peteskitchen

Hattons have some Garratt spares in stock... http://www.hattons.co.uk/stocklist/1000399/1000588/1000653/0/Heljan_OO_Gauge_1_76_Scale_Chassis_units/prodlist.aspx

 £75 for a second hand power bogie? The robbing swines!

 Couple of months to release now according to Hattons. The pictures look like a really beautiful model but......how much is that wealth of fine detail made from brittle injection moulded plastic? Its almost impossible to pick up a class 05 without damaging some part or another. The door handles, so delicate don't even look at them LOL! I love mine but I daren't touch it.
Doesn't change my mind that Heljan's market goal is the collector, not a modeller 

How many people with the early ones have suffered problems from the lack of bearings?  It would be interesting to know.

I wouldn't say mine was a problem as it runs fine on straight track. It's only on unprototypically sharp curves that it starts to misbehave. I would say its more a disconcerting thing that when you hold the model upside down and see that the axles are very sloppy. However mine hasn't seen a great deal of use.

Absolutely no idea. I've been toying with the idea of buying a later one second hand and doing a chassis swap, but to then sell it on would be very naughty!

 

 

 

 

 

 That being said I'm very pleased indeed with the running qualities of my three Hornby eight coupled tanks - they run quieter and smoother than ANY other RTR Great Western Tank model that I own.

 

 Do you have any of the first release with the square axle slots and no bearings? Mine did run very smooth and quietly to begin with but the axles have become very sloppy now and it shows when negotiating a bend by crabbing from side to side.

 

.   Mind you coming down there felt a lot safer than being bashed up the back end by a loaded milk train, they surge as the milk sloshes in the tank cars.

Cheese by London with a rough driver?

With the condition that Heljan deliver it in good condition with no bits fallen off in the box,valve gear intact and motor and gear train functioning correctly.Some members of this forum have had a less than special experience to date with examples of the O2,Beyer G and 1361/1366 tanks. Get a good 'un and all is well,indeed my O2 is phenomenally powerful....otherwise......

 

Thus I will not be the first to blink,remembering that two years ago,Rails had to sort through much of their first delivery of the O2 to find an acceptable example of one of merchantable quality.A curate's egg situation if there ever was.A good example is brilliant but with regard to the 47XX,I will bide my time .Look over to the posts on the Hornby 800 IEP and you will get the drift.....We are now asked to fork out a great deal of cash for a new model so let's first ensure that for that outlay we are purchasing a treasure that is fault free of annoying issues.

 

And yes,I am looking forward to its arrival.

 Yes I've been stung by Heljan before. I bought a Hattons Garret when I didn't have a railway to run it on, so by the time I did it was a few years old and way out of warranty. It only completed about 2 hours of running before it started dropping apart, and since day one its had issues with the compensation in one of its "bogies" Not had any motor problems fortunately though.

I think all the locos that were converted to class 29 had the two tone green

 

Jim

D6107 and 8 were painted blue with full yellows wen they were refurbished IIRC. All the rest were two tone green. I'm not sure if any of the t.t. green ones were released with full yellows though.

 As my knowledge of PO wagons is limited, I have to go by if it looks right, then its OK for me. But what really grates with Oxford Rail wagons is how far the couplings stick out. Bachmann seem to have there's set much closer yet they can happily manage to negotiate 2nd rad curves. Hell even Mainline wagons from the days of old were much closer coupling!

That looks terrible around the buffer beam and its valance. I do hope that's addressed before release otherwise its not good enough.

Very rare I buy a new released loco nowadays, but this one I think is a must. Such a magnificent and quite unique machine.

Looking for parts for my early release LNER black O2 (Broke the NEM pocket on the tender) Howes had an LNER pre-owned one for sale for £65. I couldn't see a reason for why it was so cheap and took a punt on it. Not only is it absolutely mint but it runs better than mine too.......BUT......it has a broken tender NEM pocket too! I never did get a replacement for mine either LOL

I would say a re-release is a racing certainty.

The later versions had various tweeks, one being turned metal buffers on the loco, this made a world of difference from the fragile plastic moulded ones.

 The part that I find the worst on this model is the rotary valve gear and associated rodding. It looks awful in bendy moulded black plastic. It that was addressed somehow it would improve the look no end to me, oh and also fit a better motor, The one that's in can sound dreadful if you get a noisy one.

A class 21/29

 Didn't Bachmann say years ago that they wouldn't update their model or even do a new chassis for it because the model was always a poor seller? It seems to be the only model that was new in the 90s that they have not updated at all (yes I know the J39 hasn't, but it is in the (very long!) pipeline) If thats the case, it will be interesting to see how well the Hornby model sells.

Does anybody know if the chassis has been altered at all with the 2017 production run? I have an R3128 from the first run and is now very poorly with very sloppy axles due to the bad chassis design.

That's an unfair comment. It will be just a question of getting the website fully set up - no doubt the links will work in a few days time. Meantime, you have got information hot off the press, coinciding with the start of London Toyfair this morning.

 

John Storey

 Really? It's not my idea of professionalism, but if you're okay with that, then that's cool.

I got an odd email from Oxford this morning, saying you get the rail mounted gun, and an ROD liveried Dean Goods for £49.95  , plus other combinations and various new wagons. When you click on the link to their website it says no products to show. Somebody seems to have made a screwup.

D6108 was one of the class 21 locos rebuilt as a class 29. The loco is seen here standing at Inverurie Works in July 1969.  Colour shot.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/curly42/5315345761/in/album-72157625937337796/

IIRC it was the penultimate conversion and was delivered as a 29 in Blue. However it seems to have been sidelined within 9 months and was withdrawn 2 years before any other class 29. I wonder what happened to it that was so catastrophic? From what I've heard the rebuild 29s were fairly good work horses with acceptable reliability, and the extra 100 horsepower was an advantage over the 25s and 27s.

 To save me reading through 94 pages, has anybody had an issue with the suspension (compensation?) on one of the "power bogies" The smoke box end one of mine is holding the inner driving wheel up in the air, if you pick the loco up the compensation allows it to move even further up. I've tried to dismantle the loco but its so delicate I gave up. I'd hate for it to become a static exhibit.

 Thanks 

I tend to agree, tp, but we are South Walians and tend to think of 64xx for 2 trailers and 4575 for more.  Less hilly parts of the world featured 14xx with 2 trailers, though I suspect 3 was pushing it in many cases, no matter what the official loadings were.  Experienced, preferably passed out driver, firemen were preferred for auto work because of the potential issues resulting from the driver being away from the loco for approximately half the duty, and loading the loco to or closer to it's limit would have had an even more potential deleterious effect on performance.

 

  Do you remember the Dawlish donkey from the 1998? I was totally stunned how quick 1450 was with 4 Mk1s on, I thought it was going to be a joke. In fact that engine made me appreciate GWR locos a whole lot more. Happy days!

 If you're going to do away with the traction tyres and fit plain wheels there a few simple mods you need to do to improve traction to an acceptable level. If you have the older Hornby or Dapol chassis, you need to get at the spring underneath the trailing wheelset, and cut it in half and then stretch it just a little. This will still keep the axle on the track and keep the loco stable, but it means that most of the loco's weight will be on the drivers. My 2004 vintage Hornby one will easily cope with three Mk1s or a mixed bag of 10 four wheeled wagons. Its a bit more tricky with the new square axled version. You can carefully slot our the trailing axle slot, but if you go too far the loco will rock on its center axle. Even if you do get it right, changes in gradient will cause problems unless they are very gentle. Bit like the first issue of the Oxford Adams radial tanks.

A mate picked me up the Show Special one there yesterday. Can't wait to get my hands on it, looks really nice.

 What livery are the show special ones in?

 Easily modified if it is still provided with a rear shaft on the motor, as on all the earlier versions I have seen. The rear motor bracket needs the reinforcing ribs cut back flush to permit a 2mm shaft diameter flywheel to be installed. Dependent on the diameter and length dimensions of the chosen flywheel a little space may need to be cut in the body interior. I put in an 18mm dia. 5mm long brass flywheel in this way on a friend's 8F (resolute DC operator) probably a dozen years ago, no trouble at all doing it, or in subsequent operation.

 

 

 Did it make much noticeable difference? I only have one super detail 8F but it is one of my smoothest running locos, possibly due to its low gearing.

'Just certain batches', actually it looks as if the faulty models are mixed in with the good'uns which is why they've all had to be recalled, suggests that there is more than one supplier of the affected components in China, where Hornby deal with a single firm responsible for assembly but which sub-contracts the actual production of components (this is the Chinese business model); if one sub-contractor has supplied components not to spec and this has not been discovered before the models are assembled for shipping, that would explain the situation.  It is entirely plausible that a Chinese sub contractor has fitted the pickups the wrong way up; he will probably be unaware of what the thing he is building is or what it is for, just producing to a CAD file emailed to him.

There seem to be two separate issues here, one involving the height at which the rear driving wheels sit and means that they do not contact the rails properly, which is a chassis block fault, and one involving the mounting of the pickups on the keeper plate.  Presumably a model may have either, both, or neither of these problems.

 I wonder if they had some of the old chassis blocks left over from a previous run (IIRC the titfield thunderbolt pack was its last outing) and used them up. As for the pickups they all face down now, I suspect it has been changed to make assembly easier as the old keeper plate was a right fiddle to get in without one or more of the pickups fouling a spoke and bending over during assembly. With them facing down you just push the keeper plate on, and bob's your uncle