Locomotion & Rails of Sheffield announce SE&CR D Class

[Bluebell Model Railway]

Would anyone happen to know if the front Locomotive guard irons are available as a spare? One of mine has fallen off and disappeared, I did email DCC supplies the Dapol spares dealer and received no reply believe they are on vacation, and they don't appear on the spares listing unfortunately.

[Garethp8873]

You've got to love ebay sometimes... :)

 

And only £6.50

 

Edited July 3, 2023 by Garethp8873

[Obadiah]

I have two of these excellent D class locomotives, however, after running quite satisfactorily, they have now both started to exhibit the dreaded motor problems that bedevil other manufactures locomotives. They run OK for a period, then start randomly slowing down, speeding up, slowing to a dead crawl, then back to normal again. I run standard DC with a Morley controller, have no HF track cleaners, no feed back, or similar. Has anyone else experienced similar problems?  I am getting a little frustrated with having to play the electric motor version of Russian Roulette when buying models these days.

[JSpencer]

3 hours ago, Obadiah said:

I have two of these excellent D class locomotives, however, after running quite satisfactorily, they have now both started to exhibit the dreaded motor problems that bedevil other manufactures locomotives. They run OK for a period, then start randomly slowing down, speeding up, slowing to a dead crawl, then back to normal again. I run standard DC with a Morley controller, have no HF track cleaners, no feed back, or similar. Has anyone else experienced similar problems?  I am getting a little frustrated with having to play the electric motor version of Russian Roulette when buying models these days.

 

What other locos have shown the same?

 

It sounds like a circuit component heating up, cutting out, cooling down and repeating itself.

[phil-b259]

13 minutes ago, JSpencer said:

 

What other locos have shown the same?

 

It sounds like a circuit component heating up, cutting out, cooling down and repeating itself.

I seem to recall Hornby have had issues with a number of their motors rapidly deteriorating (overheating, going slower, less torque etc) including the H and B12 classes.

 

Owners have reported changing the motors cures the issues so it’s quite possible the same is repeating itself here. 

[Obadiah]

39 minutes ago, JSpencer said:

 

What other locos have shown the same?

 

It sounds like a circuit component heating up, cutting out, cooling down and repeating itself.

Indeed I had much the same thoughts, and by and large eliminated the circuit board by exchanging tenders or by-passing the boards completely. The fault invariably remained with the motor, excepting one S15 circuit board which did produce the 'magic smoke'.  So far I have had motor faults in ten locomotives across six different classes from three manufacturers. I have never experienced this in 009 or 0 gauges though!

[JSpencer]

3 hours ago, Obadiah said:

Indeed I had much the same thoughts, and by and large eliminated the circuit board by exchanging tenders or by-passing the boards completely. The fault invariably remained with the motor, excepting one S15 circuit board which did produce the 'magic smoke'.  So far I have had motor faults in ten locomotives across six different classes from three manufacturers. I have never experienced this in 009 or 0 gauges though!

 

That's impressive. It could be the windings heating up, breaking down then cooling and working normally again. But what could cause an increase load on the motor? Dried grease? rusting axles? Mind I remember Heljan class 17s blowing their motors with ease. I see Morley do 1 amp and 2.5 amp for O or big OO layouts. I could not find the voltage for the latter. Nor whether voltage gradually creeps up with speed or it controls models via pulsing (I can remember triang motors hating 1/2 pulse on a H&M for example).

 

Weird that both Ds should go down at the same time (I have 4Ds and 2 D1s, and apart from a broken sand pipe, no issues to report - my controller a Gaugemaster 1.1amp output). Maybe contact DCC supplies who act as spares agent. 

[spamcan61]

The similar symptoms on some folks' Accurascale diesels (a small percentage of those delivered by the looks of it) appear to be due to clogging of the motor commutators with material from the carbon brushes. The fix has been to strip down the motor and clear out the commutator slots.

Edited January 29 by spamcan61

[wainwright1]

I have a similar problem with the Bachmann/EFE booster loco.

I have the one in Southern green. The first one had buffers missing at one end, so went back to the retailer. The second one would run for about four feet, then stop. After a few seconds it would restart, then stop again after another four feet. This happened in both directions and I physically reversed the loco on the track to no avail. I am now on the third one which seems to run ok, but have not had the chance to run it over a wide range of points to see if the bogie slack issues will cause a problem.

[JSpencer]

1 hour ago, spamcan61 said:

The similar symptoms on some folks' Accurascale diesels (a small percentage of those delivered by the looks of it) appear to be due to clogging of the motor commutators with material from the carbon brushes. The fix has been to strip down the motor and clear out the commutator slots.

 

Carbon brushes?  I had a motor with those symptoms once and it was iron dust from the magnets!

 

In my experience, carbon build up would slow the model down slowly over time until the commutator was cleaned.