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Looking through some lists of s/h Hornby locos, I keep seeing the terms "ringfield motor" and "scalectric-type motor". In practice, what's the difference?

Rather than try explaining the difference, go to Google images and search the two motors, lots of info also try here, http://www.brian-lambert.co.uk

OK, having now looked at pictures of each, it seems to me that the "Scalextric" type is simpler and has less potential to go noisy. Is that a fair generalisation?

Just wondering which is probably the best bet for smooth, quiet running, especially at low speeds. We're talking 0-6-0 locos by the way.

Ringfield is a specialist type motor and scalextric is a can motor.

The former can be refurbished and the latter usually can't.

For *slow* smooth quiet running,
something like this: (but the thick shaft means work to get the worm to mount properly.)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/361561129882? ... EBIDX%3AIT
4,000 rpm translates to about 3 r p second on the wheels. at full voltage.
Alternately one such as this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-3V-12V-Ele ... 1561129882

With the spindle vertical. It will fit many Hornby tank engines, but not all. D Class , Nellie

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Same size motor on an 0-4-0

Chris

Blimey Chris, that's an eye-opener! Would you believe that the idea of actually changing the motor hadn't occurred to me?

Getting back to the ringfield vs Scalextric type though, I'm surprised that the ringfield's more easily refurbished than the Scalextric, given that the former seems to use a mess of gears compared to the latter's simplicity and worm drive.

The Scalextric motor is essentially a cheap 'fit and forget' design, if it wears out you replace it. The Ringfield is much easier to strip down and rebuild, handy if you have a lot of older locos as you can make one good one out of three duffers with little more than a pair of pliers and a flat blade screwdriver. The plastic gears occasionally shed teeth but are very simple to replace, the only other fault I've come across is the brass gear on the end of the armature working loose but that's easily fixed with epoxy. The brushes are also replaceable.

The Scalextric motor is also very high revving, both my Caley Pugs fitted with it had a quite ridiculous turn of speed. You can get very good slow speed control with a Ringfield in good nick, even a 3-pole one.

muggins wrote:Getting back to the ringfield vs Scalextric type though, I'm surprised that the ringfield's more easily refurbished than the Scalextric, given that the former seems to use a mess of gears compared to the latter's simplicity and worm drive.

The reason is that can motors cannot be taken apart while the ringfield can be. Just so you know Hornby 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 locos are not known for good running qualities while the type 7 motor which is common in the cheaper 0-6-0 locos is utterly awful in an aircraft-at-takeoff kind of way.

Jim

RAFHAAA96 wrote:Ringfield is a specialist type motor and scalextric is a can motor. The former can be refurbished and the latter usually can't.

Hang on, hang on. My brain's starting to hurt. As Tim suggested in post #2, I did a Google image search on "ringfield motor". I would have said those are can motors, and they drive through a gear train. Hence my response in post #3.

If you Google image search "Scalextric type motors", put a worm gear on the motor in the third picture instead of the pinion and that's what was inside my old Triang locos when I was a kid. That's not a Scalextrix type motor????

The one at the back is a Ringfield motor, the one at the front is a Scalextric motor. Regardless of what might have actually gone in Scalextric cars over the years, if you see 'Scalextric motor' in the context of Hornby locos, what they usually mean is the one in front. This one is out of one of the first releases of the Caley Pug. The Ringfield was used in power bogies and tender drives, in 4 wheel and six wheel versions. This is a six wheel version (middles ones are in the spares box somewhere), which is either out of a Black 5 tender drive or a Class 37 bogie.

Scalextic originally used a modified Triang X03, or maybe it was the X04. Making all of the bits and assembling a motor was costly so Scalextric adopted a ready built motor made by Johnson. It was an open sided can and they all seem to have had a goldish finish. It went into the Triang Hornby replacement for Nellie which gave the 0-4-0s their reputation for jackrabbit starts.They were later replaced by a sealed can motor.
The type 7 came via bought in designs from Dapol. It's fine used with a two stage reduction, but substituted for an X04 in the 0-6-0s lacked low speed torque, so Hornby replaced the undersized middle wheels with ones fitted with rubber tyres. Truly their low point in mechanical design.
The type 7 is used in the Pug, Terrier and J94 all of which perform well if a little noisey and has been retro fitted to the 14xx and some others.

Just for the sake of completeness, on the left two slightly different ype 7s (referred to by Mahoganydog) and on the right Ye Olde Tri-ang X04 as found in almost every Hornby steam loco before the Ringfield/Scalextric takeover. The XO4 will run for years if not generations with little more than an occasional clean and new brushes.

muggins wrote:Blimey Chris, that's an eye-opener! Would you believe that the idea of actually changing the motor hadn't occurred to me?

It grew out of an experiment to see if battery power and basic radio control could produce a slow (single-speed) shunter that wouldn't care about track cleanliness or dead frogs.

That chassis is for a double-ended vertical boiler loco.



If you haven't, please note my signature line.

Thank you very much indeed for sorting that one out, gentlemen

And finally, after the review of the back story of the motors of the Triang to the final UK (Margate) Hornby and ex-Dapol 0-4-0T and 0-6-0T product: there's very much a new kid in town.

Hornby have recently released the J50 0-6-0T which has a modern drive design and performs beautifully. I expect the new Peckett 0-4-0T will be from the same mould, as the drive in the small 4 wheeled Sentinel diesels has had very good reviews. (And while on diesels, the class 08 shunter was the first all new design '0-6-0T' Hornby released after their move to production in China and very good too, big can motor, flywheel, 40:1 gear train; smooth and very controllable to a dead slow crawl.)

muggins wrote:...Just wondering which is probably the best bet for smooth, quiet running, especially at low speeds. We're talking 0-6-0 locos by the way.

The new Hornby product is in a completely different class from what went before. If smooth and quiet is a high priority, I suggest skipping straight past all the old stuff, and buying the new and vastly superior goods. Bachmann's 0-6-0T product (with the exception of the dated design J72) is in the same class.