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From my previous posting, I now have the smoke deflectors and the A3 which is 60043 Brown Jack. I was happy to buy the A3 even though a deflector is separate from the loco, its been named 'Lefty Brown Jack', it came with the loco so I can repair it. Actually this deflector shows me the mounting arrangement on its inside (which Hornby have modelled) which is a great asset, as the brass etches include the mounting bracket pieces. As for the double chimney, yes Hornby have modelled it as a separate item, but to remove it from the loco will damage it and the smokebox, so I am hoping my friend Stephen who can cast small brass items will be able to make a mould with it in situ and hopefully add a spigot on its underside which can fit directly into the OOLS Flying Scot.

Chris Oakes uses one of these on his compressor in the tutorials. I have been trying to find a set on ebay without any luck, the Chinese sights don't seem to have them. Obviously I need 4mm barb ends to fit the tube onto. Can anyone point me to a supplier, please.

A few days ago I sent in a post on maintaining my DDE. After re-assembly I put it on test only to hear the squeel from the controller. Now squeeling usually only occurs when there is no loco on track or when it has run out of water. But this wasn't the case here. The only change I made to the loco was to put in a new wiper and its wires to the PCB. On close inspection to see if anything was amiss I noticed the motor wires were on their last strands so I re-soldered, but still no luck, it still squeeled. Hmmm, is the tender at fault? So I tested the tender coupling it up to my Seagull and everything worked, so the tender is ok. Then what has gone wrong 🥶

If anyone can shed a light on this problem I would be very grateful.

Hello folks.

I am back again in need to assistance with a Mallard. For the past two days the loco has been running fine. Her low water sensor tripped and I went ahead and refilled its boiler. As soon as I put power back on the regulator motor kicked on and would not stop. The only time this would change is if I input a command. Upon inspection it looks like the wiper board needs to be replaced as it has warped and the red lead has an exposed section near the superheater. The gears, regulator linkage and everything else mechanically seem to be fine.

Thank you all for your help and have a good one.

DDE. It wasn't working too well even though I had replaced the cylinder o-rings. So I decided to strip it down into it's main components, give it a good clean and hopefully regain steam locomotion. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. After de-oiling everything, re-assembling and timing from scratch, it seemed to work ok with compressed air, but putting it onto the rolling road, all I got was a squeel from the controller. Ugh! What's gone wrong, I don't know. (Help is required here, please) I replaced the wiper assembly with a complete new one as the old wires had work hardened and one had broken away from the PCB. In stripping down the chassis, I put the screws back from where they came so as not to loose them, but also in putting each screw back into the hole they came from ensures they are compatible with its thread -…

My last project was making Bittern Double Tender. My new project is going to be as above. To date I have bought a FS body off Ebay. I have on order a set of German style smoke deflectors which are a brass etch, so it should not be too much of an exercise to (ahem!) execute!

I have included a photo of FS which I am going to reproduce.

The other day I replaced the piston and gland o-rings on my DDE. An easy job and well worth doing. However I found more than I bargained for....

Not only was there the o-rings, but on one side was this extra thing! It was a metal ring within the gland nut. Amazing what some people do, see photo, the metal ring is the one on the right.

I have read in peoples testaments of running their locos for around 30 minutes, and I got to think whether they could go longer on one steaming. Try 45 minutes!! Here's how:

Firstly I will describe my layout. It is a double track main line with R4 outside and R3 inside settrack curves set in a shed 6x3 metres. The outside track length is 15.412 metres long.

So the 'how' is easy. Isolate part of the circuit from electrical power. I have two sections of isolation, one being the access bridge to the room, 914mm and the other is between sets of points which is 3.27 metres long.

The train was Mallard with 8 Backmann MK1 Blood and Custards all with metal wheels and to minimise rolling friction I lubricated each axle.

I firstly ran Mallard for a few laps to warm her up, then after cooling for a while…

Hi all,

I've started stripping my Mallard down as per the advice on here, and I'm following the video tutorial, however the cylinder support just seems to pop off when you remove the valve gear in the maintenance video.

Mines stuck fast. Am I doing something wrong?