Oh Hornby! Where did it all go wrong?

[Robin Brasher]

On 17/04/2022 at 16:08, Dunsignalling said:

Thing is, I've never had a gripe with Hornby design other than the odd case of needless complication. Neither have assembly errors been other than a very occasional issue for me. 

 

All the Hornby problems I've encountered; split gears (nylon) and crumbling chassis or bogies (mazak) have been down to component failure, most probably caused by the use of inferior materials. 

 

Of course, when the manufacture of your products takes place half-way round the planet, preventing the cutting of corners in the factory isn't easy. Having a proportion of products suffer such defects may simply be one of the prices we pay for outsourcing.   

 

That said, it's Hornby's reputation on the line, not the Chinese factory's, and they really should be more assiduous in ensuring the dodgy stuff can be repaired. These failures are not related to the amount of use the models get and, IMHO, the rectification of manufacturing defects should not be time-limited.   

 

John

Have you returned your T9 to Hornby to be repaired?  There was a manufacturing fault with the Bachmann N class 2-6-0 causing it to derail at the slightest provocation.  I returned mine to Bachmann when it was several years old telling them that the derailments were a well documented manufacturing fault. I expected them to charge but Bachmann repaired it free of charge and it is now running perfectly.

[Dunsignalling]

1 hour ago, Robin Brasher said:

Have you returned your T9 to Hornby to be repaired?  There was a manufacturing fault with the Bachmann N class 2-6-0 causing it to derail at the slightest provocation.  I returned mine to Bachmann when it was several years old telling them that the derailments were a well documented manufacturing fault. I expected them to charge but Bachmann repaired it free of charge and it is now running perfectly.

Out of guarantee, and I wouldn't trust a new Hornby mount not to do the same. The casting is very narrow in the middle and that is probably where the failure starts. It would probably be better had it been a plastic moulding in the first place. I'd guess Mazak was preferred to maximise weight. 

 

I fitted a home-made plastic mount to my friend's loco which was the first one I encountered with the problem. Subsequently repairs have used replacement castings from Peter's Spares, which are brass rather than Mazak. They have needed a little fettling in order to fit perfectly (fairly typical of brass castings in general) but I fortunately have no difficulty in doing that. 

 

I have now purchased enough of these to do all my remaining T9s, should it become necessary. All three failures I've so far encountered had different R numbers, so I am allowing for a "worst case scenario", in which none might prove to be immune.

 

The affected part on (some) early Bachmann N's was the running plate. As a visible part (unlike that in the T9) it became apparent as soon it started to corrode. AIUI, that enabled a batch of replacement castings to be made in anticipation of returns. I have a fully intact "first batch" N (31860) and, if it hasn't "gone" by now, I doubt it ever will! A recently deceased friend had an example of 31813 (a version said to be frequently affected), which now appears on Bournemouth Central and it's fine (as a Salisbury loco, I won't need to renumber it, either). To the best of my knowledge, it hasn't had "the treatment". I'm not sure what proportion of these actually had the problem, as I have only ever seen one with it , though I may well have come across others that had been repaired.    

 

John