Hornby 0-4-0 not starting from stopped?

[glegalee]

Have any of you had problems with a new Hornby 0-4-0 loco/shunter, I have.

I recieved my club model from Hornby this year and have been running it in occasionally when the mood takes me, but recently it has been trying to move but not going any where. The motor is making its little squeeling noise as it should when power is passed through it but its just not been moving. Any way I decided to crack it open tonight to have a looksee.

Firstly I was amazed to see just how simply it was just thrown together and the primitivity of the insides. I endevoured to locate the issue it was having and I found that there were a few opertunities (thats what I call problems), Firstly Hornby had decided to wrap the motor mount in some sort of insulating tape (which isn't a problem if they had done it right, as in, not made huge over laps in it) so I streightened this out, then I found that they have used a large blob of black "blutac" to cement the motor to the mount, this in turn was making the motor sit high on the mount which was causing the black plastic retaining washery thing at the rear of the motor sit at a jaunty angle, which was then rubbing against the back end of the motor drive shaft causing my opertunity. So I removed this blactac and reset the motor in its correct possition only to find that now, the black plastic retaining washery thing was too loose between the motor and the mount, "Hmmm, I bet a nicely fasioned piece of vero board would fit in that gap" I thought to my self, so I set about making a very basic 15mm square shaped piece of vero board which I then drilled a 5.2mm hole in the middle of to fit over the black plastic retaining washery thing, then fitted it all to the motor mount, It was a bit of a squeeze so I sanded the vero board down a tad on the track side (about 1/4 of its thickness was removed) and refitted it all. I then trimmed the vero board that was visible around the motor mount with my side cutters and it looks and works a treat.

Needless to say that I might take a look in my other 0-4-0 engines and do the same if required.

Hope this helps anyone out there with similar opertunitys.

Cheers.