Let's Tango! O2 to be produced

[Bigmet]

I am a month in on operation of this model now, and it's prived completely reliable. Whatever the troubles might have been on the B-G for Hattons, it hasn't transferred to this model. It's something of a layout queen, I run it on every haul I can instead of a WD or 9F. Now waiting impatiently for the even better 'GNR style' O2/1 and O2/2.

[Bigmet]

Been fiddling around with it, and like it even more.

I was scratching my head over closing up the loco to tender distance, when a very good idea came along; a suggestion to use a different tender. It's ended up with a spare Bachmann LNER GS tender, and putting my own screw hole in the tender underside to secure the drawbar means the overall length over frames of loco plus tender has been set correctly, with a loco cab rear to tender step distance which is to scale. Added a fall plate, just a piece of blackened thin brass sheet lying loose on the cab floor, and we are done. Looks really fine when running.

A lot of folks make a fuss over this detail or that on models; but for my money on tender locos if loco and tender are obviously spaced too far apart, that is the first thing to put right. Closed up to scale, the gain in appearance is very significant, and with the addition of the fall plate providing a floor it looks like a place where the fireman could work while the loco is running. (Instead of a death trap for him to fall into.)

[Bigmet]

Concerning doubts over the motor Heljan have used in this model - which externally appears identical to that in the class 15 of which I have a pair operating successfully since that model first came out - my O2 has been plodding away every day on heavy unfitted freight turns since I last posted on this subject in March. These trains are 50 to 60 wagons, mixtures of RTR and kit built including whitemetal models, the trains typically weighing in between 2 and 3 kg. A turn involves a run of 700 feet on my system, which is scale 10 miles, and there are gradients: it takes a slow freight near half an hour.

If it was going to turn its toes up from some construction failure in the motor or drive train, I can be 99.9% certain it would have done so by now. Job's a goodun in my opinion.

[Black-Marlin]

I bought an O2 second-hand but guaranteed. I managed to run it once and the motor fried itself. This was on a Hornby rolling road powered by a bog standard Hornby controller. Back to the seller it went, who promptly replaced the motor and thus solved the problem.

Heljan's motors do seem to be that company's Achilles heel...

[Bigmet]

Well, my O2 performed some rather jerky antics yesterday evening, prompting thoughts of oh dear, perhaps all is not well. However, it was simply a large spider that was the jerk, that had faced the oncoming train and paid the price. Heljan's heavyweight simply trampled it, even though it was a biggun, but the leading truck was derailed. I do like this model, but where are the GNR cabbed and tender versions, pretty please Heljan?

(It's that time of year when the invertebrates start to think about wintering under shelter. I have found moths before now, tneatly tucked in the underframes of diesel locos, between the inside end of the bogie and the underframe fuel tanks. They only cause trouble if they limit the bogie pivoting action significantly.)

[GWR_fan]

Bigmet,
consider yourself lucky. With the early warm weather downunder the blue tongue lizards are making an early appearance as they did last year. Because we have a cat the doors are left open and the lizards think that cat food is very tasty (pity the cat is not as easy to please as the lizards). The thought of a two-foot plus lizard wandering through the house is not amusing.

[Bigmet]

That's an advantage of having had an ice age recently. Very little wildlife made it onto what's now the UK before the first humans repopulated the place, and mostly exterminated anything big enough to be a nuisance. No wolves or bears any more, long ago hunted down, and the only venomous snake is pretty frightened. Just a few escaped big cats gone feral, but these appear to have worked out that generally keeping out of sight is the best plan.

[D605Eagle]

My Tango is still running fine, unlike my Garrett which is now a display model after about 150 scale miles..... Way off topic but I swear I caught a very brief glimpse of a black panther on Cannock Chase a few years ago but your mind can play tricks on you.

[Bigmet]

Twenty odd years ago, a group of us in an office block watched a huge black cat walk across some open 'brownfield' resulting from the demolition of an ICI site, and clear a couple of parallel six foot fences that were the boundary of the old Hatfield to Herford branch, each with 'one bound'. Sadly before mobile phones came with integral cameras.

Earlier this year, I saw cat paw prints about eight inches across in the mud alongside the River Torridge. They looked just like leopard prints I have seen in Africa, after seeing the that animal stalking on the banks of the Zambezi.

They are out there.

[sishades]

I caught a very brief glimpse of a black panther on Cannock Chase

I saw one here in Burston some 15 years ago in the field opposite my house and last year my wife saw one in the road on her way home. We live in the countryside with lots of deer so feeding would not be a problem for them.

[D605Eagle]

I caught a very brief glimpse of a black panther on Cannock Chase

I saw one here in Burston some 15 years ago in the field opposite my house and last year my wife saw one in the road on her way home. We live in the countryside with lots of deer so feeding would not be a problem for them.

Thats why Cannock Chase is ideal for them. Loads and loads of deer to eat, huge areas offering lots of cover to hide in. A lot of people visit the area, but there are large areas well away from tracks that nobody enters.

[Bigmet]

Hattons price was too small to ignore, so I now have an O2/4 variant of the class. If anything even better than my first specimen, an O2/3. Ran very sweetly straight from the box, quiet, smooth from a dead slow on vanilla DC, and the same excellent traction as the first example.

Now the version I really want is an O2/2, but if Heljan drag their feet much longer I'll make and fit the O2/3 with the old style GNR cab and scratch around for a GN type tender.

[D605Eagle]

Hattons price was too small to ignore, so I now have an O2/4 variant of the class. If anything even better than my first specimen, an O2/3. Ran very sweetly straight from the box, quiet, smooth from a dead slow on vanilla DC, and the same excellent traction as the first example.

Now the version I really want is an O2/2, but if Heljan drag their feet much longer I'll make and fit the O2/3 with the old style GNR cab and scratch around for a GN type tender.

I sold my spare one just before Hattons dropped their prices of O2s, and I'm seriously tempted to get another for less than I sold my spare for!

[Bigmet]

...the version I really want is an O2/2...

Hurrah, Heljan have the O2/1 and O2/2 in their 2020 programme, so that we can have them in all their original Doncastrian magnificence. That will be the first release of an original GNR appearance non-express loco. (Unless another manufacturer greatly surprises with an alternative GNR condition tender loco in the interim and beats Heljan to delivery, very unlikely I feel.)

[Bigmet]

Yesterday it was the turn of the O2/4 to run into the one reliability problem I have yet to cure, occasional great gobs of track dirt which appear randomly on the data I have collected so far. The O2/4 made a really noticeable kick as it ran over points, so came off its train and was stood aside while another freight heavy came up light engine from the London end of the layout to take the freight forward.

Anyhoo, the fitter (that's me with a different hat on) took a look at the 'cripple' this morning. and it had a lump of filth on one rear wheel, and a smear on the leading coupled wheel the other side. It's got to be from locos 'dropping' some lubricant every now and again, but I have yet to see evidence of it as it happens. That was the first one of these events in 2020, it averages three a year. But this time for the first time I know where it happened, on a point which the loco ran across going backwards, and then after turning ran across forwards, and I have found (and cleaned) the dirty point crossing. Trouble is about forty locos ran over it yesterday evening before the O2 went through it...

My two Heljan O2 2-8-0s continue to please, in company with the O1 and O4 they add a little variety to the usual diet of WD 2-8-0 and 9F power for heavy freight. Five classes of heavy goods available from RTR for a southern end of the ECML BR(ER) steam layout, this is riches indeed! (And if modelling further North on what was the NER where the O2 was unlikely to turn up, there's the ex-NER Q6 to keep up the 'freight heavy' count instead.) Compared to the LMS/LMR provision of 8F, G2A and Beyer Garratt this is very generous, where's the 'Austin 7' (Fowler 7F) which with 175 constructed well outnumbers any of the O1, O2 and Q6 classes?