Sweep

50 minutes ago, RodneyS said:

£7.00 including P & P is reasonable.  Unfortunately I have a S & D 7F with the same problem and Bachmann only supply a complete set of all wheels with coupling rods for £28.00.

Rather a lot for one gear.

Reading the above posts makes me wonder if the same gear is used on other locos.

Rodney

Ouch, someone on here will no doubt be able to tell you if there's an alternative . 

I've had to replace the driving axle of a Hornby Britannia and whilst this seems to come with a brass bearing the Bachmann wheelsets seem much more robust.

I've now attended to both the A1 and my other WD and they both run really well. These locos are about 2005 vintage and I wonder/hope that they were going throught a bad patch at that time resulting in these gear wheel failures as I've many more Bachmann locos and just hope I won't need to do this with them all.

4 hours ago, Half-full said:

You would still have the same issues, the secret is in the application of the fixative, not the grade of ballast.  Are you fully misting the ballast, then applying a water/pva/detergent mixture?  And how are you applying the mixture?

I've it a small plant spray bottle, if I screw the nozzle down tightly it produces a fine mist but it hardly dampens the ballast. Perhaps I just need to keep at it.

I wondered if I'd be better moving up a grade of ballast from fine to medium, and can anyone recommend an alternative than woodland scenes?

I've laid the track and I've started ballasting with woodland scenes fine ballast but although if wet it in the usual way with washing up liquid etc, it still floats away leaving a horrible mess. A Can anyone tell me what i'm doing wrong? Is it the wrong ballast, or wrong size? I'm laying it dry and then dropping glue on it, should I spread glue and then add the ballast on top? It's beginning to annoy me now. 

11 hours ago, 313201 said:

Can I ask please what the average cost of Bachmann locomotive parts is roughly.

 

I have a K3 and a standard clas 4 2-6-0 that both need parts ranging from the screws to hold the motor cradles + gear cogs between motor and driving wheels in place right up to a full valve gear set.

 

The valve gear is for the K3 after 1 of the tiny pins that holds the connecting rod from the piston to the driving wheels wore out resulting in the rod dropping off and going awol.

 

Many thanks in advance for any replies and I hope everyone is ok

I just got a replacement driving axle for £4.71 plus postage, when you consider this includes vat, it's been shipped from China, stored on a shelf packaged and posted to me, I reckon that's pretty good value.

Yep, agree totally - excellent service.

Thanks everyone, the new axle arrived today and it was a fairly simple fit. I now find that I've another WD and an A1 similarly affected, but the service from Bachmann was excellent and at £7.00 inc p &up fairly reasonable.

I've now heard back from Bachmann, they are sending me a driving wheel set which they say is a reasonably easy repair. I'm just wondering how easy it is to remove the pins which secure the connecting rods - is it just a matter of pliers and a gentle tug?

Any news on the likely release of LMS type junction signals?

9 hours ago, 34theletterbetweenB&D said:

I should think it is a 'common fault' in the technical sense that it will be a recognised failure mode in this style of construction: moulded gear force fitted onto a splined axle. I have had it happen once among the 70 odd Chinese production mechanisms purchased over the last 20 years: it happened to occur on a Hornby model, sorted out under warranty.

 

The difficulty from an end customer perspective is that we cannot obtain enough data to determine how 'common' this failure mode is, in terms of the proportion of models affected. (And any data collection attempt is going to be fruitless, we don't know how many models were produced, nor how many were sold, nor how many were operated, nor how much operation those that were operated actually got.)

 

My educated guess (years in QA) is that the proportion of truly  random failure of this type is pretty low, occasional mismatches where an axle at the top end of the axle diameter distribution meets a moulding at the bottom end of the hole diameter distribution. On line discussions have 'found' a couple of OO models with higher incidence of this failure, where the most likely explanations are systemic: the moulding or machining was a bit 'off' from nominal dimension, or there was poor process control of dimensional variation, or assembly was under 'deviant' thermal conditions. (Winters are cold in China, and many small production shops are not heated, major cause of this class of problem in my direct experience.)

Before I realised that 00 was easier to see I dabbled in N gauge for 20 odd years and had one or two locos affected, luckily though they were within the gear train and not on any axles so there replacement was a simple drop in- many thanks for your thoughts 

10 hours ago, Tony Cane said:

I have some options of exchange of parts that should fix you chassis.

Please PM me if you wish to pursue this further.

Thanks Tony, I contacted Bachmann this morning before I'd seen your post. I stripped in down and it is a hairline radius split in the cog on the driving axle. I've quite a number of Bachmann locos and hope this isn't going to be a common fault - is there a particular cause?

Hi. I've a WD 2-8-0 which has developed a realistic clunk when running it's about every wheel revolution. I've had it apart and had a look but can't see anything. Without the motor you can push the chassis up and down and it's very smooth. The motor also runs well on it's own. The only thing I can think it might be is a split gear wheel somewhere. Can anyone suggest what else it might be, and how easy is it to fix with poor close up eyesight and five thumbs on each hand. Thanks.

I remember the shop in the 1970s we used to call 'Mrs Alf's' in Blackburn opposite King George's Hall, can't remember it's proper name, then there was Mercers in Northgate and Harry Welch in Preston, plus Wolstenholme Handicrafts in Accrington which we used to call Wolstencrafts Handyholmes, for a short time we had a model shop in Stacksteads near Bacup which I think was part of a newsagents - all gone now.