KevTheBusDriver

I bought a Tramfabreik 'Farish (Poole) Class 37 Conversion kit' which arrived yesterday. I have a 1981-vintage 37 which is really noisy, but runs well with the 3-pole motor until it gets hot, it also has issues with a slipping drive dog at one end! It does, however, have brass gears which do not/will not split! The fitting instructions online omitted the fact that the early Farish 37s had the motor pole pieces RIVETTED to the chassis - that took a bit of sorting out. I managed to remove the bit of metal around the lower brush housing and the corresponding upper plastic one without using the end mill they recommend. The new motor fits a treat and was easy to join to the worm drive shafts using the silicone tube provided (I used a 9mm length at one end and 10mm at the other). I soldered really tiny (but flexible) wires (about 3" long) to the motor and ran them up to the top plate. I didn't solder the wires at the top end - I used Poole's 'technique' of squeezing the wires under a relevent screw head! A test run without the body on showed it runs really slow and quiet. It's a little noisier with the body back on but it runs very nice, plodding around at about a scale 35mph. It appears on a YouTube video I made today, too. Search YouTube with 'Walsall N Gauge' then look for 'A final look at WL102...'.

I managed to 'fit' pickups to the centre axles of my Bachamnn/Farish 47s by simply bending the corner of the brass 'square' out slightly on each side using tiny tweezers. They only have to be bent enough to 'reach' the backs of the wheels. I bent them out from about half way, so the 'fold' is a diagonal. CAUTION however - removing the bogie frame is bad, and correct refitting is worse - be careful. You have to do this to remove the centre axle (which pulls out). I'm surprised that Bachmann didn't fit pickups on all wheels - it improves things immensely. The 'Peaks' suffer from the same issue, though I have not yet devised a way to add them to these.