ikcdab

I have one of the Hornby S15 which I bought back in November last year. It has always run perfectly, it has had only light usage. I have been very pleased with it. This is DC only and it has the blanking plug installed. Last night, it just stopped dead in its tracks. No amount of prodding would persuade it to go. I set it to one side and tried it again a few minutes later... All was fine and it ran ok. But then later on it did the same trick. Just stops dead, then after a few minutes starts off again. Today is the same. It just stopped. I turned off the controller came back a little later, turned the power up and then it just ran as normal. The problem is NOT the controller as other engines run perfectly while the S15 is dead. It's almost as if it overheats and cuts out to cool down, but the engine has not felt hot and I really don't think this can be the reason. I have stripped it down and checked for loose wires, but could not find any. Any ideas? Ian

which gearbox is this? Thanks

These things must have a reason somewhere. I might try swapping the motor with one of the locos that runs fine and see what happens...

I thoroughly recommend YouTube "Sam's trains". He reviews pretty much everything that comes out and the class 121 is his latest video. I think he has covered all the locos you list. He is down to earth and his videos are very well produced, covering all the pros and cons of each loco. There are those who don't like his style, but I always find his stuff very helpful.

This looks a really good start. Well done. I am following you!

Blimey, that sounds very much like the sort of thing propounded by Lenin and his cronies - apart, that is, from the financial incentives you say you will pay the management. You still have a management/employee culture so I'm not sure how you can say you would never get strikes. I agree that staff turnover would be low, but staff absences would skyrocket, as seen under most nationalised regimes. The ultimate problem is that nowhere do you mention the need to improve efficiency or to improve customer satisfaction. It seems to me that these sort of arrangements are developed solely for the employees' benefit with no thought about the passengers. To be honest this is where most british nationalised industries got to in the 1960s and 1970s with disasterous effects on the future of those industries...

of course unions have employees too. One well-known union used to employ its cleaning staff on zero-hours contracts while publicly condemning the then government for not out-lawing them.

ok so my post wasnt such "cobblers" after all. no deductions were made from my salary ever while i was in the PCSPS working for the MOD. All we did pay was the 1.5% WPS alluded to in the quote. As we have gone off-topic, i will refrain friom further comments on the subject!

Well perhaps it depends on which part of the public sector you worked for. I was in the principle civil service pension scheme from 1978 for 38 years and the pension was non-contributory. By which I mean there were no deductions shown on my wage slip and the advertised salary was what I was paid. Almost from my first day in 1978 as a rookie draughtsman, I was told that the saleries were lower to account for the non-contributory nature. I guess other public sector jobs were different.

Generally because model ballast is produced overscale. No idea why. Real ballast is under 50mm which is only 0.5mm at 1:76.

And a very good non-contributory pension and longer holidays. I was told that these made up the shortfall in wages.

The whole labour movement is strapped for cash that just gets worse as the opinion polls continue to plummet. So I don't see how they could afford the cash. Anyway, I can't imagine it's within their objectives to run a railway contract.

Isn't this just what a feedback controller does? It increases the current and as soon as it senses the back EMF, the current is turned down. Is this a problem for both DC and DCC? Does DCC handle starts any better?

Just put an insulated joiner in one rail when you join on the plain track beyond the facing point. These bits of track are then dead. Then add a separate feed to the dead rails via a simple on/off switch. I am can do a diagram of it helps.

Look at eBay completed items. Normally these sort of things go for far more than you might expect.

if you look at http://www.brmna.org/ukmomags.shtml you can work most of them out. In general, R stands for "railway" and M for "model" and its variations......

Hi Matthew, I'm glad you are using templot, it really is the best planning package there is and almost automatically leads to realistic trackwork. Your plan looks good. The second option looks better as the sidings are longer. If you are using templot, you might as well make the turnouts as large radius as you can, in a loco depot these could be B6 or B8. Looking good.

Ok so it's sorted. I think I had two issues going on. 1. The motor mount was loose and allowing one of the flywheels to intermittently rub against the diecast chassis. Solution was to pack out the motor mount with thin plasticard (I used 20 thou) and ensure the mount is screwed securely to the chassis. I actually used new screwd as the original Chinese ones had stripped. 2. But I still had some horrible growing. Turns out that my attempts at lubrication of the motor bearings while the motor was in the chassis was inadequate. It's v difficult to get to the bearings like this. Once I had the motor out of the chassis on the bench then it was v to easy to lubricate the bearings properly. The growling then disappeared. Result is now one class 47 running properly in both directions. So to documents this for the future, extracting the motor isn't as bad as it sounds. @Matt 1. Once the the body is removed pull off the little plastic clips along the sides of the circuit boards holding the connecting wires. 2. Undo the screws securing the circuit board and ease out the wires from their connections. They are just pushed through the holes. 3. Undo the screws securing the bogies and carefully allow the bogies to drop out allowing the red and black wires to pull through with them. 4. Prise off the four plastic clips each side and allow the diecast chassis to come away from its plastic base allowing the wires to the accessory switches to gently pull through. The motor is now revealed. 5. Pull the motor out of its plastic mounting bracket. It is a very tight fit but it will come out if levered carefully. Allow the motor wires to gently pull through. 6. The motor can now be run on the bench and properly lubricated. 7. Removing the motor reveals two screws housing the motor mount to the chassis this can be removed if needed.

I use this, never had any problems with it. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000ZIXVAS?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

A recent acquisition from Ebay was an (apparently) brand new Bachmann class 47, Thor. Lovely locomotive, and to all intents and purposes, appeared to never have been out of the box. It ran the usual silky smooth in one direction, but in the other it has a dreadful growling noise, sounds like grating gears. The grinding was so bad that the loco is virtually unusable. Apparently this is not unusual, see the embedded youtube clip below. so i took it all apart. I dropped out the bogies and the grating was still there - so i knew they were ok. I lubricated the motor bearings, all made no difference. The motor runs smoothly out of the locomotive, so I conclude that the motor is OK..unless of course there is a looseness in the motor that only is seen under load. then i noticed that the motor mount appeared to be loose and i suspected the motor was moving and grinding against the diecast chassis in one direction. So i fixed the motor mount down very firmly - but this just made it all worse and now i had grinding in both directions.... what i now think is that fixing the motor mount down quite so firmly forced the motor against the chassis, hence the grinding. So now i have taken out the motor mount again and i plan to pack it out with thin pasticard (about 20 thou) to just raise it from the chassis. then screw it down firmly, hoping the thin plasticard gives just enough clearance. apart from that, i cannot see anything that is causing the problem. The youtube clip below suggests that this isnt an unusual problem and I'm not convinced that the guy in the clip has fixed his loco. Anyone else come across this and what did you do?

I have used the 5mm laminate flooring underlay. It's the dense blueish foam rather than fibre so it may not be what you have. It is ok, bit it dents really easily if you lean on it or put something heavy on it. Bearing in mind the cost of 3mm cork being not high (I paid £6 per sq m) I have reverted to cork and not regretted it for one moment.

Gimp is another free and really good image manipulation programme. It does this stuff really easily. If you have problems, drop me a PM and I can do it fit you really quickly.

It's all over the web, so looks genuine. I just hope they get all the railway aspects correct and we don't (for example) have mk1s or BR liveried stock running in WW2...

I've never had any problems using a junior hacksaw then cleaned up with a file.

thanks for the reply. presumably if you use a relatively slow-setting epoxy, you can apply the adhesive, then have plenty of time to quater the wheels before the glue goes off. is there a recomended epoxy to use?