Merchant navy valve gear X7191

[ColinB]

I ordered a replacement valve gear set hoping that the unrebuilt Merchant Navy one might fit my unrebuilt Battle of Britain/West Country loco. I compared all the dimensions between the two locos and they seemed roughly the same. Anyway the set arrived this morning which unfortunately won't fit as the point it connects to the chassis is different. I couldn't help noticing how substantially thicker all the rods are compared to all the other ones I have fitted, so is this going to be a new trend for Hornby. No issue about the valve gear not fitting, I will save it as a spare part, should mine on my other locos fail. At the moment I found the rebuilt Battle of Britain/ West Country valve gear fits if you remove the extra bits. In my case I had a set that was broken so the extra bits were damaged anyway, so I actually recovered something useful from scrap.

[JohnnyGee]

Merchant Navy valvegear has always been a very fragile set up, that's why new spares are usually sold out and second hand ones are rare and expensive.