Heljan '00' 05 problem solved after nearly 3 years

[Dad-1]

To be fair only 1 year down to Heljan, due to the unavailability of replacement motors.
Now in !!
Now fixed.

https://youtu.be/zhBS9PfE5Is

Geoff T.

[Bufferstop]

I bet you could have found one on Ebay. Unless a motor has been made specifically as part of the chassis you'll find one that matches, but without the gear on the end, and usually considerably cheaper than the manufacturer charges.

[GeraldH]

What a saga! It's shame that Heljan can't do a better job with the availability of spares, it has certainly deterred me from buying anything else from them.

[Bigmet]

But how much deterence? If my model railway scene really needed that particular rod coupled shunter, I'd not be put off. Mind you, I test all new purchases thoroughly for 'infant mortality' within a week from arrival: if it fails back it goes for replacement; no arguments, it's a very recent purchase.

[Dad-1]

Quite right Bigmet,
My mate should have shot it straight back to the trader, who had also added the decoder. When moving
house though, model trains are a very insignificant item

As to delays with getting the replacement motor, change of servicing agents as Covid restrictions started
was something of a problem. Let's face it after a short time you couldn't get Peco track !!

It runs well enough now and I know someone who says his 05 is one of his best runners ever.
Perhaps the missing insulation was a one off, as without it I'd have expected many more complaints.
This happening shows how difficult it can be when every imaginable problem lines up in one event.

Certainly Gaugemaster were very good in their handling.
I want a replacement fret of wheel pick-up wipers for a Hornby loco. None available and perhaps this year ?
An old loco ? No a Peckett B2, so in that respect Heljan are no worse than other manufacturers. BUT honestly
can you say any of them are manufacturers ? They procure and don't make anything themselves so don't have
easy access to any spares other than breaking down non-working returns ??

Geoff T.

[Bufferstop]

Geoff it's been that way with spares in the computer industry as long as I've known it. I did a one day course on aligning disk drives, and the guy running it was quite happy to buy anything we couldn't fix just for his company to rip down for spares. Similar thing with printers, they are eminently fixable if you can find the spares, about the only parts that were ever available were dot matrix print heads, some of those could even be repaired if you had a donor part, loco fixing skills were transferable to print heads, usually amounted to identifying which hammer was broken and pulling the same one out of the donor head. 24pin heads were the real taxing ones.

[Bigmet]

... BUT honestly can you say any of them are manufacturers ? They procure and don't make anything themselves so don't have
easy access to any spares other than breaking down non-working returns...

That's a truth, and increasingly apparent in OO with multiple competitors emerging to challenge the longer term players. When people ask questions on the lines of 'I have always wanted a model of the Armsworth Carthorse class, and see that one has now been announced, but it is by a maker I have never previously heard of'; my suggestion is that it will be made in the same Chinese manufacturing system used by all the longer established makers, so it will probably be worth a punt. (They all use technique developed to serve the North American HO market over the last fifty years, and most of that looks right and performs well.)

When it comes to spares, for any class which I really need to have operational for the layout, I buy a cheap 'breaker' as opportunity offers. Of course what happens when you have the spares to hand is that they are very rarely required, but that's life...