Flying Scotsman buzzing not moving

[Gary-351222]

I purchased a Flying Scotsman. Lovely, but it buzzes instead of moving. When I start the HM2000 it moves about half a centimetre and if I slide the direction switch it'll move in the opposite direction about half a centimetre all the while buzzing. My Inter-City (40+ years old) is currently circumventing the track merrily. Current base is a bedroom carpet. Just a temporary measure out of curiosity to see if the Inter-City worked. Now it's the Scotsman's turn? Any thoughts?

[Going Spare]

Can you give the catalogue R-number of your Flying Scotsman to identify, for example, whether it is loco- or tender driven. Was it new or secondhand?

[Gary-351222]

eBay listing for the used loco and plastic tender says R855 and from the weight and inspection I'm pretty sure it's loco driven. I got it moving a couple of centimetres back and forth but then I realised it shouldn't be making smoke! Seller said it moved well backwards and forwards in his listing. I've added photos from the listing. Hope that helps.

[ColinB]

To me it sounds like something is stopping the motor from moving properly. I would check for stuck valve gear. As Going Spare says, it would help if we knew what type of Flying Scotsman it is. Like late 1970's with motor in loco. early eighties with motor in tender or later with a modern motor in the loco.

[Gary-351222]

Good morning. You'll see that I had updated my post with info and photographs as I'm not too well versed yet in the technical details. I'm planning to attend a fairly local train club next week and they have a free repair table. Probably a wiseer choice than me starting on it!

[Topcat2018]

To the best of my knowledge (no guarantees) if your Flying Scotsman is R855 then it's pretty old, late 1960s to mid 1970s. Fairly basic and easy to service if you haven't burnt out the motor. It will be loco driven and have an X-series motor, don't know which one.

[Going Spare]

It might be an idea to check the controller connections as buzzing could mean the motor is being fed with AC rather than DC current. Make sure that the track the loco was on is connected to a 'controlled 12v DC' output.

If that is not the cause, take the loco body off by removing the screw under the cab floor and see whether the worm on the motor shaft is meshing correctly with the wormwheel on the rear driving wheel axle when power is applied. There may be sufficient wear in the axle journals to cause them to come out of mesh.

If the problem persists, release the motor from the chassis block by removing the screw at the front of the motor and see whether the chassis moves freely when pushed along the track by hand.

Edit: Having re-read your first post, I think you can disregard the first paragraph above.

[Gricer]

Last year a friend picked up an old Hornby loco for me at a boot fair. When I tried it out I just got buzzing. I visually checked running gear for possible locking and retried it several times. Just buzzing. I finally opened it up and found that it had been converted and contained a chip. Not good on my analogue layout. Perhaps someone had done the same to your second hand Flying Scotsman?

[Yelrow]

Gricer, you beat me to the punch. Buzzing to me indicated that it had a chip, and DC running had perhaps been disabled.

[Gary-351222]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. I'm late 1960's myself so I know the feeling!! Love the information I get on this forum. Helpful and educational. The train club men next week will take a look at it for me. On a side issue, how do I find out how old or young a FS loco is?

[Gary-351222]

Thanks for your reply. I'll find out the score next week when the train club I'm planning to visit take a look at it.

[Gary-351222]

If that is the case can the chip be taken out and put back to its original condition?

[Yelrow]

yup, you simply remove chip and replace with blanking plate. what i dont know is how you return to DC running. No doubt some clever person will know. May be, you need to take it to someone who has DCC controller. above my pay grade.

[Going Spare]

Your version of Flying Scotsman was introduced in 1968. If it has a firebox-glow light in the cab, it is an early example; if it has the chuff-chuff sound generator in the tender, it was made between 1971 and 1977.

In general terms, loco's with a catalogue number below R1000 were made in the UK between 1952 and 1999. Catalogue numbers were allocated entirely randomly so the higher the R-number does not necessarily mean the more recent the model is, and, to complicate matters, those numbers were often reused for different loco's. The instruction leaflet that was issued with each loco gave a production date at the top of the first page. Tri-ang-badged loco's date from between 1952 and 1965 when 'Tri-ang Hornby' was adopted. This lasted until 1972 when 'Hornby Railways' came in to being.

When production was transferred to China in 1996, catalogue numbers used were from R2000 upwards for individual loco's and train packs (R1000 for sets) and were allocated in numeric order, covering both main-range, Railroad-series (from 2007) and the short-lived Live Steam models (2005) without segregation.

If your loco has been fitted with a decoder, restoring it to DC operation will depend upon how the decoder was linked in to the fairly simple original loco wiring (slightly more complicated if a firebox glow bulb is/was fitted). If a decoder socket was used, the decoder can be replaced by a blanking plate but it may have been hard wired directly to the loco wiring. Diagrams on Service Sheets 76 and 89 accessible from Lendons of Cardiff via the 'Useful Links' pinned post at the top of this forum section give some idea of the original wiring. A decoder-fitting tutorial for X04 motors (as in your loco) is within the pinned FAQ post at the top of the DCC section of the forum: removing a hard wired decoder would be the reverse of that procedure.

[Gary-351222]

Goodness. That was a detailed and interes reply. I think I'll leave to the men at the repair table of the train club to tackle the loco's issues.

[ColinB]

It cannot contain a chip as the author said it moves about a centimeter backwards and forwards they generally don't do that. I suspect it is a case of the motor is just "gummed up" and needs cleaning. I have had it happen to many of my old Wrens.

[ntpntpntp]

Running a DCC chipped loco on DC doesn't cause buzzing unless a low PWM frequency is chosen in the decoder. If DC is enabled it will run but will need the controller turned up a bit before the decoder "wakes up". If DC has been disabled in the decoder it'll just sit there and do nothing.

It's the other way round - putting a DC loco on DCC track - which causes buzzing and no movement. It's bad for the motor, even if the DCC system has the ability to "zero-stretch" the DCC signal and run a single non-chipped loco. That facility fell out of favour many years ago, especially for small scales.

There's probably no decoder in it, this sounds more like a mechanical problem, something jammed up.

[ModelerXYZ]

Buzzing may indicate that the motor is moving but the wheels are not. Worn gears could be a culprit. That is what I expect to find when I dismantle my Henry model. (Yes, I do play Thomas the tank engine sometimes)

XYZ

[Rana Temporia]

If it has a plastic cog on the axle they often break away from the splines and will rotate without the loco moving, moving erratically, or apparently working fine until a load is put on it. You will hear the motor running but the loco won’t move properly.