The Hornby Re-Built Patriot and Royal Scot models have some excellent qualities but watch for the metal fatigue of the chassis and any other metal parts. Slipping gears-mis-mesh can often be attributed to weakness around the Crown-Gear Assembly (or Mazak-Rot of the alloy chassis) directly below the brass worm of the motor.
I have all of the Hornby BR Era models of both the "Royal Scot" and "Patriot" classes produced and it's been an unpleasant learning-curve with the Mazak-Rot affected models. I owe a great deal of thanks to all at Hornby, and I mean everybody that I have communicated with in various forms. I think they, and the wife, know how much I've spent!! ;-))
The motor-fixing design needs some slight modification...I say this because the worm-gear cover, although small, has to perform at least three functions. It is there to retain oil/grease splashes within the gear-area, the ear-flaps hold-down the axle of the Crown-Gear Assembly and the rear under-part of the worm-cover places pressure down on the motor front-bearing case. The worm-gear cover is, unfortunately, too weak for its purpose.
Presently trying to *find* the time to renumber/rename all the Patriots (rebuilt and un-rebuilt) to the Welsh resorts that they were named after, and there are quite a few on the map! Well, I realised how much I like the three classes and realised just how many of the models I actually had, more than the Black 5 collection and there's at least sixteen of them.
It certainly does appear to be a slow, smooth-running, loco' so what's stopping you..??
Cheers,
Heiter :-)