New Railway Modellers Forums

The gloss finish loco drive Britannia class are very early 1970s. There was a small window when they were made with a gloss finish and loco drive. They were also made with the steamsound mechanism in the tender at this time. The time period was short as the model was soon after issued as tender driv...

Rubber band drive was quite common once. In the 1950s, the Kirdon Derby Lightweight had it. I think Athearn diesels had it at some point in the past. The Dapol Castle, County, Trasnpennine, class 150, class 155 have the drive dear mounted next to the commutator is a poor design. Any oil on the gear ...

Some Bachmann class 66 locos are notoriously for derailing. I think there was a casting or moulding fault on some of them causing the bogies to not fit or sit perfectly. I seem to recall it being discussed elsewhere probably on the on the RMWEB forum with fixes suggested and carried out some years a...

The early Hornby class 25 models had headcode lights. 25247 was the loco number of the blue one. There was also a green one. Later models did not have lights. Not up to modern standards in appearance or performance but should be reasonably cheap.

The loco on the eBay link seems to have Lima H0 scale class 33 bogies.

Oil contamination of the commutator is a common cause of slow running and high current draw. Commutator should be fairly bright copper colour with a few streaks of dirt. If it is near black, it needs cleaning. The slots between the segments need to be clean otherwise they conduct rather than the cur...

Check that the drawbar is not bent causing the front drive wheels on the tender to life off the track. You need to check really closely as may not be immediately obvious if it is just a fraction of a millimetre.

A small bit of plastic in place of the broken bit should do the trick. Maybe a small cross section slice of cable insulation with an offcut of a cocktail stick or match stick inside might work. Also check your plastic before you recycle it for a suitable piece of plastic that could be quickly trimme...

I am sure there have been a few round layouts. There may have been one based on the Woodhead route that I saw quite a few years ago now. I am certain I have seen accounts of others.

I think many models of these wagons supplied in train sets or possibly the Railroad Range were not fitted with ladders. I think all the real things were though. I guess a bit of suitable dimension signal post ladder might do the job.

Quite a few generally more elderly and some newer Graham Farish models suffered from cracked gears where the plastic gears cracked on their metal axles. Some models were more prone to it than others. This could cause a gear to be spinning on its axle rather than rotating the axle and transmitting po...

Any 14mm metal disk coach wheel sets should be fine that have the same length axles as those you remove.

Hi Kevin, There is a bot of a knack to getting the drive shafts in place. I have done it often. If you need someone to help, let me know. Damian

The faults in the cups are hidden by the other plastic parts around them. Even when taken apart, the crack can be quite hard to see.

The drive shaft cup coming loose at the worm end is a very common problem with these models. I have fixed several myself with a drop of glue. Best to do both bogies at the same time as the other one may cause trouble later on. Sometimes, you can see a tiny hairline crack where the cup meets the moto...