Lima can motor locos

[bob129]

I have just bought a Lima class 20 i find it has a can motor and shaft drive to a gearbox.
Doe's anyone know if Lima made any other locos with this type of motor.

[Mountain]

I once bought one of those. I dont know if other models Lima made have that motor. I found the Lima class 20 to be a bit of a compromised design so it wasn't such a nice runner as the pancake motored models I had. I didnt have it long as a friend liked it and for me, a class 20 is the wrong region for the area of the country I was modelling in.
What was the Lima class 59 or 67 like internally? I didnt buy these. These were some of the later models Lima made which may share the same motor? Hopefully someone knows more.

[Bigmet]

Lima's class 67 - their last introduction to the UK market - was a centre motor all wheel drive. Too little too late. They had the knowhow to do this well before Bachmann bought their centre motor 'spectrum' drive to the UK in 1991/2 in the remotored Mainline Peak body.

The class 20: good can motor, but the gear ratio was only 4:1 so it would spin those wheels at a rate good for scale 400mph. All the driven wheels had traction tyres and no pick up, and the pick up was obtained by metal plates running in a pulley wheel like arrangement on the back of the trailing bogie wheels which acted as brakes to limit the speed. Weird set up...

[bob129]

Thanks for your replies guys.
I have fitted TTS sound to my 2 Lima class 20s and they run very well,pity they didn't use the motor arrangement on earlier models.
Cheers
Bob

[D605Eagle]

Although Lima were independent at the time, I believe the motor and chassis were derived from Rivarossi who incidentally ended up buying Lima in 1992. The reason the super high quality Pancake motor wasn't used was that it wouldn't fit in the narrow body. Lima's UK outline models were all made to a price, hence the cheapo quality of the mechanisms. Their European outline models were quite superb in comparison. Class 20s were always more expensive than other Lima locos.

[Bigmet]

... Lima's UK outline models were all made to a price, hence the cheapo quality of the mechanisms...

Driven by the UK agent for Lima's OO productions, at the time Riko. Much the same arrangment arose phoenix-like in the form of Hobbyco which was the UK agent for the ViTrains brand during its short lived foray into OO productions. Having an agent between manufacturer and retailer is going to put the price up, so they made the saving to keep prices low on the product - innards especially.

...Their European outline models were quite superb in comparison. Class 20s were always more expensive than other Lima locos.

Effectively I missed out on Lima's OO activities due to the usual 'midlife break' from model railway, mainly due to career pressure. I was well surprised by the Lima class 20 when a friend produced both a new one, and also the seriously damaged wreck he had acquired, and asked me to produce an all wheel drive unit from these. Well look at that, they had done half a job toward all-wheel drive, which had been emerging in North American HO during my first time around.

It was a pretty easy job to fit the drive bogie from the wreck - well I say that but finding out how the body came off slowed me down a little - and really I doubt it would have affected the model price very much had it been supplied as all wheel drive (only one type of bogie to make for a start and plain wheels with no traction tyres, there's some savings). This of course was the moment I discovered that with the brakes off, (I had fitted new wiper pick ups all around) it would do about 400mph. But no matter because the owner was a DCC user, and that's when I got the good demo of how DCC allowed a tailored set up to make a mechanism run as required. That was a one off, as Bachmann came in with a better all-wheel drive by the time I was thinking a couple of 20s were needed for my operation, as it was going to show the first diesels arriving to displace steam.

[Meister]

Believe it or not, some of us actually like Lima! As a young modeller in the early 1980s I would never have stuck with the hobby had it not been for Lima's modern image range which was by far the best available at the time. Never had any running issues with them and they were rarely if ever faulty from new (unlike some other 'quality' brands I could mention). Years later, the only locos that ran perfectly after almost 15 years in storage were Wrenn and . . . you've guessed it . . . Lima. The only ones out of the 50+ I own that have ever given any problems are a 94xx and a 20 that were eventually much improved with some fettling and TLC. Yes they are crude and dated now but Lima is nothing like as bad as it is often made out to be and the company made an important contribution to the hobby at the time.

[Puffingbill]

The thing I like about Lima models is that they can sit idle for 30 or so years but give them a little push backwards and forwards and off they go, a wee bit of oil and they run as good as new, its a pitty some of our other brands are not as reliable.

[Ken Shabby]

The Class 20 was the only Lima loco I've owned which I had real trouble with. I bought a boxed and never used example about 5 years back and It ran very poorly, however I know now It probably only needed lubrication as It had sat in it's box for over 15 years.
I sold it in bits for a fair price and now have 2 Bachmann Choppers which both run superbly.
Since then I've bought many Lima diesels and I'm a big fan of them. My latest is a EWS Class 33 which is my first post privatisation loco.
Ken

[GWR_fan]

In my experience the earlier release models tend to run better. I purchased several models released not long before Hornby took over ownership and while they looked better with their plated wheelsets, the motors were amp hungry and the locomotives were very tempermental.

The class 20 always surprised me with its odd design with single bogie drive and limited power pickups. Even stranger is that Hornby continued the same design even though in competition with the far superior Bachmann model.

[Bigmet]

Cheaply acquired tooling, and a model at a low price in a Hornby box would be the shorthand answer.

There was positive howling at the time Hornby bought the Lima tooling, for immediate resumption of production of the 'essential' diesel locos. At least the 20 has the decency to look like a 20; the 55 now, that is genuinely dire, but Hornby have persisted with that unchanged in externals.

As for the loyal Hornby customer base, back in 2003 when Lima were acquired there was a definite cadre of customers who wouldn't consider anything but Hornby product for their model railway needs. That's faded more than somewhat in recent years.

[brammie]

Thanks for your replies guys.
I have fitted TTS sound to my 2 Lima class 20s and they run very well,pity they didn't use the motor arrangement on earlier models.
Cheers
Bob

Bob; Me too, but I find that their speed is far too high for scale. With no CV4 or CV5, the only way that I can see to reduce the speed to near scale is to fit a dropper resistance in series with the motor supply - say 4ohm 4watt. Thoughts?

[GWR_fan]

Yesterday, I received another cheap purchase from Hattons, a Lima class 67 "Night Mail". Same design as the Hornby (pre-mazak chassis design) model, however, the Lima has a lone traction tyre on each bogie. Definitely not a speed demon and I would think would respond well to a decoder. The circuit board has a pseudo 8-pin design however, it would seem that Lima went cold on the idea of making DCC ready and connected the track pickups and motor terminals. The tyres give the loco a slight wobble although performance otherwise is fine. The previous owner did a bodge fibre optic conversion to illuminate the centre high intensity headlamp. I ripped this out as the execution of the job was very amateurish.

I have two of the Hornby (ex-Lima) design with plastic chassis and heavy weight in the fuel tank. The lighting on these is led rather than the clumsy filament lighting on the Lima model.

[Bigmet]

...another cheap purchase from Hattons, a Lima class 67 "Night Mail". ... Definitely not a speed demon and I would think would respond well to a decoder. The circuit board has a pseudo 8-pin design however, it would seem that Lima went cold on the idea of making DCC ready and connected the track pickups and motor terminals...

There is a weird coincidence. Yesterday afternoon I had a look at an old MR from 2001, thanks to a friend who was interested in a particular item within (which need not concern us).

But this issue had a modest announcement of Lima's new class 67, with a small sketch diagram of the centre motor all wheel drive layout. The spec list included claims of 'custom electronic control' with specific reference to acceleration, but not a word about DCC. In that same MR issue the DCC ready Heljan 47 was reviewed*, and Bachmann already had at least their class 25 on sale with a DCC socket. I rather suspect Lima's 'too little, too late' effort had some muddled thinking on the 'electronics' front.

(Interestingly, further evidence of muddled thinking, both Lima and Hornby made the mistake of fitting traction tyres on their first OO centre motor all wheel drive models, Hornby's the class 50.)


*I was quite impressed by the Heljan 47 review, they properly identified the major flaw by stating appearance was compromised by the main body being overwidth by 2mm, and this affected appearance with over emphasised cab taper in plan view and excessive overhang of the body above the bogies, and would be very difficult for all but the keenest and best equipped modellers to correct. It contrasted rather with their lame comment that Lima were 'answering prayers' in finally bringing a superior drive layout long proven in HO to their OO range. I would have thought something more pungent on Lima finally seeing the error of their ways would have been appropriate, and more consistent with the properly critical Heljan review.