peteskitchen

Does it? I must have missed that. Thought it was just two axle bearings held in the chassis by the keeper plate. Saying that with my crappy eyesight I could have easily missed that! The Heljan/Hattons LMS Bayer Garratt has compensation. I think that's the only one so far before the B4.

There's a picture of a pair of 22s in the late 60s running with doors connected, I think the caption said that it was the last known recorded event of this happening. They might have even been in BR blue livery but I don't remember for sure. I don't think I've ever seen a picture of anything other than co-bos, 21s and 22s using the connecting doors.

Oh I forgot to add. I don't know how Dapol have done it considering the axles are rigidly mounted in bearings in the chassis, but I've never had an 0-4-0 go so well though insulated frogs before. Even the dreadful peco code 100 long crossing with its massive hideous plastic frogs doesn't even produce the slightest stutter.

I just received a B4 Caen thanks to Rails flash sale! Everything was where it should be, and it ran okay except it ticked quite loudly in reverse, this turned out to be the motion just catching the remarkably thin footstep. I very gently bent it away and the ticking was gone. I must say I was somewhat disappointed how light it was, Hornby's brilliant Peckett is so much smaller yet far heavier and will "wup" the B4s pants for haulage. Never being one to give up, I took it apart and saw that the side tanks are full of nothing but air except for a strange small plastic box in one of them. I filled all the available space with lead, including a disk in the front of the smokebox (bad idea!) Had real fun shortening the blanking plate enough to reassemble. However! now not only will it pull anything it runs so silky smooth compared to before. I'm super impressed and at less than £80 a real bargain. Just one thing that struck me as odd though, why go to all the effort of fitting flickering firebox, but no crew in there? I'm not sure it would be possible to get any in as the entrance is very tight. Also what is that strange device behind the dome? I noticed that the later BR liveried ones don't have it.

I have had a couple of Heljan models suffer from grease solidification. I stripped them down and completely removed the foul stuff and rebuilt using a special lightweight grease designed for RC helicopter gearboxes. Made a massive difference to how the locos ran, much smoother, quieter and a lot faster too. Only problem is my source of the grease has dried up (excuse the pun!) Without visiting a shop that does RC models I'm not sure where to get some more from.

That all depends which bakery it is! When I lived in Camborne there was a Cornish pasty factory (long gone now fortunately) that made the foulest pasties you could imagine!

That one has moved to Foxfield now and it well on it's way to be restored. Cosmetically it looks fantastic in lined blue livery, and yes it is unique.

Ever get the feeling that Hornby and Oxford are having a private competition to see who can make their coupling stick out the furthest? It's as daft as young kids seeing who can stick their tongues out farthest! A seriously beautiful looking model, but that coupling is just utterly ridiculous!

Read this on Kernow's website. It's implying that DJM have been dropped and Kernow are now dealing directly with the manufacturer? Looks like it might be out pretty soon if they are doing livery samples. "We announced this model back in 2010 but after virtually no progress was made with the previous supplier we awarded the contract to DJModels in August 2014. The project effectively started from scratch from this date, albeit with research already well-advanced. Further problems resulted in us working directly with the factory from April 2018, since when progress has been swift and we have reached livery sample stage."

I don't know why Heljan don't do more runs TBH. The last run they did coincided with Dapol's release which was heavily trumped as super perfect, yet the Heljan ones sold out fairly quickly and the price of second hand ones wasn't effected at all. It's not like the class 86 which took years and seriously heavy discounting to shift. Personally I prefer Heljan's drivetrain on this to Dapol's, which to me seems incredibly power hungry and not as controllable on DC. However the last run of Heljan's Wizzo did suffer from badly built drive trains on some which required rebuilding. (IIRC somebody on here described how to rebuild them) I bought a Desert sand and green on from the last run, the green one was fine but the sand one was very noisy indeed.

I had a big hand in doing the artwork for them, but no I'm not the seller. Its one of the guys in the Class 15 Preservation society who has listed these.

These would look good with the Lilleshall Peckett https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dapol-Lilleshall-wagon-3-pack-Limited-Edition-from-the-C15PS/401599456350?hash=item5d8131645e:g:7v8AAOSw6zNbnEl9

Actually it was many hours using various photographic enhancement applications using that and another picture of one of these wagons that was equally blurred. Unfortunately i screwed up the word spacing when I did the artwork.

Does this help

It seems the loco used in this film is dumped round the back of an industrial estate in Stoke on Trent. I've not managed to find out which one though. I got shown a picture, but the guy wouldn't say which one it was. A Est Railway Mountain is rather a large thing to hide!

Now scheduled for re release now in lined BR green livery....with a 20% price hike! I wonder what happened to all those returned/recalled GWR liveried 14xx's from last year?

Looks like the update needs updating!

Thank you. I do kind of understand what you're saying. I thought that the bridge rectifier in each controller would stop and current getting to the transformer but I'm no expert in that field. I might have a look inside a Gaugemaster controller that has a built in transformer to see if the actual controller circuits are the same as the panel mounted ones.

AFAIK Lichfield City council were offered the loco and were interested, but failed to raise the money required to buy, move and display the loco.

Is there a reason why Gaugemaster DC panel mounted controllers require a separate transformer or transformer winding for each track? Would using one meaty transformer powerful enough to supply all the separate circuits not suffice?

Scrap steel is £175 a tonne, plus you have a hell of a lot of copper in the generator and traction motors. I think you'd get a shed load more than 2k for it scrap.

Times change and things have moved to social media until the new mobile friendly website is sorted out. Here's the page and group for class 15 on facebook. New volunteers and donations are always appreciated, there's still a long way to go to get her running. The facebook group with pictures of the loco lift from last weekend (24/3/18) https://www.facebook.com/groups/D8233/ The facebook page https://www.facebook.com/The-Class-15-Preservation-Society-123660271044298/ Thanks.

Oh dear. It seems Heljan have taken a step in the wrong direction with this model. Zooming in on those pictures GWRRob posted, the fit and finish of added parts is appalling. The more I look at it, the more I find. The 1363 class I recently bought is bad enough but this is just too much for me. I was really looking forwards to this loco too.

All I can tell you is that a class 17 used a class 15 frames (thats why the cabs were so long!) and the same bogies on the prototypes, so I would guess the models are the same bogies at least.