luke_stevens

Found my copy, but it doesn't explain about the XK2 class. It talks about the Japanese scheme, and how some of the classes get the designations but not the XK's. All the XK classes ae 0-6-0 shunters so I guess it si something to do with their function rather than a patriotic statement... Luke

Closer... http://www.railography.co.uk/info/pages/numbering.htm

You want to check a copy of "Peter Clarke: Locomotives in China". Needless to say I can't find my copy at the moment... https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/LOCOMOTIVES-CHINA-CLARK-PETER-ROUNDHOUSE-PRESS/20667751417/bd

Some info on XK2 class that Paul has just got. http://www.railography.co.uk/info/cn_steam/profiles/xk2.htm

From small beginnings! Luke

I think Slovenia Railways were incredibly lucky: 20m to the left and it would have gone in the drink! Luke

Progress... It still runs, reasonable smoothly and quietly so I thought I should look into fitting the body. Very much first steps with temporary hand carved supports that are a bit off square, which is why the model is off centre too... 1)Temporary, but in about the right sort of place with the right sort of shape... 2) A little drunk. No doubt some Somerset scrumpy from a Bristol - Brighton working... 3) Looks good from the side. I'm now measuring up the fuel tank dimensions and looking into possible speakers... Luke

Lifted the motor and removed the cardan shafts but kept the bogie clip covers in place: no improvement, so not the cardan shafts. But is now obvious what it is... Carefully looking whilst turning the bogies revealed that the edges of the bogie frame clips were clashing with the chassis side frame. So out with the scalpel and fine files... Over-trimmed I'm sure but it's looking good on this end... All fine now, perfectly happy to go round Hornby R1 (267mm ) TT track :) I might slightly fill the edge of the gap with 1.0mm by 1.5mm strip rather than the 1.5mm by 1.5mm I'd used previously, but will be very careful this time :) Luke

Thanks for the thought; I will check again! I am using the original cardan shafts and connectors provided by Piko in the original model. There is about 1mm slop in the shafts between the cardan couplings. I have given the bogies about 0.5mm vertical tolerance as I thought this might be the issue but it isn't. There is also tolerance at the end of the bogies to the frame. Question: If the bogie retaining clip isn't touching the frame then why is there resistance to rotating that isn't there when the clip isn't there? There is clearly something going on that I haven't noticed / realised / considered! Any other suggestions would be appreciated! Luke

And she runs! Well sort of. She is very happy going back and forth but she does not like the idea of curves, The right had truck is more resistant than the left hand truck which is very happy to turn clockwise, not so much to turn anticlockwise. Both are happy to move up and down, just a little. Without the bogie retaining clips both bogies rotate happily and at the moment the only things the bogie retaining clips touch is the bogie bearing surfaces. Time to do some more investigation and then some filing...

Balanced! Turns out I had to swap the trucks end to end as the motor wouldn't cleanly fir the the motor bracket cleanly the other way round. Between each of the cardan shaft coupling there is about 5.5mm. The mottos has about a 0.75mm end to end slop but it doesn't happen when the motor is running so things are stable. I've packed the height of the motor so the shaft better aligns with gear towers. I think it is a fraction too high but that shouldn't be an issue. Next stage will be to replace the red wire that went missing from the right hand truck... The drops the shafts in and see what happens under power.

Turns out I'm not going mad! I was perplexed that sometimes every thing would fit and sometimes it wouldn't. Now I see why: the cardan shaft coupling is at a different position for each truck. I will now have to "decided" which is best where and stick to it so I can tweak everything into place properly. Luke

As promised: 1) The jig. The idea is that it hold the flywheel just far enough from the motor bearing that it don't get gunked up when using Loctite 603 to fix the flywheel to the motor shaft. 2) Motor in jig. The problem I had is that I forgot that the is movement of the shaft within the motor and I came very close to fixing the flywheel slap bang against the motor bearing when the shaft "pulled back". Quick twist and reposition and all is well. 3) There is about 5mm between the cardan shaft coupling and flywheel at one end and about 8mm at the other. Once I've replaced the cardan shaft couplings within the flywheel I remeasure and balance them evenly. I'll probably have to replace the chassis stringers. Luke

First ever trial with motor! I haven't connected the cardan shafts, the motor isn't fixed (and I think it need to move a bit to the left, and the motor may be a bit low but it the motor fits in the chassis, it doesn't rub and it picks up via the wheels! The most stressful element was fitting the flywheels to the motor shafts without buggering it all up. It came close to going wrong but I was lucky. I'll up load a photo of the jig I built to help and explain what almost went wrong tomorrow... But for today I'm happy! Luke

And a side view. Yes, the truck on the right is more inset that I'd intended, no I'm not going to change it :) I'll use it as the end to fit a coupling... All the striations will be hidden by the body shell. The bottom of cab window level is above the top of the frame, just below the level of the gear tower, which means it's probably behind the cab bulkhead. Luke

The chassis now has both bearing circles, and has had another 1.5mm sq strip to bring the bottom of the chassis to the bottom of the body casting. I've also filled in so of the area at the ends. In the middle is a cradle to hold the motor at the correct height. It isn't at the right yet and will need a little packing. The next major step is going to be cutting back the excess motor shaft. My worry is to trim it too far, though it's more likely I'll end up under trimming...

I'm waiting to renumber/name my A4 as "60024 Kingfisher. She did railtour work on the former LSWR during March 66. Luke

Hi Les, Back in October I got in touch with 247 Developments asking about replacement etched name plates and got the follow reply: "Hi Luke Next year wi will be looking in to Doing a range of plates for the new Hornby TT120 locos Get back in touch then" Also RailTec Models already offers a custom loco decal pack for TT120 at £6.90 https://www.railtec-models.com/showitem.php?id=5500 Luke

I'd be interested to see ANY business plan where 2022 actual matched 2022 forcast from 2017. Luke

The 828 might also be a UK dispatch thing with Hornby being told they had 828 dispatch slots before Christmas. It would make sense as there are now boxes marked X/1102 (I think). Luke

From the moment Hornby realised the A1/A3/A4 wheels were wrong I'm sure the original release plan went out of the window. If you can only get 828 sets to the UK before Christmas and you already have more than that in pre-sales then there is no point in advertising to the general public what you can't deliver. In terms of the 828, it is more likely to be a logistics issue: the contractor will pick up the container at 10am. If the container is sealed and ready it will be collected. If it isn't then it will be left behind. The factory will have decided what it could complete by the cut-off time and shipped that. Luke

And the photo that I assumed I'd taken and posted but hadn't... 3) Hopefully this will make things a little clearer. The only essential dimension is the diameter of the hole for the truck bearing. Everything else can be adjusted, modified or bodged to fit. And as for where they are positioned? The centre-to-centre for the tracks are not "scale-correct" but calculated so the axle of the front truck to the axle of the rear truck is correct scale distance. This means that the trucks will actually turn and not hit the body shell. Once again I'd rather have a chassis that works than one that is scale-correct but doesn't...

Just in case any one thought I'd given up... 1) The most complex part was using the Olfa circle cutter to get a "hole" of exactly 17mm diameter for the truck bearings. I had several just under and a couple just over. In the end I has two that were correct. I then stuck one upside down... The rest of the chassis is 1.5mm sheet and lost of 1.5mm square strip. There will be some 1.5mm by 1.0mm strip to cover the gap above the bogies (not visible in this photo). I'd ordered a replacement motor 1420 and a couple of replacement flywheels, but the flywheels (upper right) don't have the correct indent for the cardan shaft coupling so I'm going back to the original Piko flywheels. I will be dropping the motor in the chassis so that I can fit the cardan shaft as straight and level as possible. Slow and steady progress... 2) A little jig to show me where the bottom of the chassis need to now exceed so that the body shell sits correctly, and to ensure that ti doesn't sit too high. Both parts need final trimming :)

One of the recent Piko videos shows the DSB Nohab in production so it shouldn't be long now. I think they are on the Piko mid-December releases. Luke https://www.piko.de/DE/images/Monatsflyer/Flyer_PDF/2022/2022-12-12_99545_Monatsflyer_Januar_23_6s_H0_TT_final.pdf

My first thought was "Feed Me!" which is close enough... "We're gonna need a bigger layout..." Luke