WaysideWorks

How do you remove the cover of the slide bars of the Pug?

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

This fits with what I suspected.  My advice FWIW is to attempt to standardise on coupling and wheel standards.  As you are on a limited budget you will no doubt wish to stock your layout with stuff from eBay.  I suggest you check out Parkside, a brand under the Peco umbrella, who make very reasonably priced wagon kits which are not too difficult to put together with a minimal tool kit; you'll need poly cement, a pair of tweezers, a sharp craft knife, a small file, and a small long nose pliers.  The kits are complete with wheels, bearings, couplings, transfers; all except paint.  I digress; concentrate Johnster, the reason I am making you aware of them is that they sell packs of NEM coupling mounts.  This means that you can remove the coupling mounts of older stock such a the massive Hornby couplers you mention and glue the Parkside mounts, their catalogue number PC34 to the undersides of the wagons, packing or trimming the mounts and using a variety of cranked and straight Bachmann couplings to achieve a standard height bar above railhead.  Take this standard height from the Peckett and make a gauge that will sit across the rails and just fit beneath the Peckett's coupling bars.

 

I appreciate that you are on a budget and fully sympathise (been there done that), but if you've got some stock to be going on with I recommend spending the limited budget you have on metal wheels and standardising your couplings with Parkside mounts for a while until you've established good running before buying more stock.  If you can put aside £15 every month for this, you will soon have beaten the chaos into submission, and the benefits will be lasting.  Avoid Dapol wheels and couplings; I've always found them a problem and can't recommend them.

 

I'm probably trying to teach granny to such eggs, but as well as eBay, Dapol will sell you unpainted van and wagon bodies which are excellent toolings and cheap as chips.  They'll sell chassis for them as well but I'd recommend using Parkside chassis as they are a lot better quality and run much better.  It is worth spending a little extra and sourcing some turned metal wagon and van buffers, as Parkside's plastic ones are a bit flimsy and many of those on the eBay stock you may be acquiring are rather small blobby mushroom things.  You will need a small hand drill with a pin chuck and a set of bits, 0.1mm to 2mm to add to your toolkit, but this is a purchase that will repay it's initial outlay many times over, and is not only a lot cheaper than an electric minidrill, it is capable of finer work as it can drill slowly enough to not melt the surrounding plastic!

 

The experience this will give you will stand you in very good stead if you are able to build a bigger layout in the future.

 

As to rail joiners, it's a matter of opinion, of which there are several.  My view is that joiners will help to align the ends of rail sections where they joint to the next section and to hold the rails at in the correct position at the join and ensure that the height of adjoining sections is the same, as well as providing electrical connection, but there is nothing wrong with duplicating the connections with a ring circuit beneath the baseboard and soldering 'dropper' wires to the outside edge of the rails and drilling holes for them to connect to this 'backup' supply.  Not everyone is good at soldering, though it is a very useful skill to develop if you can.

Thanks alot! Will look into those kits.

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

And, what's it pulling.  A train on a curve exerts a greater drag on the loco; it does this on those big 12 inch to the foot scale ones as well, and the sharper the curve the greater the drag.  If your Peckett speeds up to normal speed on the 'back straight', at the furthest point from the track power feed, then we have established that there is no voltage drop and we know that the loco can traverse much tighter curves than rad.1; someone on here had them happily chugging around 9" radius!  We will assume that the track was new with all joiners clean and in good condition when it was laid, and that the pieces are well aligned and level to each other, and that all the joiners are a tight fit (if any are loose, a squeeze with a pair of pliers will ensure electrical conncecion

 

Some extra drag from the train will be experienced, as it will as the train is hauled or propelled through turnouts, and this will be worse if any of the vehicles have any of the following features:-

 

1) stiff running; ensure that all wheelsets run freely. Plastic axles running in plastic bearings will not run freely for long as they will wear each other, metal pinpoint bearings with plastic axles will wear the axle ends and metal pinpoint axle ends will wear the plastic bearings.  They depend on a pin point axle being free to run in an unworn cone. 

 

2) plastic wheels.  These have increased rolling resistance at the rail head and will pick up crud, which they will then share evenly between themselves and the railhead.  Get rid of them and replace them with all-metal wheelsets.

 

3) back to backs.  This is the measurement between the rear face of the wheel tyre back and that of the tyre back on the wheel on the other end of the axle, and can 'drift' with wear over time.  Track gauge in 00 is 16mm and the industry set standard for the back to back measurement is 14.5mm.  If you haven't got a proper B2B guage, set the wheels as closely as you can to a wheelset on the piece of stock that runs around the curves the most freely out of your stock.  You force the wheel along the axle, to which it is a tight fit.  Make sure the wheels run true to and square to the axles when you've finished.

 

4) wheel profiles, the shape of the edge of the wheel where it rides on top of the rail and of the flange.  Any older models may cause extra drag from this cause; it it says Lima, Triang, Triang Hornby, or Playcraft on the bottom it might be time to retire it or replace with modern wheels.  Hornby Dublo or Trix should be ok, but check the flanges are clearing the flangeways on turnouts and the plastic chairs on the insides of the rail.

 

5) couplings and buffer contact.  Try to standardise on one make of coupling as the bar profiles and material they are made of, not to mention the height at which the bar is set above the railhead, is not as standard as it should be.  The job of the bars is to keep the buffers separate so that they do not foul against each other on sharp curves or lock, causing derailments, when being propelled.  If the bar overrides with the adjacent one, the buffers come into contact and unless they are merely 'kissing' will generate side forces that will manifest themselves as more drag until a point is reached where the train is forced off the rails.

 

6) long fixed wheelbases.  Longer vehicles are not designed to be used with R1 curves and will exacerbate all of the above issues, especially 5.  Stick to short wheelbase wagons with scale wheelbases of no more than 10', 2.5mm, no more than scale 17'6" body length, 17.2mm.  

 

7) gradients.  On a curve, it is very difficult to maintain a level across the rails, and the track will form a helix corkscrew where the inside radius rail is steeper than the outer rail, leading to stesses as the inside wheel has to climb a steeper, shorter slope while having to revolve at the same speed as the outer ones, hence, more of our enemy, drag.  

 

The ultimate answer is to lay curves of greater radius of course, but this is an answer which brings more questions with it, mostly, do you have room for a layout with larger radius curves?

 

Check the Peckett as well, ensuring that all the wheel tyres and the backs where the pickups bear on them are clean, but especially that the pickups are bearing correctly on the backs of the wheels at all extremities of the wheels' sideplay, which will be at it's greatest as the loco traverses R1 curves.  Be very careful if the pickups have to be adjusted; they are known to be particularly fragile on this model and if you are doubtful, send it to Hornby or take it to a dealer of known repute in this matter.  If you can't handle a soldering iron with a degree of skill and finesse (like me), you could need a replacement Peckett, which is in nobody's interest.

Thanks for this info, i'll look into it tomorrow. And also, I really do not have the space for anything bigger than 1st radius, my room is 6 cubic metres! My coupling arrangement is also dire, I've got slim NEMs and massive Hornby couplings and plastic wheels on some of my stock as well. I have a pretty tight budget so I buy what's cheapest!

14 minutes ago, LNER4479 said:

What radius of curves are we talking about here? Can you post a picture?

Hornby 1st radius, with a W4 Peckett.

2 minutes ago, woodyfox said:

It could be a drop in current. Check the rail joins and tighten if necessary. 

I can't really tighten them seeing as the track is glued in place..

Hello!
I have a small oval of track as a layout, with some points, but in the bends my loco slows down considerably. It's not the wheelbase of the loco, seeing as it's an 0-4-0. I suspect something's wrong with the track because I've cleaned it enough for it to run properly, but it still slows down.

Just now, Mick Bonwick said:

 

Take great care with these pickups, they're very fragile. They seem to be made of much thinner material than most other locomotives of the present day. I have already found to my cost that you can't change their position more than once.

I think I said that wrong, I didn't reposition them, I poked a little needle in between the wheels and the pickups and a little bit of crud came out.

1 minute ago, smokebox said:

Try rubbing a soft pencil on the wheel backs.

Wheel backs, as in where the pickups rub along?

I've tried repositioning the pickups and I think that's done something.

I don't know whether or not it'll stay like that though.

Hello,

Yesterday I got a Hornby W4 Peckett, and in the evening it started making a small squeeking/whistling noise as it goes along. I've tried lubricating literally every moving part (even the crossheads!) with sewing machine oil and it still squeeks. What do I need to do? Or should I return it to Rails of Sheffield.

I have a Hornby 0-4-0 of the more recent slow variety and I cannot for the life of me get the body off. It comes off quite easily at the back but the smokebox just will not come loose.

Thank you!

Alright, thanks. I'll look into it.

Yes I meant PWM haha, the Hornby one is PWM because it makes a humming noise at low voltage. Is the Gaugemaster one Feedback?

Hello,

I currently have a Hornby R8250 controller, but I have a model (DJM J94) which has a coreless motor. I head WPM is bad for coreless motors because of the heat it produces. Is there a way of modifying the controller or a cheap alternative with the lowest frequency WPM possible? I know the Bachmann Speed Controller has no WPM but the shipping costs for that thing are ridiculous. The R7229 isn't much better seeing as the WPM is even higher on that one. It also can't be a feedback controller.

TIA.

00

Hello,

I'm looking to convert my Dapol A1X into an A1, and give it a different livery. I don't know how to disassemble it though. Is there a manual someone has a pic of?

TIA

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2 hours ago, DavidCBroad said:

Bottom rod Photo (3) above is bent in between the wheels.   Top Left wheel tyre is not on straight. Back to back on the Left axle is greater than that on the Right Axle. I expect the tightness has elongated the axle holes.  You could straighten the rod, straighten the tyre and ease out the back to back but these things really are rubbish designed for 4 year olds who enjoy running them at a scale 200 mph. Buying a L&Y ex Dapol 0-4-0 or a Peckett has to be a better bet long term for serious modeller, and buying a 1960s Triang Polly or Dock Shunter is a better bet for er 64 year olds who like to race 0-4-0s around a double track oval at a scale 200 mph.   Did I say I really don't like these plastic chassis and have spent fruitless hours trying to make them into something slight;y less awful.

Pecketts and Pugs are too expensive and the Polly or Dock Shunter are too hard to find for a cheap price including shipping, and I'm not exactly a serious modeller.

3 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Yes, that's what i was thinking.

What material are the wheels from this model made from?

Oh I really wouldn't know, I'll hazard a guess and just say steel?

47 minutes ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

The motor is also slightly off axis.

 

 

 

It probably is, but happens to be more noticeable in the forward direction. Because the worm drives directly onto the axle, that wheelset is pushed to one side going forward, the other side going backward. Consequently the loco sits differently on track, and all the moving component parts alignments are subtly different. Lots of small variations that sum differently forward and reverse...

 

I would suggest you have found enough already to return it on the basis of unsatisfactory running, rather than try and fix it.

I don't know how long Hattons accepts returns, seeing as I bought it a while ago.

And as SR71 said I don't have money for all that expensive equipment. If I had money to buy that stuff I would just get a new loco

Turns out it's crooked AND it's out of gauge! What do?

8 hours ago, SR71 said:

Also the back to back on the undriven axle looks much tighter than the driven. Even if this isn't the cause of the current problem it will cause derailing once you do get it running. It could be these are pinching the chassis.

How do I loosen these?

7 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Top left wheel in photo 3 looks crooked.

If that would have been the case wouldn't it be wobbly in forward and reverse?