New Railway Modellers Forums

muggins wrote: It was that conversation, on top of the coupling droop, which decided me to never again buy Dapol.

Never say "Never again", you'll soon run out of manufacturers

As well as adding some weight, check the back to back dimension of the wheels, It should be 14.5mm, too small they will de-rail going through points, too great they will have a tendency to climb out on tighter curves. You can get a "back to back" setting tool or check them with calipers.

I knew about Rod Stewart's model railway but it's never attracted much publicity, I'm very glad to see that his generosity made it into a BBC report. Let's hope that the "low lifes" get a punishment that fits the crime. A couple of hundred hours apiece spreading ballast with just a shovel ...

I'd suggest that to avoid the possibility of copy cat raids venues ought to arrange some overnight presence, particularly school and community hall locations. One man with a compressed air horn beats the best of burglar alarms at repelling invaders.

The speakers supplied with TTS kits are likely to be suited to going in an enclosure formed from the body or chassis mouldings, so may sound tinny when mounted in free space. It's a principle of mounting any sort of speaker that you stop the air pressure from the back of the cone leaking round to th...

Good idea as long as it matches in with the other coaches. Sometimes non matching coaches work well. Other times they don't. Worth a try though. Doesn't have to match too closely, rolling stock colours tended to fade so unless it was an important train you were likely to get variations between just...

Old (b&w) TVs were far more susceptible to interference than modern sets, and power hungry Dublo motors provided it by the bucketful. The RF filter circuit provided by those components has to be provided on the decoder if it's going to do anything useful.. The shift to UHF in the late sixties ma...

I decided to give it a go recently and it worked ok, particularly on spectacle plate round windows, and diesel cab side windows. I used Evostick Resin W, (woodworking glue) getting it as thin as possible helped, and I was impressed by how clear it was. It's difficult to see much detail through the w...

There seemed to be a lot of "desperation descisons" in the last couple of years of operations at Binns Road, Meccano used to order huge runs of parts, particularly if they were done elsewhere, they probably thought they had enough raw 08 bodies to do another production run if needed. It wa...

I thought that I had seen the 08's in 3 rail form being advertized in the past, as when I wanted a 2 rail version (Hornby Dublo or Wrenn) all I could find were 3 rail versions.... I did eventually get a Wrenn version in 2 rail like I wanted There's history about the HD 08 Shunter and it's disappear...

The plug from the decoder takes them out of circuit, you can hardwire your decoder leads to track and motor. I live 40 miles from the transmitter and have operated many locos with them removed, right next to the aerial without any interference. It's a legal requirement for the manufacturers to fit t...

Hornby part numbers tend to change quite frequently, and may indicate nothing more than being a different batch. I don't think you can go far wrong with this motor, if it has a worm gear it's for an 0-4-0, if it has a spur gear it's the scalextric version. Originally they were mounted with the termi...

It's part no X2258, New Modellers Shop has three in stock ATM. You can get them almost anywhere. It comes with a neutral plastic coloured gear, AFAIK, they are all the same pitch, but they are exceedingly easy to change, should you want to. You'll need a pair of long nose pliers and a watchmakers sc...

The vagaries of large database systems, will always do something to confound you. You probably weren't the only one to loose their account, in which case the elves down in the data mines would have been on time and a half until they got them back.

It's either something mechanical, making the motor work too hard, or something wrong with the overload protection, my money's on the mechanicals.