Isambard Smith

Also, even for anyone thinking "one day ill do a midland layout", they're gonna be planning ahead: "better get that loco on preorder now cos in 20 yrs time when the coaches for it become available ill look pretty daft if I've nowt to pull 'em, so ill get one before they sell out..."

I've got one on preorder through rails of Sheffield...still says pending... I'm checking it every 30 seconds tho , you know, just in case

Pickups were the first thing I checked...when I googled p class problems it was the only that seemed to be commonish occurance , and they're fine on this one ,maintaining full contact at all times.. Thanks for the help guys!

Hmm? but why would it only be sn issue anticlockwise ? And as I say , I've run larger locos on this circuit with no trouble. Edit...just setting up a larger circuit for testing. Edit 2; on a much larger oval, 20" radius, its now stuttering both clockwise and anti clockwise, tho a little bit less running smoke box first.

Lol, lot of short wheel base locos manage those curves with ease, all the Bachmann junior locos, Hornby terriers even my old airfix 14xx and a couple of tender engines! The circuit is actually oval so its not all as tight as that...

Hello. The other week I decided to , after putting it off for years, to get myself one of those lovely little se&cr p class tank engines from hattons. It arrived the next day, and out of the box it was very pretty but ran horribly, lurching all over the place, so back it went . Hattons service was excellent as ever and they replaced it straight away with no issues. And the replacement is just as nice...and it runs a lot better...but its still not great. Now every review I can find of these is glowing, so its odd to me that I've had a pair of duffers. And hattons have already said I can swap it again...and i may yet, but I'm wondering if its an issue that is fixable, and fixing things is much more fun than returning things, so I'm here to see if anyone can suggest what the problem might be.... So the loco is on a small circuit, 12" radius. Running clockwise its runs perfectly no matter which way it faces. No noise. No stalling, no stuttering, perfect performance at all speeds from glacial crawl to escape velocity. Not so running anticlockwise. Again facing doesn't matter. The loco pauses slightly after each rotation of the wheels. At speed this makes it lurch around rather a lot. At low speed it keeps stalling. There is sweetspot of sorts where it'll complete a circuit but any wagons its hauling will get left behind... I thought at first maybe the pickups were losing contact, but this definitely isn't the case. When I got down to eye level with the rail what I saw was the the loco is picking up each wheel off the track in turn...even the sprung first axle! Doesnt seem to happen at all going clockwise...but anti clockwise its never got more than 5 wheels down at once and often only 4. Now as far as I can see the quartering is fine, the back to back spacing seems fine (tho i can't find my gauge or callipers to be certain) , the coupling rods aren't bent or twisted or anything like that. So I'm baffled. The bit that gets me is that direction matters but facing doesn't.... Has anyone encountered anything similar or have any suggestions? Thanks!