Bigeddie

On 19/05/2022 at 22:05, cravensdmufan said:

Yes Andy, though I was worried about attacking a one day old £200 loco!

 

The similar treatment that I gave my Bachmann Co-Cos wasn't so critical as the it didn't matter if I "over filed" and the centre axle ended up slightly loose - the bogie was always going to be good and stable on the outer four wheels.  With a Bo-Bo it's important to file across straight and not take too much off.

 

My advice to owners of the new 91 would be:  if your loco happens to  run well enough over your pointwork  but is just a bit noisy then leave well alone!  Mine dipped quite noticeably on a few points (especially at very low speed) and actually derailed a couple of times.  That's why I decided to try the modification.

Well I received my class 91 durham cathedral just over a week ago, looks great but sadly derails on my 2nd and 3rd radius curves with inclines and at some points . I checked a number of my other locos and they are all fine. Yes, some show a slight wobble but nothing horrific and no other derailments, on close examination i am convinced its the fore/aft inflexible bogie issue mentioned earlier , but I suspect exacerbated hugely by the weight of this unit.

i also have a couple of 2020 apt power cars which are not very forgiving ( indeed i tweaked my layout to accommodate them)  both these locos have bogies which pivot fore aft when not pressed onto the main body, but move very little if anything when pressed ( held toward the body)  my other similarly bogied locos ( modern Bachmann , older Hornby or very old triang) all retain some significant forward / aft movement when pressed) of course the vast majority of them have much of the weight ( the motor) directly on a bogie and not pressing the body down onto the bogie.

My APT power car handles the curves etc ok, but the class91 will not, the class 91 is a little shorter ( but surely that should if anything help) The only other difference is weight, the class 91 at c600g is 50% heavier than the apt at c400g. Both have most of the weight in the body so its borne by the bogie/ body joint.I suspect this “locks” the bogie more firmly and making the loco very sensitive to imperfect track laying, in particular tighter (2nd radius) curves on incline changes and points.

so, sadly i will have to send it back tomorrow ( internet purchase direct from Hornby arrived 11 days ago) interestingly one of the people i spoke to at Hornby mentioned its known to have trouble with 2nd radius curves, pity it does not say that in the advert, on the box, or the instructions. 
 

So i think i put this one down to what some consultants at work used to call “suboptimal” design. Although I’ll never know if my tracklaying was perfect,  would it have coped!

11 hours ago, zoomer1979 said:

Well I finally feel vindicated today. I got to run my full set after I fitted pinpoint bearings and changed the pickups to low friction axle type, as sold by @DCCconcepts. Guess who doesn't need a second powered NDM for the 14-car formation? Well I still do! It does however run fine without the unpowered NDM. I will maybe try what others have and lighten the load of it.

On another note, having returned a couple of the intermediate coaches for repair to Hornby due to badly aligned bogies, the repairs have turned out to be super glue bodges. With the top bogie clips popping out and causing adjacent coaches to ride high and low, they decided to glue down the parts instead of replacing the clips. They have now warped again. See attached pictures. Another frustration for this underwhelming model.

Neil

H

Hey Neil, sorry to here of your challanges, bit surprised at the bogie bodge, maybe its worth ringing them, explaining that it is an unacceptable temporary measure and in any case ineffective and insisting they replace the faulty bogies?

Hey i had alot of trouble getting on the site this morning, still can only get in via a link on twitter. Anyone else having trouble ( i get a server error message)

14 hours ago, Darius43 said:

I have replaced the weak, flimsy and broken Hornby pantograph with a robust metal one.  I modified the Hornby base (which is made of a softish metal alloy) to accept the new pantograph base which is fixed with a small screw into the place where the original Hornby plastic lower arm attached.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new pantograph isn’t strictly correct but does look much better and, unlike the original, stays up.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

Hey Darius looks pretty good to me, which panto arm did you use?

Hi Paul Thanks for the APT expansion kit, it looks a really great kit, now I just need to find the time to get to work on it!

i was thinking when I saw the post about the chop shop dav4 trailer ( which looks good) given that one of those at 00 would allow people with the 80’s set to run the apt-q , might there be a call for them if you produced it? I would certainly be interested.

1 hour ago, JSpencer said:

 

Indeed my first efforts will be trying replace the shell. If not then replace only the entire NDM. It is a pain to have to send back the entire 7 car train (especially as I am outside the UK). I have no use for a bunch of APT coaches by themselves.

I only wish it was just a short. It takes seconds just to prune away a cap.

 

 

Hey JS try emailing them and explaining, my 7 car set clearly had a gear /driveshaft issue ( sounded like a bag of nails and stiltingly moved)  i explained the rest seemed fine, And they were ok for me to send back just the ndm, albeit i had the packaging from the extra ndm ( which seems ok so far) but the key piece of pack8ng is the plastic (albeit ugly) so you could use that and well pack it.

30 minutes ago, scumcat said:

I want to remove  mine before They blow, but I can’t seem to remove the pantograph, any suggestions please.

There are two screws accessed from above , the pantograph stands on two pillars and they are screwed  at the bottom on each side. Try shining a light to see where they are , or look at one of the youtube videos of people like 00rail dismantling theirs. The screws are the same as the two under the body.

the panto screws are either side of the panto rather than at the ends

20 hours ago, marcusd666 said:

Same here I wouldn't recommend Them I have a used them and my NDM'S Started clashing and started getting derailing. They are great for uncoupling but sadly on my 1 second radius curve with a small y point they are no use.

Would they still work with a shim wide enough to fix the length between the couplers?

3 hours ago, apt-e said:

Hi all,

While I am recovering, and trying to keep sane after watching daytime TV, I have been working on the n gauge version of PoP 2.

Pilot completed and pc 3/4 well in hand.

I will post some photos when I am happy with what I have designed so far.

 

Regards

 

Paul.

 

Hey Paul, get well soon, best regards

2 hours ago, jonnyuk said:

sorry but been new is no excuse. That should give any shop a blank canvas to lay the shop out correctly and most importantly neatly and presentable, get your new products on display front and centre, not on the top shelf in boxes and amongst all the second hand stuff, start off how you mean to go on.

The signal box, not too far away sells both new and old stock, second had stuff is a right gold mine but its all nicely on display, great value, all labelled up in a sorted manor, they are night and day. I know which shop i'd rather visit.

Anyway this is detracting from what this thread is about, the APT, not individual shops.

To bring this back on track, i've debated in my mind for weeks about should i, should i not get one of these. Having seen the old and new models side by side it does make the new one look good, trouble is you read all the bad stuff (faults people are having) about the model and think its not worth it, but actually you have to bring it back to, do i like the model? Take it at face value can i justify the price?

For me the answer is still a no,  there is stuff on order this year, class 91 set, Blue pullman hst set, deltic, P2 2007 and a couple of wagon sets and £430 goes along way to paying for it.

 

   

Well, fair enough, and you’ll be happy i am sure with your other investments, the only thing to keep in mind is, how happy will you be if they really do sell out and, next year your only route to one is to pay whatever the e bayers are baying for…….

6 hours ago, rembrow said:

No instructions but they are placed in the boxes in separate clear plastic bags, near to the relevant coaches. The ndm spares are inside their clam shell boxes and the other two are in the egg box style trays.

Be interesting to see if the hunt couplings are each the equivalent dimensions to the Hornby counterpart.

it is a bit weird that Hornby fail to mention the different coupling sizes, given it is not obvious until you look for it, how many frustrated owners who aren’t on this forum will there be? And how many unnecessary returns will that generate, all they needed to do was mention it on the service sheet

19 hours ago, scumcat said:

So I emailed west hill wagon works last weekend to tell them I felt the APT hunts couplings are unusable and got no answer. So I politely asked again on Wednesday still no reply. Has anyone else had difficulty with email replies from this company before?

Hey try giving them i call, they answered promptly and were helpful when i called recently, i think they are just a small outfit and can get swamped.

22 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

Took it to the father’s layout for a bit of high speed testing. 
 

 

Hey Paul how big is the shed empire?

43 minutes ago, Wolf27 said:

Things didn’t end so well tonight.

Omg gutting, damage report?

32 minutes ago, MoonM said:

With apologies for the construction site that is my house (!), here is a video I've taken of my APT power car on my boy's work-in-progress DC layout. Anyone experienced anything like this degree of slowing on corners? If so, is there an obvious fix? 

Thank you! 

 

Not had this problem myself but

1 ) is it run in yet?

2) does it happen both directions and with the car placed both ways round?

3) 2nd or 3rd rad curves? 

12 hours ago, letterspider said:

Is anyone else having a problem with their motor car derailing over points.

The bogies jump when running toe to heel - conseuqntly I can't go more than 50% speed before there is a derailment

My trackwork is PECO Code 100 and nothing else has problems running over it

Hi I had this problem but only on one of my std insulfrog code 100 peco points, I have realigned the point and adjusted the levels with shims . It seems a lot better. 
 

there is still some noise on this point and a little on one of the others, but no derailment. Might be worth spending some time with a level and straight edge to get the points perfect?

Well my long awaited 7 car set just arrived direct from Hornby and I think it looks great. On the packaging front, whilst not the ultimate in packing, i thought that putting the decorated box in a tight fitting brown cardboard box with a corrugated packing piece, then putting that inside bubble wrap and two pieces of 20mm foam padding inside a corrugated box was fairly good. No obvious damage inside although i have not run it yet.

i really like the internal detail, although i will eventually enhance it., and the cab is so much better than the 80’s version.
 

i have ordered the Hunt couplers ( @£8 they seem sensible for a punt!) 

i do wish Hornby had better fitted the capacitors or at least shrouded them so it doesn’t look like the coaches are carrying loosely packed 45gall drum freight as a sideline! I have seen the 00 rail capacitor move videos and will probably try this in the future, but as yet am am not confident enough in my modelling skills, particularly removing and re soldering to the board. It’ll be interesting to find out how you other braver souls get on. Still i may try asking my brother ( who used to build aviation sensor packs when he was a technician) to do the “scary” bits.

Anyway off now to see whether a full 14 car set looks weird on my little layout. In any case it’ll look a lot better than the imaginary DJM version ever will on anyones setup……..

6 hours ago, zoomer1979 said:

Both types of pantograph are poor and flimsy

Can you explain “both types” I thought the ndm’s only come with the early type  not the high speed type.?

35 minutes ago, Markwj said:

John has kindly listed the prices in his post from the Hornby site which are different to the ones on the printed sheet.

I ordered early on, and paid 484.99 for the 7 car , 89.99 for the  double coach packs , 109.99 for the ndm and 39.99 for the APT U single pack. I did cancel the aptU when i realised it was included  in the 7 car pack. I did think about buying several aptu and anothe 5 car set  to cut and shunt together one of the proposed sets  but decided that was too much to risk with my unrefined modelling skills!

50 minutes ago, ac1874 said:

So basically Hornby have covered their 'losses' in honouring the preorder price with direct customers (in the face of increased manufacturing and shipping costs) by increasing the cost to their retailers.....

Ok forgive me, i’m confused, if a retailer takes a preorder, say last year do they pay Hornby the price at which they preordered (as is dine by retail consumers) or the price at date of dispatch? (I had presumed the t&c were similar, or at worst the retailer was asked for a deposit or prepayment.) some retailers i have used ask for a deposit some for payment upfront, i was surprised Hornby only charge retail cons on dispatch.

4 hours ago, Markwj said:

Yes I was told week of 17th with 5 car due this week which we have now got to the end of!

I suspect the first anyone will hear is when those of us whose cc have changed get a please update your card details email, unfortunately i am told you cant update the details until they try and fail to use it! And then you only have 7 days

6 hours ago, Markwj said:

Well so much for the nice lady telling me the 5 car was due this week- no obvious sign of arrival anywhere! 

Well Hornby responded to my email asking about my 7 car set today  and said “ Our system shows that this product is due in stock over the second half of January.”

4 hours ago, John ks said:

I've got 8 coaches & a spare NDM waiting for the 7 car set to arrive

If I want to run a 14 car set I have 2 choices,

1 do a body swap on the NDM's & have number matching set

2  Just use the second powered NDM as is & have a set without matching numbers

 

 If I go with the second choice 

1, who will notice 

or

2, If I understand correctly, the porotype run without number matched sets

 

 

 

 John

Hey John, same here, that said, it is a little frustrating if 2 powered ndms are needed for the 14 car set as Hornby did not make that clear at the time we all ordered, indeed they indicated in their diagrams only one powered and one dummy was needed. I guess most people will  run less than 14 cars and have no issues, whilst the rest of us will need to source a second powered ndm. ( luckily i am looking at mine as i write) 

i do think that Hornby should provide a way for those who they ( albeit through over confidence rather than malice) misled to upgrade to 2 powered ndms. But the most cost effective way (for them and us) may be another ndm run. Lets hope they do the right thing.

1 hour ago, Nodrog1826 said:

 

The release date was 31-12-21 on this retailers web site, not mine may i add, but is now this:-

 

https://cheltenhammodelcentre.com/train-packs/Hornby-r3874-oo-gauge-br-class-370-apt-set-370-001-370-002-7-car-pack/p-r3874

Hopefully thats be ause they are out of stock and expect batch 2 in March . Anyway for what its worth i have asked Hornby cust serv for an update, but they may not know much more than us!

8 hours ago, Nodrog1826 said:

I don't want to burst peoples bubbles, but the UK delivery date is now looking to be late February/March.

 

Makes you wonder how their retailers keep faith with them, let alone the general public.

 

Just for the record I have the 7 car set on order, and have had the new anticipated delivery confirmed by my retailer and via another source on the web, not Hornby.

 

 

I just looked up the coming soon page at Hornby and the jan/feb releases are gone, the rest are March onward and the apt’s don’t show at all, but the apt page still says winter 21/22?