n9

Thank you! 603 seems to be 25 smackers where I live but I will get some if all else fails. Currently I'm on my second supergluing attempt, the first one having just not glued. Is it me, or are super glues getting ever more expensive and distinctly less super? This was Gorilla. I'm giving it the full 24 hours this time, having applied a little more than before with a needle. Might be too late this time around, but I'd dearly love to learn of an option that doesn't require heat to remove.

Thanks chaps! So far it sounds like super glue or thread bond might be the way to go, albeit don't think I could heat that up later to break the bond because the plastic collar does go right through the flywheels so the adaptors are sitting right inside that plastic - you can see that in the last pic. So I'm still open to other suggestions if there are any.

I'm after a semi-permanent solution because I fear super glue might make it impossible to remove parts in future without causing damage. Is the answer a tiny amount of superglue? Enough to attach but not enough to break parts should I need to remove the flywheels later? Or something else? Detail: I'm fitting the flywheels onto a new coreless motor I bought from Tramfabriek on my N gauge Dapol Class 22. This is what the assembly looks like with the old motor: So at each end of the shaft there is a flywheel with a plastic collar that serves as a socket for the worm mountings to plug into. Here's the same assembly with the worms "unplugged": And here is the new motor with the flywheels and collars ready to go back on: The drive shaft on the old motor is 1.5mm diameter. On the new motor it's 1mm. So brass adaptors (small brass cylinders or bushes) are provided in the conversion kit and you can see those already fitted to the flywheels in the last pic. The problem is that it should (ideally?) be a pretty tight fit for the adapted flywheels onto the shaft, but it isn't. Sven (of Tramfabriek) sent me a picture showing how they should be delicately hammered on. But while mine are snug fit, I can easily slide them along the shaft with my fingers and the worms would definitely slip. Overall this has made me realise I don't have a clue about how much torque a shaft needs to overcome at N scale. Thank you! I'll end with some other inconclusive ideas that have flashed through: . Painting the shaft ends. . Kapton tape on shaft ends. . A few strands of copper wire twisted along shaft. . Copydex. . Paint as glue. . Get adaptors with slightly smaller holes if they exist. . Solder. But spaces are way too small for a tip. So wrap a bit of solid core around the soldering iron tip and use the solid core as a tiny soldering tip? I've ruled out knurling and anything requiring a lathe or dismantling of the new motor.

Sure! I'll be giving it a go soon and my intention is to post some kind of update or guide. The kit has arrived though: Pretty quick turnaround and delivery time given the usual Customs nonsense getting stuff to me. As you can see, I got the gear puller too to get the flywheels off the motor, although Sven suggested it might not be necessary and that gentle prying with a couple of flat screwdrivers either side of the driveshaft can do the trick. (I wanted the gear puller anyway because it just seems useful to have and will probably also help remove some types of wheels.) Sven also said that the plastic collars either side of the flywheels can come off just by pulling with fingers, so I will be trying that first. If you don't want to wait for me, I think the Tramfabriek Class 52 guide should give you enough general knowledge. I'll be relying on that guide for the motor swap part because I'd already stripped my Class 22 right down. My feeling is though that if you're not hamfisted with these sorts of things it should be reasonably straightforward, with the main dangers probably being bending the driveshaft or damaging delicate mouldings/cosmetics or the usual risks with soldering.

That's good. Where are you seeing this? For over a month I missed the closure, so clearly I need help staying in the loop.

Alright, so let's see if I've understood. Assuming DC operation: 1. The suppressor circuit, which in this case is a capacitor with an inductor soldered to each of its legs, doesn't care about polarity; if you supply it with positive to either leg with negative to the other, it will do its suppressing thing. 2. A positive and negative motor feed ending up respectively at the corresponding positive and negative terminals on the board, just means the forward direction of the locomotive will be, say A. But if those feeds are switched over (as in this case) it just means the forward direction of the locomotive will be B instead of A. Maybe I should have posted this in the non-DCC electronics section, but is this correct? Thanks

Thanks for the replies! Maybe I need another coffee, but I'm not too clear that they answered my question. So I'll try to rephrase: In my example above, why did Dapol take the black negative wire from the motor and solder it through the suppression circuit to the positive terminal on the board, and take the red positive wire from the motor and solder it through the suppression circuit to the negative terminal on the board? I ask because I would have expected the opposite: the black motor wire to go through the suppression circuit and end up at the negative terminal on the board, and the red motor wire to go through the suppression circuit and end up at the positive terminal on the board. I'm just dead curious why it got wired that way. Thanks!

I mean the capacitor/inductor combo wired to motors for interference suppression. (Is there a proper name for this?) Pretty sure these things often just get removed for locos on DCC if/when it interferes with performance, but I'm curious as to the wiring. This is from a Dapol loco: The pic isn't the greatest (sorry), but the black (-) wire from the motor ends up connected to the orange (+) wire leading to the positive terminal on the board, and the red (+) wire from the motor ends up connected to the grey (-) wire leading to the negative terminal on the board. (In the pic, the red motor wire runs to the farthest capacitor pin but it's concealed behind the black motor wire running to the nearest capacitor pin.) I'm curious why the polarity gets switched over. Is it because the polarity doesn't matter? Or is it because it has to be switched over for the capacitor/inductors to do their thing? Thanks!

Bless 'em. They're still there doing the right thing. This from Amanda who just processed a previously agreed (before the closure) partial refund for me today for some second hand locos that weren't quite as advertised. I wrote to them yesterday not being sure if anyone was still there: "There are a few of us still here dealing with the last emails and calls. I will complete the refund for you today, there will be a separate email sent to confirm this has been completed. Thank you for your kind words and I shall pass this on to the remaining team. If I can be of any further assistance please let me know and I will be more than happy to help." TBH, the refund didn't cover all the parts I replaced but I don't care, no argument from me, I'd much rather have Hatton's back. I hope that when the dust settles and the sky is blue again, a bunch of them will team up and continue, because 50 pages and counting to me says they were doing an awful lot right. And it's not just the volume, it's the words.

Damn. Think I must be the last person to learn of Hatton's demise. Literally just found out when I went to their site. And I'd recently been posting stuff on here as if they were still with us, completely oblivious to the fact. I am well and truly shocked. And I'm going to miss them dearly. Proper old school shop and service. What's more, finding myself living overseas, I found their Trunk service and DHL Express combo to be absolutely brilliant, in large part because it made Brexit customs hell completely painless. No other shop that I've come across does that. But generally, they were just brilliant and I loved shopping there. A huge hole has been left in the hobby. I wish them all well for the future.

Thanks for the suggestions! Definitely worth considering. I still have my next steps parked and I've been filling in the time repairing a number of locos. It's been time away well spent because the thought of starting over has been quite daunting and the loco tinkering therapeutic. It's also been good just to step back and let answers come rather than actively pursue them. And look, your suggestions/help just arrived without me even thinking about this! In the coming weeks I'm going to have a go at fixing Peco's trackwork. I'm buoyed by some of the success I had redoing some of the frogs a while back (for reasons other than bouncing), and some plasticard and brass strip has arrived this week so I can test tweaking flangeways and crossings. No idea how that'll turn out, but I think it's worth a go since I'd already bought the majority of the track, and laid about half of it, and it's a new track plan if I switch. Depending on how I get on with that, I'll either settle for my arch nemesis 🙂 or bin it/save it for a fiddle yard. I know beyond doubt that I won't be having locos behaving like rally cars. Bottom line, I haven't ruled anything out yet.

Oh I see. You mean this glue? You're right, the light board does indeed appear to be glued to the underside of the cab. I can see that being annoying if you need to get in there. In fairness, I'm going to order driveshafts plus worms in addition to new bogies because I noticed they occassionally weren't meshing properly, so I just had to open it up to inspect that side of things 🙂

Oh no! I didn't get that far into the loco. Thankfully mine seems to be fine in all other respects. I have other locos that wobble a bit and I'm okay with that, but this one is considerably worse. But useful to know there are reasonable performers out there.

I've just located some replacement bogies which I'm considering buying. So another way you can help, if you know about these things, is if you can tell me what caused these wobbly wheels. Was it a bad production run? Is it just a bad design inherent to this model? Thank you!

This is the third of the "Fine when last run" locos I purchased from Hattons recently (2D-003-012.) This is pretty much how all 3 bogies (including the spare) work on it: I'm reminded of pizzas being tossed. Clearly the wheels and/or axles are all out of kilt, and the loco has no hope of running without wobbling all over the place. Here's another look at the assembly: From what I've gleaned from 00 posts (and I fear it's a similar story for this N,) the stub axle design is something of a nightmare. In one post I read here, a lathe and pretty much a complete rebuild of the wheel and axle assembly took place to get rid of the wobble. But... is there a more sensible fix that I've missed? If not, what are my options? Would replacement bogies (assuming I can get them) be doomed to suffer the same fate? I completely stripped and cleaned the bogie assembly shown in the video and reseated everything as squarely as it will go, mainly just to discount gunk and build-up of crud being a possible cause, but to no avail. I'll end by saying these posts aren't intended as a dig at Hattons, because I've generally found their support to be good and largely I'm up for tinkering and fixing when I can, but I do think that faults like these should be clear in their descriptions and the items priced accordingly. They weren't. Here are the other threads regarding these locos if you're interested: Thanks!