richard carr

Slaters offer suitable replacement springs such as their buffer springs in packs of 12.

Brian This looks great, all your posts will save me hours when I get round to building mine. Richard

If you really want to save some money on a decoder then remove one of the motors by loosening the screws on the side of the bogie and pull it out. Then you can safely fit a loksound or zimo decoder that costs less than £100. The loco will still pull a 10 coach train and draws about 800 mA at full speed. Richard

And to add to Norman's good advice, for the lights the black wires go to the individual functions and the red wires are the common. The latest 37 is a retro grade step for Heljan as far as fitting DCC is concerned. All recent models had a pcb with screw terminals and it was easy to see where everything went this one has gone back to the plug in connectors which really just makes it awkward to a fit a decoder. Richard

Graham I was just pointing out the cost of the V4 to an Xl which isn't that different as a stay alive equipped V4 is about £130, £96 for the chip and £34 for the ESU power pack. Yes the the length of the push rods isn't helpful for any kind of chassis, but for the resin chassis should a brake touch the wheel it doesn't cause a short so they only require a little bit of filing to fix, for my brass chassis I resorted to getting my own longer version etched. Richard

The Loksound XL4 has the stay alive circuitry built in you can see the 2 capacitors on the board and it definitely works in my Deltic. Brain Clapperton has his views on Loksound chips but they are not the same as mine, I'm using a loksound V4 with 2 ABC maxon powered gearboxes wired in parallel on my 37 and it all works just fine with a large 4 ohm speaker. I will fit a stay alive to this in due course but its running without one now. The power bogies from ABC that I have seen have all been powered by mashima motors, I'm not sure that a single loksound V4 would be able to power 2 of those without overload, but it might. I know of others who have used a V4 to power both motors in parallel on Heljan locos, I'm going to try this on one shortly but it might turn out to be an expensive experiment. I also don't think that the ABC power bogie offers any advantage over the JLTRT resin bogie and delrin chain. Graham, how are you going to fit the brakes and get sufficient clearance between the wheels and the brake blocks to avoid shorts on the abc power bogie, you will also find that the pullrods are too short.

Jeff It would depend on the motor but probably not. However 2 things to bear in mind, the XL has a stay alive circuit built in the the Loksound V4 doesn't and they cost about £34 to buy and require some deft soldering to fit. The second thing is that when you power both bogies on a diesel its like 2+2 = 10, its amazing the improvement in performance, I have recently done it on a 37 and I am now going back to the few I have that are single bogie powered to double those up. If you use the abc diesel bogie gear box with a maxon motor though, you can get away with just using a V4 loksound chip to power both, and the pair are only about the price of one of their power bogies. Richard

Thanks Brian, I will give that a try. Richard

Brian I'm building some JLTRT TTA tankers and some PRMRP TEA tanks. I was wondering if you knew of a source of solebar tranfers, as I can't find any ? Thanks Richard

Brian Is the chip a Loksound V4, because if it is you are supposed to use 4 ohm speakers to get the best from them, at least according to their website, you can safely use 8 ohm speakers but the volume will be lower. Richard

Brian I'm not sure your door handles are that wrong, from photographs it looks like they should be the BR curved handles that you get on Mark one coaches JLTRT do them, where as yours are are more T shaped which I think are more typically southern railway style. There's not a lot in it really and from a distance you would never be able to tell even if you were aware of the difference. Its great model, I hope to see it int he flesh at a show one day. Richard

Brian When you improved your Heljan Deltic, did you you remove the brass fly wheels, if so how did you do it ? Thanks Richard

Brian This looks great you just need another 10 of them ! I will be interested to see how the bogies go together, there is a desperate shortage of good looking reasonable fast to build wagon bogies. Have you seen those that Simon Varnum is developing ? Richard

Thanks Brian I like the green 31, but if I were to get a green one I would prefer the small yellow panel Yes I forgot about the Prestwin as its been so long since it was announced, maybe we will get the flask wagon at Telford next year ! Richard

Brian Sadly I am on holiday too for the Telford weekend so could I ask you to post details on here as soon a you can. Have you any idea when the JLTRT nudclear flask wagons will be available ? Thanks Richard

Jeff I am sure they are hoping to sell at least 200, but this will take them some time, possibly 5 years. I think he will be lucky if they have sold 50 by now, but I know when I last spoke to laurie that he was very pleased to actually have some sold before it was available. Richard

Brian The 31 looks really good, their best model yet, I look forward to getting mine. The JLTRT BG is very goodand almost falls together with nothing inside. Richard

Tim No I didn't add any more weight to mine it runs just fine with it. I suspect that once you have yours all squared up it will run fine too without any further adjustment. These kits make a very nice model, so does their GUV kit, I have done 3 of those. I have also made several of the slaters southern vans, they make a very nice blue parcel van too and ran until 79 for the larger guards vans and about 84 for the plvs so perfect for our time frame and they could seen everywhere on the system. Richard

Tim I added a rocking axle to mine, very easy to do and just gives enough movement to keep it running smoothly. I will see if I can add a photo of it later. Richard

Jeff I have to agree, but its worth perseving with as there are some very nice transfers in there. Richard

Brian I didn't realise CPL did those brake pieces, I will have to get some. Where did you get the extra vac cylinder and dynamo from ? Thanks Richard

Brian It looks great, mine is still in its box but when I do get round to building it this will be really helpful. Richard

I did ask Laurie why they did the Clayton and he told me it was because it was something different and it certainly is. but as you say the majority of things they do are what Pete wants. Richard

We don't want a price war, we want quality products at reasonable prices. If manufacturers start chasing down prices all that will happen is that quality will fall, they will have to save money somewhere and the majority of their costs is in the inital delvelopment, so that is where they will cut back. Its not locomotives I want, there are plenty of those around now, its quality rolling stock at reasonable prices. Personally I think the Heljan mark 1s are expensive, but I'm sure that a coach requires just as much development time as a loco, I just hope that they can sell enough of them to get the unit cost nearer the £100 mark, thats still 3 or 4 times the 00 price point. From my understanding of the costs to make a model I think they would have to anticpate selling 5,000 of something to get the retail price down to £100, thats a lot of coaches when the Gauge O guild only has about 6,000 active members. Richard

Thanks Brian I will have to work out which ones I have got as one set came from thier diesel detailing pack and the other is spare 37/4 one. Richard