yet as it has some other build issues with the glue around the.glazing.

 

[davros909]

i assume these  never ran   as  two car units   toigether  2 x2 cars i mean   to make a 4 car????  any help will be appriciated  cheers

[BR(S)]

i assume these  never ran   as  two car units   toigether  2 x2 cars i mean   to make a 4 car????  any help will be appriciated  cheers

 

I've looked through quite a few pictures and YouTube videos of these units and I've definitely not seen many 2 x 2 formations.  Here is an example of one (fifth picture down), in Connex livery, but it's a Class 205/2 at one end: 

 

http://www.semgonline.com/gallery/class205_03.html

[mattog]

Has anyone had any luck tweaking the CVs to get the sound in sync? At high speeds the engine sounds a little slow to my ears. Which CVs would one adjust (59,60?) and what values would I need? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.