wilfy

Hi, Just some things to be aware of with the Hornby Sentinel. Be very carefull not to put any pressure on the windows. I just carefully and gently picked the loco up by the cab and the result of this is the large side window on one side tilted in at the top. There is no other option but to dismantle the body off to sort this out. It is only necessary to remove the rear coupling to get access to the securing screws, but it is the two long self tappers set in tunnels that have to come out not the countersunk screw on the surface. You have to disconnect the bottom of the hand rails. The instructions say these should pop out but thay are glued in it seems, at any rate they were hellishly tight and took a lot of pressure on a screwdriver to move them. It seems you have no choice but to use quite severe force on these. Once I got the body off I could pop the windows back into position quite easily. All of the windows are made as one flat molding with tabs that are meant to fold to position the windows. There is a large centre square that is glued to the underside of the roof, but all of the tabs on this were broken on factory assembly. The glued in part was at an angle to the windows clearly indicating this to be the case. I will secure the windows with a small drop of cyanoacrylate glue. I use Powerbond 806 which does not cause clear plastic to mist if you just use a tiny amount. I renamed the loco with waterslide transfers but in truth you can tell I have not had much practise at this. It was difficult to position the individual letters without moving the previous one and although I gloss varnished the area where the transfers sit I still had some issues with the carrier film. More practise needed.

Hi everyone, I really do not want to be a rumour starter but I have just opened up a H and M powapack transformer. Inside I found what I believe to be a sheet of white asbestos used as electrical insulation. This was in a very soft and crumbly state and there was white dust on the inside of the box. I may be wrong in identifying this as asbestos but am I going to take the risk, NO. Does anyone know for sure?. Apart from this issue, the 16 volt did not work and the 12 volt outputted 16.95 volts according to my meter. I did swallow the H and M hype, I have a sixties duette on the way from ebay as well. Its just my own personal opinion but I am disappointed, perhaps I was expecting too much from old apparatus. The only thing is I did not pay much at all so I can write it off to experience. I now need to take the powapack to the tip for safe disposal.