Well, so much (HO scale) activity of late!
Nothing profound, just a few bits and pieces and a bit of a road trip to Port Pirie to run some stuff on the SARMA layout that is open for public viewing, housed within the confines of the disused railway station adjacent the old yards. Whilst the trip was worthwhile there were a few issues around the operation of some of my most expensive items (not the 750, I didn't take that with me).
My Trainbuilder East-West set was brought out its boxes for its first 'mainline' run, with mixed results. The consist was made up of a BD, the Cafe car, 2 ADs and a CD. However, none of my locos could pull the consist. At all! Granted the bends were tight-ish and this was on a grade but the coaches required some decent effort just to drag along by hand. Anyway, in the end a single AD and CD were left as I slowly deducted the other coaches as either there was too much weight or they consistently derailed.
Bogie swing is one of the issues I think will be resolved very easily. Spacers or washers, between the bogie and chassis, may even solve the issue in one go. But a bigger issue and arguably more critical is the bearing, or lack of, for the axles in the bogies. The wheels simply do not spin when there is weight on them and these cars are heavy! More about this when I attempt fixes on them.
Now for the 'tragedy' and I can only blame myself for being a softy. A young girl wanted to 'have a drive' of my Ozrail 909 that was doing laps of he layout hauling a short mixed that included the BD and CD. 909 was coping with this short train, just, but only if you kept the throttle/volts low. So I showed the little girl and her father how to operate the throttle and then Shane appears with my lunch. Off I go outside to enjoy the sunshine and have a chat, forgetting there's a very young girl piloting ~$1,500 worth of model trains.............
....I come back inside to check on thing only to be told 909 has ceased functioning. Full open throttle and continous slipping on the grade = melted gearbox parts and driveshafts.
Yay. :(
I dismantled 909s sister number 900 "Lady Norrie" the night before to begin a rebuild to get the Ozrail models looking 'better'. The cursing must have been heard by the model train gods and I was punished accordingly. Damn.
A top view of the Ozrail 900 mech
I'm new to the blog scene and I don't understand why it uploaded these as portrait images. Anyway you'll have to bare with me. The following two photos are of the gearbox tower and the driveshaft that has come adrift... if you look carefully you might see the dislodged shaft poking out of the chassis weight...
I'll provide more info on the repairs as I do them.
Now, on a lighter not here is a modified Lima S class that I acquired from the very talented Nathan Peters. It's a dummy, thankfully, and little more work is required to get it up to speed (it'll be 'in the shafts' for most of its life behind NRs/ANs/DLs and when they appear, 93s. Although it was supplied with kadee no. 5s they needed to be fitted. I use scale-head no. 153 or 158s on my locos. Some styrene packing at the rear to suit Piece of cake. Done, done. I want to fit steps on the leading bogies, some additional hoses, sun shades and of course judicious weathering... but not graffiti!
The standard Lima axles were still present and they won't cope with anything less than code 100 so I whacked in some Powerline 'traction tyre-less' axles. A bit too much sideways slop so I had to glue some styrene strips to limit the free play. I reckon these will last about a minute when I get it on a layout...
Until next time... ciao!
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