legin

Thanks a lot, Cypherman, I was a bit worried about the suggestion of oiling the plastic spacers on the axles, and so now I won't.

Hi, all, Many thanks for your replies ( and links) re "plastic pickups" on the Class 4. I think the lockdown must have been causing a brainstorm. That said, I have only one split chassis loco and they were, until Cypherman, a bit of a mystery. What I should have been talking about, I think now, was wear on the stub axle journals ( David Broad) and "wear on the chassis guides in the chassis half blocks " ( The Johnster), which I think may be the same thing. So keeping those clean and lubricated is essential but with oil used sparingly. Also the type and quality of the oil is important. I have some rather expensive hypodermic syringe oil from the local model shop which doesn't have a name on it but which the repair guy, whose room is like Steptoe and Son for those of a certain vintage, uses it himself, and I have seen probably well over 200 locos, in total, awaiting repair and/or conversion there, so I assume he knows what he is talking about. And it is ok, probably essential, to lube the plastic centre sections of the axles as well. Hope I have got this right.

Sorry, forgot to add this. I have had great difficulty in driving in the trackpins into the plywood and even more getting them out.. So much so that quite a few pieces of track and all points are screwed down. My solution would be hardboard nailed to the plywood but I haven't tried this as it would mean taking up all the track which has taken light years to get right. Has anyone done this and if so, would the hardboard tend to warp and so defeat the object of the exercise?

This may be a bit off topic but is a question on mainline split chassis pickups. I have a Class 4, bought in the 1980s new but which up until 3 years ago, and after a years running 30 years ago, was in a box. Straight out of that box, with a bit of lube added, the loco, converted to DCC, has run perfectly. No sign of Mazak rot either. However, I still have the original instructions which state that, from time to time, the keeper plate should be removed and a drop of oil put on the plastic pickups. I have done this but I read with horror above that the oil contributes to the deterioration of the pickups. Are the manufacturers wrong about this and have we learned from long experience? And if the pickups are not lubricated, surely this would lead to dry plastic to metal contact which would cause deterioration quickly. Any thoughts gratefully received. Nigel

For what it's worth, I have an 8 x4 baseboard which is 2 cm plywood. This is supported round the outside by 4.5 x 2cm softwood bracing with 2 extra bracing struts at equal intervals along the length. I have had this for 3 years and it works very well. For part of the year, as dictated by the Domestic Authorities, this is removed to a vertical position for storage. It is very heavy. However, I have had no suggestion of warping at all and the layout runs perfectly at all times. I think that over-engineering the baseboard and supports is the best idea, despite the weight. 8 x 4 might seem quite small, but I have 90 feet of track on it including 22 points, so it is extremely complicated to work and therefore interesting.

I am just a bit concerned at the predominance of people who are advocating code 75 over code 100 on the basis of how the track will look. Most things will run on code 75 but not all. It depends on whether or not you value reliable running for all your stock over appearance. What you don't want is good looking track and rough running/derailments, because this is the frustrating and annoying part. Changing loco wheelsets is easy for those who have done a lot of it but foreign to many others, unfortunately including me. If you are happy to invest the time and money, fair enough. Wheels on rolling stock should generally not be a problem unless as shown on a you tube video I have lost track of, it is old Triang, in which case, there is much fiddling about and rebushing if I can remember it correctly. My track is all code 100, made up of Hornby setrack from the 1980s including some second radius points, some new Peco setrack, including points, and Peco flexitrack from the 80s. I have a number of locos from the 1980s, Mainline, Lima, Aifix and Hornby and items of rolling stock dating from the 60s to the 80s, including one or two Triang. All of them, without any modifications, will negotiate all parts of the track including all 22 points, mostly old Hornby, some of which have modified check rails. So I think it may be ease of use/ reliability versus appearance for you.

Hi, Chris, I'm not sure if this will help at all given David's and others very thorough ideas about how the layout should be run. My own interest in model railways is, however, not so much in the building and repairing, but in running them to a sequence and a time, but not a timetable.. My template is at Midford Station on the old SDJR, where the 1948 timetable is displayed at full size. Having taken several photos of this, because I live 100 miles away, I then had some idea about the trains which were run in those days. The timetable included goods trains. My first train of the day is therefore the 2. 40 a.m goods to either Evercreech Junction or Templecombe-I can't remember which without finding my old table. Do not get up at this time. Then I picked out some other trains so as to give a balanced idea of what should be running- goods to Evercreech and Templecombe from Bath and back, Milk Templecombe to Bath, Mail to Bournemouth, Coal Templecombe to Bath, Express Passenger Bath to Bournemouth, (supposed to be the first and last legs of the Pines Express respectively) and with a number of local passengers interspersed to different destinations. So I agree entirely that the best first port of call is an original timetable. I have 7 train sets and 8 locos but 2 are just shunters. I drew up a sequence table with train number, type, stock, from and to, stops, engine, and a big space for notes at the end. Fourteen trains in all, which with all the shunting and loco turning, takes several hours to complete. You can do it in bits. I then drew up another table of timings. Although I have 2 stop watches, I find it impossible to keep track of multiple trains and so the timings are based not on distance but how long a particular train is going for. So the Express is timed at 6 minutes Bath to Evercreech and stop and a further 6 minutes Evercreech to Bournemouth, but one minute less on the return.The stopping passengers are 6 minutes bath to Evercreech, 2 minutes Evercreech to Templecombe, and 5 minutes Temple to Bournemouth, total 13 mins and so on.. The clock is stopped at stations and where there has to be a signal stop ( or an accident!). Because the layout is relatively small, trains travel at between a scale 10 mph for goods and 20 for passenger. I have a 1952 publication by Henry Greenly (written for Trix Twin which I used to have) about all this, and there are some interesting chapters about sequencing, marshalling of wagons in order, dropping some wagons and coaches at different destinations and of course collecting them. What is essential is that all stock must, at the end of the session, be back where it started, and where a loco is at A then to get to B it has to travel there either on a train or light. I got the book from the Trix website for next to nothing and the guy running it had one or two left when I purchased 3 years ago. I don't suppose they are in great demand. Nigel

If you can go bigger than 2nd radius, I would. I have an inner circuit of Peco 2nd radius and an outer of about 3rd radius flexitrack. I have a whole variety of locos from new to 30 years old. Although my Hornby 2P is said to be ok for 2nd radius and above, it has repeatedly shed its traction tyres on second radius, particularly the inner tyre. My Airfix Royal Scot, 30 years old, is jumping slightly when traversing the 2nd radius. My Mainline class 4 also seems to be grinding slightly on the inner curves. All of these locos are fine on the outer radius. So whereas the manufacturers might say that your locos are fine on second radius, maybe they should say that they are sort of fine. I know what has been said above about flexitrack and second radius and broadly I agree. However, if you use this and have space for lets say a 2.5 radius, it might make all the difference. A Tracksetta would be fairly essential.

Hi, Philip, I agree about graphite. It's very slippery, but after having to clean the track before every session without the graphite, I haven't had to do it for months now with it. Swings and roundabouts.. I mentioned it to Sir Topham as a downside, for me at least, of running without traction tyres. Even so, I have an Airfix 4F, tender drive of course, which has 6 traction tyres on the tender but which slips badly in places with a moderate load. I think the trick is to try to confine it as far as possible to the points and then to remove it from the remainder of the track, particularly curves, from time to time. Nigel

If this is any use, I have a Hornby loco drive 2p which kept shedding its traction tyre on the left front driver, despite the fact that it was never run on anything less than 2nd radius curves which are supposed to be ok for it. Last year, I took both left and right side tyres off and ran the loco without. My layout is DCC and I have 22 points. Not once has it shorted out on any of the points which are a mix of 30 year old Hornby, new insulfrog Peco and 30 year old Peco electrofrog. It did however tend to buck slightly over the old Hornby points, but so do some of the other locos.. This year I have added graphite to the track, mainly for the o-6-os on insulfrog points and the 2P struggles without the tyres on some of the curves when pulling 3 coaches or more. So- the loco works well with small exceptions. If it were heavier, I doubt if it would slip at all.

Hi, David, I wondered the same thing and last night took out the motor unit and looked at it with a magnifying glass. I couldn't see a gap between the plastic drive cog attached to the wheel and the frame. So with the gearing removed, I eased the B2B out from about 14.2 to 14.5 and the wheels spun freely. That is a bit of a catch 22, because of the tender wheels binding on curves when its at 14.5, and it had started again to pickup intermittently. So now it goes quite well overall, except that a lot of power needs to be applied before it will start, and then it can be backed off. What I couldn't really understand was that when the tender was moved from side to side on the rails, the wheels were not far off sliding down onto the sleepers with he B2B at about 14.2 but when I opened them up to 14.5, there was still play between wheels and track but the flanges were much closer to the rail and it picked up power much better. Andy G is kindly sending me one of his unwanted Crab tenders so I can do a direct comparison. I am quite determined to get to the bottom of this because I think now that just a small problem need to be fixed before the loco runs perfectly and it would be rather a shame to give up after all the help I have had. Another point is that, despite the loco driving wheels moving freely by hand, I was a bit suspicious that on the curves, the wheels might somehow be responsible for the slowing down, rather than it being a fault with the tender. Pushing the loco (tender removed) by hand showed that it would freewheel for some distance by itself. So with the loco minus tender, I hauled it round the track at crawl speed with one of my DCC locos to see if it would slow down or stall on the curves. It did neither, and so the loco itself is free running and any fault lies with the tender. Nigel

Two points: (pardon the pun) First, I have a problematic Lima Crab which has featured quite a lot on these pages recently and which would not move properly on the track nor go over dead frogs. The rear tender pickup wheel was not picking up power from the rails but would respond occasionally to power to the wheel in the cradle. It had not been used since 1988 when nearly new. So the rear tender wheels were removed and thoroughly cleaned with isopropyl as was the wiper which was making good contact. It still did not work. so the offending wheels were again removed and this time sanded with 180 grit paper. It then worked. The motto of this is that with a loco which has not seen use for a long time might well have badly oxidised wheels and wipers which need some brute force cleaning. Not all plain sailing though, because when I redid the B2Bs to the correct width, it became a bad runner again but widening them to 14.5mm, despite the thick flanges, did the trick. But it binds on curves which is another story. Second, I have a Hornby 2P (DCC) on which the traction tyres kept coming off on 2nd radius curves, so I took them off. The result is that the loco runs normally and does not short out on any of my 22 points or anywhere else, despite the groove in the wheel. So at least from my own experience, I can't see any danger in what has been suggested above.

A bit late in the day for this reply, but I have recently discovered a whole host of problems with my Lima Crab which I bought in 1987 or thereabouts and which has done to date only about 9 months running. I have received enormous help from members on the forum to get the loco going properly and it's under this part of the forum entitled "tender pickup" if that's any use. The main problem was that although the motor ran well when power was applied directly to it, and it ran when power was applied to the front tender pickup wheels, it was not moving or not moving well when power was applied to the other set of tender wheels. I had cleaned the wheel front and back with isopropyl, so it was clean-or so I thought. But I had to remove the rear axle wheels and sand them with 180 grit paper to properly get rid of oxidisation which had built up and which the isopropyl would not touch. Now it works. I did the same with the wiper tip. So if the loco has not had any use for some time, it seems clear that these brass amalgam wheels are prone to this. I also eased out the B2Bs slightly so that the wheel rim outer face would contact the rail better, though this did lead to some binding on the curves.

Hi, David, I have narrowed the B2B on the tender rear wheels, as suggested to slightly below 14.5mm but I only have a 14.5 gauge and so it's a bit of guesswork. The front tender wheels are the same. The rear wheels no longer revolve freely now though, which was the case before I first removed them. It's not a wheel problem because I swapped the front and back axles and wheels around and the original front wheels were revolving freely. However, despite my misgivings that narrowing the B2B of the rear wheels would lead to pickup difficulties, it has not, and the loco is still negotiating the dead frog points ok. It also seems to be getting round the curves better without significant slowing and so what you said about the B2Bs being important has been borne out. My loco has and has always had screws to fix the ends of the drawbar to the loco and tender so I will attempt to get hold of a small spring for the tender end. I had seen this article when I was looking for solutions to get the Crab running but it appeared to me to deal with the loco centre drivers and mine seem to be ok. I was a bit surprised at what was said by someone about the 7F, which was classified as being able to haul 10 coaches unassisted over the Mendips-2 more than any other loco apart from the 9Fs! The downside was their riding qualities at higher speeds. Nigel

Hi, David. Thanks for this. I shall have a look again at the tender wheel B2Bs and tweek them inwards slightly to see if that makes a difference on the curves. As I said before, I don't think it's to do with the actual loco wheels, since I have not altered these at all and they turn freely by hand. I have just had to alter this post because I thought you were referring to springs under the drawbar retaining screws. The thin sprung wire connecting the 2 drawbar screw is till there. However, the guy from the shop, when he was converting to DCC 3 years ago obviously lost the spring which goes under the drawbar attaching screw to the loco itself and he has replaced this with another. But there is no similar spring under the tender fixing screw so that when it is done up, the drawbar is held rigid at that end (the tender end). Do you know if there should be a spring under this screw to enable the tender to pivot on the drawbar? Dead frogs: I have recently become a devotee of graphite, even though it causes some of my locos to slip occasionally. However, the running, particularly the 0-6-0s over the dead frogs is excellent and all my locos will now crawl at less than walking pace. So the Crab is now having no trouble, despite its relative lack of pickups, in getting over the dead frogs. Apologies for getting you mixed up with uax6-Andy. I think it was because there were such a lot of posts. And I have just been to Specsavers which obviously hasn't worked! Nigel

Thanks Paul. This gives me some confidence to tackle bigger issues, including the re-wheeling. The loco had multiple problems before I even came onto the forum and had been written off by my local model shop as a static exhibit. but since it had only done about 9 months running from new, I thought I had nothing to lose. Because of a lack of instructions, they could not get the loco body off but I managed that and found that the brass strip leading to the loco drawbar securing screw had become detached from the wire leading to the driving wheels. That was fixed as was one of the wipers not fully contacting the front offside driver. The wiring had been butchered by the shop after they had converted it 3 years ago to DCC just before I set up my first layout for nearly 30 years, and then the chip and its wiring removed. The motor worked well but It had become disconnected from the wire leading to the tender wipers. There was no connection either between the motor and the tender body, so no earth. I couldn't figure why not and so I put a wire from the motor earth to the tender drawbar securing screw. So far, so good, but when it went onto the track, as I have said on here, no pickup from the rear tender pickup wheel, even though the wiper appeared to make good contact. That's when I got stuck and came onto the forum because I did not want to enlarge the hole in which the tender rear axle is carried to allow the wheel a bit of downward play for fear of the wheel cog losing contact with the motor cog, tolerances of course being very fine. That wheelset was not revolving freely either Thanks to the enormously helpful suggestions on here, the faulty tender wheel and wiper were given a pretty drastic going over with fine sandpaper to remove oxidisation, tender wheels swapped front to back after I had been told that they were splined, and opening up the B2Bs did the trick. It took weeks of spare time (most of it thinking) but was more than worth it! Nigel

Hi, Andy, I have sent you a PM and due to the number of excellent suggestions I have had, I have unfortunately mixed you up with Il Grifone-David, who dug out the info for the B2Bs and gave me other useful information as well. So many thanks to him as well. Nigel

Thank you john and thank you everyone. You've been brilliant. All the suggestions have been very worthwhile in that things which were not actually faulty nevertheless needed chalking off and there was much valuable help where things did actually require alteration to get the loco back on the road. Apart from the driving wheels binding on curves, the motor itself runs near silently apart from the loco as a whole crashing over some points as is normal for old heavy locos. All my old ones do it. As an afterthought, I don't think that the Mazak is causing the centre drivers to bind on curves, and some points, because the plastic keeper plate has not expanded outwards towards the centre drivers and there is good clearance side to side for those wheels. I only have a small ( but very complex) layout and so trains never go above a scale 20mph but at this speed on the straight, the Crab will stall or nearly stall on some of the tighter curves.So I am not sure what is causing it. I doubt if it is the quartering because I haven't touched it from new and the loco is not rolling eccentrically as it moves along. My 4-6-0s, an Airfix Scot and Mainline standard 4 are fine so I don't think it's the wheelbase at fault. Also on my old layout, many years ago, I think I had some first radius curves which caused the Crab no trouble. Nigel

Hi, Andy, Many thanks for all your trouble and for the information in relation to the Romfords. The good news is that I have had the loco running for an hour now and it runs over all my 22 points bar one without stalling. So both tender pickup wheels are picking up power. It's the first time in 30 years that the loco has run properly, because until 2 years ago, I didn't have the space for a layout. The domestic authorities have relented and allowed me 6 months every year! I have tweeked the B2Bs on the tender wheels to just short of 14.5mm as you advised, but it's a bit of a guess, since my B2B gauge is exactly 14.5. The wheels, however, are now further apart than they were originally. I think also that the Mazak tender weights might just have worked to counter the slight distortion in the motor block so that the pickup wheels are firmly on the track. It will also thread all the points, a horrible mix of mostly my old Hornby (with modified check rails) and new Peco So far so good, except that the loco is slowing on curves all of which are at least 2nd radius and some points (2nd radius again). Although the drivers appear to be moving freely by hand, there must be some binding when on the track. This is less so when the loco is in reverse, so I think it might be a slight Mazak problem, fairly easily solved Tenders: this is a more than generous offer and although it doesn't look at this moment that there is a problem any longer, there was at first some momentary hesitation when the front tender pickup wheel was on a dead frog, so I'm not completely convinced that the pickup difficulty won't reoccur, particularly if there is any more distortion. The other thing is that I cannot get continuity between motor earth terminal and the engine drawbar and so have had to put in a wire direct to the tender drawbar screw. If I have got this right, the motor is supposed to earth directly through the tender chassis. I don't know if you are a DCC man, but I read that type 2 Ringfields have to be isolated from the chassis before a decoder could be fitted, and before I got the layout resurrected 2 years ago, the local model shop converted all my 30 year locos to DCC. I just wonder , since the motor is similar, if they had to do that to mine. I can see under the motor itself that there is a small metal plate which I presume is supposed to contact the brass strip which locates under the tender axles and into which goes the drawbar screw . But it's not happening. The long and the short of that is that I would love to have one of your tenders, provided that you are really thinking of scrapping them. As you say, I can transfer the motor innards and wheels from my tender if necessary. Wasdavetheroad suggested that putting the motor block on a piece of glass would reveal whether it was square and this worked for me. I will of course pay the postage and give you something for it. So if you haven't changed your mind,, I will give you my address. Thanks a lot also for the rmweb article, which I need to read again a lot more carefully. I can take locos to pieces and fashion scratch repairs but that's about it at the moment. I've always been more interested in running trains to a sequence and a timetable. However, the Crab drivers have always looked completely odd to me and changing them for wheels to scale is something I would like to do, (apart from getting the quartering correct). So with the help of the article, I shall have a go when the layout comes down. I am also fortunate that my neighbour, who gave up model railways years ago, used to work for 3 model rail shops in the midlands and has converted literally hundreds of locos to Romfords, if I get stuck. What a difference it makes to the stance of the Crab, as shown in the article photos-completely transformed.I am slightly puzzled about what you say about the pivot position. Does this mean that when the eccentric is horizontal the pivot should be vertical as opposed to leaning forward at its base? I think also that some weathering might enhance its looks because it's in MIdland livery and looks a bit plasticky to me but I think that modifying the loco so that it is wider at the cab end than the tender is probably a bridge too far for me. Regards, Nigel (which of course is Legin backwards).

Thanks Andy (and everyone else), I actually have an Airfix 4F, same age as the Crab, but it's my best DCC runner and so unavailable for conversion, I would have to get another one, or maybe even a second Crab and then filch the tender. I'd like to see the article you mention though, if it is not too much trouble, either to modify my Crab or for future reference if I can get this one going. My e-mail is nwhittakerw@outlook.com. Anyway, I have had some success with the Crab, but discovered I have two problems rather than one. Having swapped the front wheels to the back and getting the B2Bs around but not more than 14.5mm, all the wheels turn freely now and with everything back together both sets of wheels will turn indefinitely when power is applied to each in turn. So nothing wrong now with the electrics. The bad news is that I have also put the loco with tender on a piece of glass, as suggested by wasdavetheroad (thanks for that tip) to check whether both tender pickup wheels are resting on it, and they are not. I detached the motor block from the tender chassis and it was rocking very slightly on the wheels, unless minimal finger pressure was applied to the top of the motor when it didn't rock. So I don't know at this stage whether it's the tender chassis or motor block which is distorted. I have loosened the chassis to motor block screws a half turn to allow the motor block and wheels to sit on the track without being held fast by the tender chassis-so when it goes on the circuit tomorrow with all the DCC locos removed, it will be clear if it is the motor block at fault. If it is, then what can be done about it is another problem, but I will report back tomorrow.

Apologies for the delay in replying. Tried the day before yesterday but submit button not working. I have removed the back wheels and thanks for telling me that they were probably splined, They are. The wiper is polished and the back of the pickup wheel shiny, so it appears to be making contact. Once I had moved the wheels slightly, I noticed that they were starting to spin freely so I think that the plastic cog attached to the pickup wheel may have been fouling the motor body assembly. I shall remove the commutator so that I can see if the plastic cogs going to the offending wheel are moving freely as well. When I removed them all 3 weeks ago, they all appeared to be in new condition and I removed some tiny sprigs from them. I could see on you tube 2 days ago that the drive cogs have caused some jammiing trouble on LIma models. But when I applied power to the front "good" tender wheel, both wheelsets went round, although perhaps not as quickly as they should. I am still mystified about the loss of drive after a few seconds when the rear "faulty" wheel is powered. The tender has just the 2 pickup wheels, front and back. Middle is a dummy.

Thanks a lot. Swapping the wheels is a great idea, but I was not sure how to get them off because the axles are held and fully enclosed in, the motor underframe. I spoke this morning with a friend who long since gave up model railways, but still has 200 locos!! on most of which he has installed Romford wheels. He too thinks that the tender wheels may be splined and to lever them off with tweezers either side of the axle and pressing equally on the wheel backs..I have spent absolutely ages on the net trying to find out how the wheels are held onto the axle, looking mostly at LIma diesels, but with no result I suspect that it would have been good practice of Lima to have driven wheels splined rather than simply a push fit on the axle. I have been suspecting also that the tender chassis might be warped, given its age or alternatively that the engine drawbar is bent ( though it doesn't look like it), forcing the rear of the tender upwards. All 4 tender drivers appear to be ok on my workbench but I haven't tried them on glass, so many thanks for that wasdavetheroad. I am still not getting why the rear tender pickup wheel revolves with the loco in the cradle for a few seconds with power applied and then stops. Maybe the wiper is losing contact after a few revolutions, although it seems to be hard against the wheel back. I have tried to sand the wiper with the wheel in situ but that is rather difficult and removing the wheels would allow me to get at it properly and to access properly the back of the wheel.

Sorry, John, I forgot to say that there is clear daylight between the tender Mazak weights and the wheels, so this does not appear to be affecting running.

Hi, I am hoping this thread is still alive. I have managed to get contact between the rear tender pickup wheel and motor by sanding the wheel, both tread and rear face, and the wiper at the point of contact with the wheel, with 180 grit paper. There must have been a lot of oxidation on there because isopropyl did not touch it. The wheel still will not spin freely with drive cogs removed. A track test shows no improvement, with stalling still evident when the front tender pickup wheel is on a dead frog, and touching a metal clip between rear wheel and track does not get the loco moving, nor will pressure on the tender rear, nor moving the tender side to side to try and get contact. But I am now really perplexed, because, applying current to the front tender wheel when the loco is in the cradle is fine and both sets of wheels spin indefinitely but applying current to the rear wheel makes it revolve well for a few seconds and then it stops and will not restart. I don't understand this at all because it is obviously nothing to do with contact between wheel and track and there is clearly good contact between wheel and wiper for it to start at all, and between the Peco wheel brush and the tyre for the same reason. The rear tender wheel still needs to come off, somehow, to get it revolving freely, but this now appears to be the least of my worries and not the main cause of the problem.

Thanks John, I hadn't thought of this one at all. The tender body goes on easily when the Mazak weights are exactly on position, but I have never looked at the clearance between the top of the rear wheel and the weight. So I will try the loco with weights on and weights off. I think the thing to do first is to attach power to the motor direct, and with it out of the tenderchassis, to see if the wheels turn properly. If they don't, it's not the Mazak but that is not to say that when the loco is actually on the track, with weights installed, they are not fouling the tender driving wheels. The other suggestion above from 34... is also worth a try because the loco has been sitting for so long in my roof that some oxidisation of the wheels could have occurred as well, and possibly on the wiper itself at the point of contact between wiper and wheel. Unfortunately at the moment, I can't find my crocodile clips to attach to the motor, but they must be somewhere!