Hornby 0-6-0 Sentinel - Anyone used one ?

[Dad-1]

Very Sweet Runner, can't fault it.
That is unless like Sam you think directional lighting should be fitted
for the price they charge. Mind you knowing the problems my mate had with
his Heljan 05 I prefer the simplicity of this one !

For Dave a couple more photos from a running session.







Testing it was the #19 Kadee that caused problems. It was one from the packet.
I tend to soften the springs so they operate more freely.

Geoff T

[Lofty]

They look good, though far too clean for my taste, funnily my Heljan 05 is probably the best runner I have, the running lights are minuscule and you have trouble seeing them in decent daylight. It’s currently in the sick bay having had a buffer snap off when I dropped it.

[Dad-1]

Dropping is NOT good for models.
What went wrong with Derek's 05 ?. He had a decoder fitted by supplier and after 3 feet of travel it expired in smoke.
He didn't return it but just shoved it aside. After a year or so he gave to me and I refitted the blanking plug. Smoke
again and the motor was burnt out. No spares available !!
Another couple of years and I got one.
The motor is a press fit and held by 2 rubber rings. I believe the motor moved being pushed back by the simple action
of the drive. There was no insulating to prevent the motors end terminals from shorting in the metal chassis.
I had to strip out the DCC socket also burnt out and then hard wired in a new decoder.
For some odd reason the Heljan wiring didn't match the normal standards and I had to work out what had to go where
leaving a truly odd mix of colours connected together.
I gave it back to him working with all lights functioning.
His version turned into Very much a nightmare loco.

Did some insulating fall out when the supplier fitted the decoder ??? We will never know.

Geoff T.

[Dad-1]

Now looking like it's been used for a few years.
Clean shiny plastic doesn't look right.



Geoff T.

[SRman]

That does look good, Geoff. Nice job with the weathering.

[End2end]

Looking the part as a workhorse. Much better now with your weathering Dad-1.
Thanks
End2end

[Lofty]

A vast improvement on the factory finish in my personal opinion.

[Bigmet]

More, more! Filth that is. Got to be some exhaust deposit and the odd streak of oil leaking down somewhere? It sounds like this is a 'recommendable' for those that want a simple and robust small loco, for not too much money.

...Did some insulating fall out when the supplier fitted the decoder ?...

Whatever happened, there cannot have been any meaningful running test operation, (here assuming that the decoder installation was verified by the vendor by an address change) since it failed so fast when the customer operated it.

I had several 'supplier installed decoder' jobs to look at on behalf of others when DCC was relatively new to the UK, and they were consistently poor, sounds like improvement is still required, twenty+ years on. All of what follows is 8 pin decoder related, because that was what was available. Decoder still on factory default 03 address, decoder plug with a bent pin, bodies wedged on by trapped wires due to no attempt at dressing the wiring bundle, uninsulated decoder unsecured in close proximity to bare metal, decoder trapped and under load. Really you couldn't make it up. I ended up talking to a long ago retired agent for one of the DCC providers, and he was blunt in the extreme about such problems, I'd probably be banned for quoting his pungently expressed opinion....

[Richard08]

Nice gentle touch of weathering there. It hides, or is that camouflages, the windows - which look terrible on the pristine version.

[Dad-1]

Thanks for the comments Guys,

By this morning the dirty look had faded slightly as it dried out overnight.
I did have to carefully check all the coupling rods as washing with paint
is asking to jam one up. Then a touch of lube to ease any ingress of paint.
Here it is in it's operating environment where apart from an odd dribble
stains to follow it fits the scene.
Rather late, but tonight will be it's running-in on the club's long test track.





Funny Sam's Trains can get things very wrong, you can never expect 100%
perfect running straight from the box, at the very least it should only be
judged AFTER at least 2 hours, 1 in each direction.

Geoff T.

[Richard08]

Funny Sam's Trains can get things very wrong, you can never expect 100%
perfect running straight from the box, at the very least it should only be
judged AFTER at least 2 hours, 1 in each direction.

Geoff T.

That's very unfair. Sam ran his in and it still didn't run very well. You just got luckier, nothing to do with Sam.

[Dad-1]

Hi Richard08,

A little unfair perhaps, but he can be very critical.
Most of his slow running stutters were over insulated frog, probably Hornby points.
Now while I agree that live frog points are not Train Set issue and perhaps locomotives
should pass over them, to achieve that we wouldn't have the recent super little 0-4-0
locomotives.
We need to educate modellers that these smaller locomotives need live, switched
polarity pointwork to run slowly and faultlessly through them.

For all my criticism I do check out what he's done with any locomotive I'm about to buy,
from that I will judge if I'm prepared to spend. His Heljan 1361 analysis was spot on !!

Geoff T.

[Bigmet]

...A little unfair perhaps, but he can be very critical...

Hopefully, the brand managements are taking notice. If you want to secure - let alone grow - your place in the market, then product that works reliably straight out of the box is expected, and thus a baseline requirement.

The limitations of UK OO set track is something those producing it should urgently rectify. The design was obsolescent by the 1960s, before it was introduced to the UK, in my definitely unhumble opinion.

Likewise the models. Pete Waterman et al were busily demonstrating the limitations of the tension lock coupler in this week's 'Model World' episode.

RTR OO product now has good potential performance, it's time to go to work on the several significant limiting 'legacy' factors that still infest it. None of it rocket science, there are proven solutions, to make good performance reliably available to all.

[Richard08]

We need to educate modellers that these smaller locomotives need live, switched
polarity pointwork to run slowly and faultlessly through them.

Geoff T.

I agree, going electrofrog was always something of a complication to early teens me - a couple of dozen sets of points to replace for a start. Hopefully Peco's unifrog will solve the problem for those starting out or building anew. Hornby's 'match truck' with pickups seems a reasonable compromise in the meantime.