zoomer1979

9 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Legomanbiffo

Biff sells the Wheeltappers project, I'm usually a Biff customer by default!

Neil.

On 19/11/2022 at 09:26, zoomer1979 said:

Just read the latest news letter and realised that a D600 would make a great present for my Dad, with the reasonable assumption like most North British locos, it was tested on Scottish metals before heading South. So I selected D600 itself in original condition as I'm sure it was tested on the Dumfries line. All three versions that are available just now showed a stock level of 10. Looking forward to it.

Neil.

Got my D600 in good time and it's all set for my Dad. I'm guessing he would eventually get a sound chip for it. Who do we reckon has the best guess of the sounds? Wheeltappers? Roads And Rails? Olivia's Trains? Digitrains? The Soundguy? Anyone else have a suggestion?

Neil.

On 07/11/2022 at 12:17, ColinB said:

I don't know if this is of any use to anyone, but I received my sound based one and the running was terrible. It kept stopping and starting on any piece of uneven track. I sent it back to Rails and they adjusted the pickups but it was a little better but not brilliant. As I wanted to keep the model I looked into making mine a bit more reliable. I ordered some Hornby Thompson bogies that came with pickups, just to rob the pickups. Surprisingly the wheelbase of the bogies is the same as that of the fell, so I changed the wheels and substituted them for the Fell ones. I wired them in and amazingly my Fell runs perfectly. 

I don't want to be too critical but the whole model mechanically is a bit of a let down. Sam in his review complained about it not being easy to remove the base keeper plate, but it would be quite easy if they hadn't clipped the wire to a clip where if you try to pull it out strips the wire. Then you have the bottom half of the axle boxes that just "push in" which fall off if you handle the model.

Hi Colin, I too am frustrated with the pickup situation. Can I as what Thompson bogies you got for the pickups that were a good size match? Thanks in advance.

Neil.

On 28/11/2022 at 17:50, Wagonmaster said:

Just trying make sense out of the lighting arrangements which are clearly not right. There should be four white lights on the front, top centre and three along the bottom. There is also one red tail light somewhere near the middle bottom. Would I be right in assuming that the bottom row centre white light is directly below the top centre white light and the the red tail light is the offset one?

 

I know the Fell didn't really use the electric lights but used discs or oil lamps, but iit would be nice to have them displaying correctly. I can always turn them off!

In my video above you will see it's displaying a single white top centre light, (stopping passenger) and there are two red tail lights. If F0 is selected and put off and on within a short while, it will switch all front white lights on. In an ideal world you would want individual controls for each light. Not sure if any of the round plastic pieces in the accessories pack are maint to be discs for on the lamp irons, who knows?

Neil.

11 hours ago, stovepipe said:

So, as the CFPS link has been confirmed, why are they doing it? Is there any element of fund raising for the society? Or do the members just want specific preservation era models to buy for themselves? As usual with KR Models there are more questions than answers, and the whole announcement seems rushed, with marketing copy not even properly proof read.

You just have to look at their instructions to realise how well they proof read things.

Neil.

Took the factory fitted speaker out and replaced it with 2 4ohm speakers, one in each nose area. It has made it a much more convincing sound model. I also took away the visible red fan from both nose ends as you wouldn't of seen them behind the radiator. More progress towards accuracy!

Neil.

1 hour ago, cctransuk said:

 

Trouble is - as I understand it - the crankpins are too securely fixed to allow them to be removed.

 

CJI.

I got mine off fairly easily with a crank pin spanner. The head size is a wee bit awkward because of the paint, so a touch up will be required once they are back in position.

Neil.

Just read the latest news letter and realised that a D600 would make a great present for my Dad, with the reasonable assumption like most North British locos, it was tested on Scottish metals before heading South. So I selected D600 itself in original condition as I'm sure it was tested on the Dumfries line. All three versions that are available just now showed a stock level of 10. Looking forward to it.

Neil.

4 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Ive done a tear down on mine tonight to understand how its put together.

 

 

 its actually quite a clever design, basically an 8 wheel bogie, sat fixed (no lateral swing) inside the chassis, and hence the body.

 

Much of this design, I found reminisces older Heljan styles in several places, starting with accessing the body which requires removing 4 buffers and 4 screws behind them in the chassis..

 

mine is DCC ready, but it comes with a pre fitted speaker. The circuit board design again looks familiar with track inputs and the motor in the middle all using JST  connectors.

Interestingly the body has a few giveaways about future potential… the roof vents are a separate insert, which means replacing these with alternative styles in the future is possible. 

The body too reveals moulding line seams inside which suggest this isnt a 1 piece, but maybe slides, at least on the body side grill / bonnet and front grill being a separate slide tooling piece to the main body… Maybe alternate body sides may appear in the future ?

 

onto the chassis… the wheel base is basically a regular style diesel bogie, screwed into the chassis..
 

 

To remove it isnt straight forward though…

 

1. You need to disconnect the pickup wire from the board.

2. Then unscrew the board, 3. unscrew the motor retainer, 4. disconnect the motor, 5. lift out the motor so it cleanly separate from the shaft.

6. Then tease out the shaft from the gear box which is clipped into the gear box.

7. Remove the gear box retaining clip, which feels superfluous.. it neither holds in the bogie in the frame nor does it hold the gearbox together… (as the gearbox is glued together !!).

Then the ugly bit.. 8. you need to unglue the pickup wires from the side of the bogie frame !

9. Remove the bottom of the 8 axleboxes from under each wheel, and push down on the gear box tower to lower out the bogie.

 

 

10. once done you can then unscrew the keeper plate with the 6 screws that holds the wheels in, carefully lower out the pickup wires which are both soldered and glued to the keeper plate and hence onto the wheel pickup wipers.

A screw map above, from left to right laid out in order…

 

The motor looks like a half size Laisdcc oo motor with single shaft, small flywheel. Its lower rpm hence the model isn't overly fast, but isn't too slow either.

 

For the wheels, they have bearings, which was the root behind the poor performance of mine, it was oscillating and turns out one wheelset didn't have the bearings properly seated into the bearing boxes (shown bellow). Had I not rectified this, at some point the pressure would have gone to the rods which although metal are very soft and flimsy… I would urge to look for this.
 

Incase i need to access in the future, I have not reglued ! The wires to the frame, this would make removal of the keeper plate much easier in the future. I refitted the bogie frame to the chassis.. looking at the bogie and the hole in the frame, I suspect at some point this was designed to rotate within the frame, but later redesigned to fix/screw it to the frame.

The bogie itself is two piece held together by screws and glue! 

The wheels are quartered ok and the cranks are tight, however in the bogie cradle, there is a good 2mm of slop!!, which means 4mm sideways movement between the rods, however they do rely on gearing to hold it tight. 
 

(note the bending on the top right rod, a result of the bearing not being sat in its cup).

 

The motor tops out at 0.2a at just over 70% power, so circa 9 volts.

 

overall impressions

The model feels a bit old school in its design with modern updates. Its certainly not a bad model technically, but equally it is not a great one either. There are definitely lessons that could be learned for the future.
As regards the body my thoughts are inline with others.

 

positives..

 

The use of a bogie mounted in the frame is clever.
The use of jst connectors is better than soldered connections to the board

The model has led lighting in both directions of the cabs and front/rear lights, but without control on DC.

Cab detail is present but rudimentary.

 

Negatives

 

Other manufacturers separate the keeper plate from the pickups (and are using spring contacts rather than the Triang style pickup arrangement) making access easier.

Too much movement in the wheels, and the rods do not have strength to hold the wheelbase shape

I can see this being a challenge for maintenance, but that the points that need maintaining will be initally a challenge to access.

 

 

 

Excellent tear down, balanced and informative. I found that it was quite easy for the wheels and therefore the fly cranks to move on the axles, meaning quartering and synchronization was easily lost. Something that could also cause bending of the delicate rods, which could definitely do with being stronger.

Neil.

4 hours ago, zoomer1979 said:

Well I wasn't sure I was even going to get a model I paid for. As for loyalty, this company is a complete joke. There were problems with the GT3 too, which were supposed to get fixed, (the buffer beam was miss drilled and squint and the front bogie frame was the wrong way round) and what got supplied was a new bogie frame in a bag that said "boofer beam" and we were told to drill holes ourselves to fix the buffer beam! Plus the pickups in the tender were awful. As for the Fell, I'm going to write a very frank and honest letter to KR and detail all that is wrong with it and how much time it has taken me to get a model that runs, never mind one that is accurate! My Dad is returning his for a refund. Will never recommend a KR Models product to anyone.

Neil.

A reply from Keith after I explained what happened to my model. "I know it's probably not much consolation for your model. But with all the models that we have delivered, we have only had back less than 2% of the batch.  Bigger companies than us expect to get back between 5-10%.  I know a guy who worked for Blackberry back in the day, and he said that if they only got 15% of any batch of models back it was a success.  So we're not doing too bad.  The Fell was a very complex model which has taken some criticism some of which was why it's not prototypical.  It changed so much during its short life.  Little subtle changes that last only a few weeks.  It was a learning curve for them.". So why not just two versions like they are doing for the Big Bertha? And early 4-8-4, then a later 4-4-4-4 and have two liveries for the later one.

Oh well, I'm done now until the correcting parts become available.

Neil.

13 hours ago, GWR-fan said:

In hindsight one is left wondering why the Fell fell short of the mark.  After the relative success of the GT3 one would assume that the Fell would have been up to the quality of the GT3.  Did the manufacturer choose another manufacturing facility or was the Fell specified to a lower level of standard?   The Fell was developed and approved for production prior to the GT3 being released so why the lack of quality both in the development of the model and the quality of the received item?  With both models being developed concurrently what went wrong?  Was the Fell promised to a price point to which little to no profit could be realised and so the quality suffered at the expense of financial return?

 

Lack of reliable power pickup is alas a feature of many manufacturer's products these days so I will not criticise the Fell in this regard.  What is inexcusable though is rod mount bolts basically superglued to the cranks and yet the cranks are able to rotate on the drive wheels resulting in bent rods and subsequent damage to the drive mechanism,  hence the inexcusable bent drive axles.  Also below par is the toylike rendition of detail on the chassis sideframes.  When Sam reviewed his model on You-Tube what was obvious was the wobble when the drive wheels rotated.  In this day and age how is it that a manufacturer cannot even mount a drive wheel squarely on an axle?   Aside from the body design aesthetics,  the Fell will prove to be mechanically an unreliable runner and like the prototype more than likely find itself  undergoing regular manintenance or modification.   Ironically though,  the model seems to have found favour with both the modelling press and consumers.    Would the results have been different if the model had been fully capitalised by the manufacturer and not basically (although the manufacturer did not like the term)  a crowd-funded venture.  As the purchasers,  who,  in the main,  pre-paid for the model,  do they feel a sense of allegiance or loyalty perhaps and are unwilling to raise criticism.

Well I wasn't sure I was even going to get a model I paid for. As for loyalty, this company is a complete joke. There were problems with the GT3 too, which were supposed to get fixed, (the buffer beam was miss drilled and squint and the front bogie frame was the wrong way round) and what got supplied was a new bogie frame in a bag that said "boofer beam" and we were told to drill holes ourselves to fix the buffer beam! Plus the pickups in the tender were awful. As for the Fell, I'm going to write a very frank and honest letter to KR and detail all that is wrong with it and how much time it has taken me to get a model that runs, never mind one that is accurate! My Dad is returning his for a refund. Will never recommend a KR Models product to anyone.

Neil.

On 11/11/2022 at 00:04, zoomer1979 said:

Hi folks, my Fell arrived today from Canada. The tracking was saying 17th November so I wasn't expecting it. I had a quick look at it to check its condition. Everything seems to be there and straight. I have noticed the connecting rods are quite loose and more alarmingly the counterweights are quite free to lose sync with each other. Maybe needing secured on the axles a bit better. I will be running it this weekend so any issues I will detail on here. I want to upgrade to two speakers, so that it is a more even sound across the whole loco. I also hope to correct the body details using the parts produced by the members here.

Neil.

Well it is running day today. I started at 1245 and have been working on the Fell to get it running correctly since. After being told by Keith than it ran well and sounded great, I put it on my programming track to try it and change address. Straight away it would barely run without cutting out. On to the rolling road and it was obvious that one pair of axles were badly aligned and causing the cranks to partially lock each revolution. So off it came for adjustment. Whilst doing this I noticed I'm missing one of the lower axle box pieces, which is a separate detail that clips on to the cast chassis. Luckily it is cosmetic. Next I noticed that one of the axles I could see the splines, a check of the back to backs showed that one at 14.83mm, next two 14.34 and the other outer 14.54. This was corrected. I then removed the cranks from the bad pair and re-aligned and re-quartered the fly cranks. The connecting rod on this side was also bent like a banana so was straightened back. Running is now okay only I now noticed one of the bogie axles was wobbly, this was not clicked onto its axle. So now I'm going to size up a pair of speakers as quite frankly the supplied speaker is amateur hour compared with what should be done, (no enclosure whatsoever). Onwards and upwards.

Neil.

On 01/11/2022 at 19:16, zoomer1979 said:

I have had an email from Keith, apologising again for the delay and he has tested a model and dispatched it to me by Canada Mail. Estimated delivery is 16th November. Let's see what happens next.

 

Neil.

Hi folks, my Fell arrived today from Canada. The tracking was saying 17th November so I wasn't expecting it. I had a quick look at it to check its condition. Everything seems to be there and straight. I have noticed the connecting rods are quite loose and more alarmingly the counterweights are quite free to lose sync with each other. Maybe needing secured on the axles a bit better. I will be running it this weekend so any issues I will detail on here. I want to upgrade to two speakers, so that it is a more even sound across the whole loco. I also hope to correct the body details using the parts produced by the members here.

Neil.

I have had an email from Keith, apologising again for the delay and he has tested a model and dispatched it to me by Canada Mail. Estimated delivery is 16th November. Let's see what happens next.

Neil.

1 hour ago, Jitmen said:

Mine never arrived due to confusion over what colour I ordered, when I politely complained KR cancelled my order, sent me a rude email and gave me a refund to a card I no longer have, so I’ve no model or refund, nice models but poor customer service 

That is pathetic. I'm inclined to tell them where to go too, but I want to get the model and improve it (with fellow members help) to show what should of been done.

Neil.

On 22/10/2022 at 12:28, chris p bacon said:

 

I don't agree that there is a positive. You have at least one funder of the model who paid his money up front in good faith that when produced he would receive a model.  KR have stated in the past that they don't like going down the retailer route, and yet RoS had a supply of models and a funder doesn't.

That to me says that more have been returned as faulty than was envisaged and KR have run out. I can't see that there is another explanation as they knew how many that had to be produced and supplied. KR did say themselves that they wouldn't commit to production until they had enough confirmed orders so the number required with a percentage on top for faulty models was known at the start.

 

The poster is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If he still wants a model, would KR still hold one from a further batch at the same price that he's paid for one from the first batch.

What if he waits for a further batch to be commissioned but KR decide not to.

KR miraculously find a model to fulfil is order, but it's actually a returned item. 

He accepts a refund of £150(?) which after 18 months is actually only worth £140 due to inflation.

 

Personally I would ask for a refund of the full amount paid as well as a 20% fee for part funding the production of the model. KR haven't used their own money to produce the model so should re-imburse those that have that they have let down.

 

 

 

On 22/10/2022 at 13:24, Michael Hodgson said:

On the face of it this chap has been and is still being treated very shabbily given that there is apparently an easy solution to what is presumably a mistake on the part of the manufacturer.  I realise however that we've only heard one side of the story, and there could conceivably by some mitigating issue. Mistakes do happen, and I would like to give them the benefit of any doubt by assuming this is a cock-up; but if they don't pull their finger out to remedy the situation, on the basis of what I've heard so far it strikes me as extremely sharp practice. I hope I'm wrong.

 

Where a customer has ordered and paid for one, and they've run out having supplied some to retailers who are not yet fully sold out, it seems to me that there is a moral obligation on the manufacturer to buy one back from that retailer to send to their customer and thus honour their original contract.   The price of such repurchase should be purely a matter between the manufacturer and retailer, the manufacturer absorbing any loss that might be incurred in putting matters right.

 

 

Thanks for the support, I hope I'll get one from this batch and not have to wait for the second run. I had picked the DCC Sound Fitted in late green, (so no middle cranks, correct!). I used the spread out payment option which ticked along nicely and concluded about a year ago, probably the original estimate pre COVID.

I can't help but feel that my response to them stating that I still want the model and the fact their, "sold out" means that for no reason other than their incompetence, I'll probably not see mine fora year or so. I'm very unsatisfied with this. I should see if I could buy one for myself at a vastly inflated price and just send them the bill!

Neil.

Well friends, despite ordering in good faith in February 2020 and filling in the form as presented and selecting the later version (different to my Dad's), I was told today that due to the selection not being picked up, my order was not processed. After Keith gave me a tracking number that was my Dad's model, he confirmed there are no models left and I was offered a refund or to wait for the next batch.

I do want the model still, but who knows when it will come.

Neil.

Still waiting, emailed using the website and Keith answered giving me a tracking number that doesn't work. He claims it was delivered on 10th Oct at 1020 and there was nothing through the door. Nothing at sorting office either.🤔

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

@zoomer1979 it sounds like a 1970s car stuck in first gear.

15 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Sounds a bit difference when you get that small piece of the real sound approaching that junction.

Indeed. The sound of 4 V12 Paxmans, plus 2 AECs, must have been quite a cacophony. I think the sound file in the model has under sold the racket of the real thing for the sake of everyone's ears!

https://youtu.be/swJFXI5AqbE

For those who have sound fitted models, a reference video from the time it was on test.

Neil.

Well, just to add to the list of problems, my Dad's "early" version has an issue with one of the axles, as seen in the attached video.

Neil.

Well I finally got my IC Swallow version of the MK4 DVT last week. Yet again Hornby have delivered a Railroad model for a Premium price. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw less detail on the new one than the 1980s original. What sort of mugs are we being played for! Once again it will have to be worked on to get it to somewhere near the standards expected of the sale price. The old one even weighs more than the new one. And don't get me started on the fact it barely runs the length of itself due to the huge drag of the pickups and details. It's supposed to be ROLLING stock! Plus there's the odd thing going on under the windscreens? To sum up, you would be better and cheaper buying an after market lighting kit and decoder socket. You can have it back Hornby.

Neil.

The shape of the front of the DVT looks much better than the original in my opinion. Hopefully my pre order from Collett Models comes through and he hasn't been "Hornbied".

I had a bit of a strange experience last week. Was holidaying in the area and thought to visit the shop on the Monday morning about 11am. Got there and parked next to a car already there. Nobody at the counter, so I walked round to the other entrance and went through the whole shop unchallenged and not attended to. Even said hello to a guy in the workshop area. No help and no inspiration at all I was away after 5 minutes.

Neil.

On 24/07/2022 at 11:54, Gary H said:

As it is, the MS450 is not NMRA compliant. Bachmann seem to have moved over to Zimo now. Why not have a drop down menu when purchasing- Zimo or ESU, no big deal you'd have thought!

Hi Gary,

Interested to know what is non compliant about the MS450. I have found Zimo drive control to be superior right out the box, whereas the ESU needs quite a bit of tweaking to get it silky smooth.

Neil.