Hello from Germany!
Hello all,
my name is Michael and I have been reading here for some time to learn about the Hornby live steamers. My partner and me are much into steam and we do visit the British steam train lines every now and then, and we will continue to do so - there is a life after March 30, we are quite sure. ;-)
Now a few days ago finally the A4 set arrived - the A4 and the Stirling Single are my girl's favourites - and there was a lot to see, to learn and to disassemble, as the oil had done what oil in model railways has the tendency to do if not moved from time to time, which is to stick, and this model hasn't been used for about ten years. As well I needed to clean and re-fix the magnets, the surfaces of which were in state of dissolution.
I was surprised the shell really was of plastic, but a short test with a soldering iron (on the inside..) convinced me this plastic is well suited for the task. I like the whole conception of the locomotive - of course nowadays one might find some space-saving solutions here and there to allow for other, smaller locomotives.
Until now, the locomotive was just to be convinced once to run on a test arrangement, which it did very fine.Then and the following days the reversing motor arrangement always went berserk and kept turning without stopping in any position. This is a quite unthankfully behaviour! Did someone else experience this?
Surely I will get the beast to run perfectly one day, hopefully before spring, as then we can't wait having the Hornby Rocket make the garden an unsafe place, but may be we may see you on one of your exhibitions in London and have a talk?
Michael
Hi Nick, hi Mike M,
thank you for the welcome greetings!
Your remarks are most welcome. Three days ago, I had tried once again to find out why the motor was running all the time, and this time the regulator drive rod was sheared off, because the screw holding a gear had come loose by itself. Needless to say the rest of the thread from the broken rod was not willing to come out of the small brass bearing, so I milled a new one. I haven't added a small drop of loctite to the screw because I do not know yet how often I will have to unscrew it.
If I knew your info before, Mike, I would have concentrated on the controller earlier, as only the flicking to the right hand side shows reactons of the motor. When flicking to the left side, either nothing happens or the voltage goes down and the motor feels free to spin all the time and remains that way. So I then opened the box and found that one miniature snap-action switch does not work right. As I now have no chance to work on it for the next days and still have to figure out how to do it with the least damage, I'll leave it alone, but surely this will run before our next trip to England will "coincide" with a show of yours in a few weeks!
Michael