ausrym

I've purchased 4 Hornby locos and 2 of them (both J15's had issues - one the moptor dies after 6 months, the other would work 1 day, not the next (very tempramental). The B17 I bought has been a shocking jerky runner and nothing has fixed it. I bought so many Hornby spares, serviced, cleaned and lubed them but no dice. Ironically my 'train set' Hogwarts Express with a 3-pole motor has been the best crawler and perfectly reliable. I've given up on Hornby locos - they aren't worth the hassle and have pre-ordered a Dapol large prairie from the upcoming 2nd batch as my 'Plan B' loco

No worries Bee, my layout scenery is all done so I'm not prepared to change it to accomodate R7295 so I'll give this a miss (plus my setting is English, not Scottish, although I was happy to bend the rules for this building, but alas...) I wish Hornby would publish dimensioned line drawings of (all aspects of) all its Skaledale buildings (similar to what they do for the locos), especially for those that have lean-to areas etc. or are unsually shaped. Would make things much easier.

Thanks Bee, always a wealth of info from you. I want my consist to be Loco > (Coach 1: 1st compartments>3rd compartments) > (Coach 2: 3rd compartments >brake section). My take on that RMweb forum link is in order to make the above, I need it in this order: Loco > R4687A (LH) > R4685A (RH). Is that your reading Bee? If so I'll go buy them :D

Hi all I want to make up a small 2-coach branch line train. I want a brake 3rd corridor + a corridor composite. I'm thinking of R4685A (right hand) and R4687A (left hand) respectively? Do I need this combo so I can have the 3rd class all together and then the 1st closest to the loco? Or do I need 2 of the same 'handed' coaches?

Bump

Hi all I want to buy R7295 Scottish Croft for my layout but the dimensions listed on the Hornby website suggest it could be too big for my space. I can see there is a front ‘alcove’ and a rear skillion portion for the overall building which represent the extremities of the building depth (i.e. front-to back). If anyone owns one, could they please provide a bird’s eye view photo of it and measurements of the main part of the building and then the alcove and skillion portion to see if I can adjust my topography and landscaping around these points? Regards

Hi guys Thanks for the ongoing help. So, a minor update. Firstly, I'm in Australia and it's too costly to mail anything to Hornby unfortunately. I pulled the loco apart right down to the worm gear (thanks for the service sheet suggestion, which helped). With the motor both in and out of the chassis I can rotate the worm drive which then rotates the wheels freely. I accidentally broke one of the wires from the tender to the moto so I’ll have to solder that back on. I otherwise can't see any faults. Does the above shed any further light for anyone? EDIT: typos

So, minor update. I miraculously found a 9V battery. Tested it on my other 2 locos and their wheels spin so the battery isn't flat and my technique works On the J15, nada. I can't even feel the motor vibrate or hear any hum. Put the J15 back on my layout and it at least makes the hum sound but no movement. Any ideas?

Hi TVR Thanks for your quick reply. Unfortunately I don't have access to an analogue layout. I don'also don't have any 9V battteries but I'll buy one tomorrow and see if that helps. So that I'm clear - do I apply the battery to the wheels and see if starts moving (not sure what you mean re "directly to the motor contacts"). I did just pull the motor out (it's stil connected by the 2 black wires) and I can't rotate the wheels more than say 1/8th of a turn. Do I need to snip both wires to try the test or does this narrow down the issue for you? Thanks aagain for your help as this is all new to me

Hi all, I purchased a Hornby J15 early BR (R3415) ~2 years ago and it was working fine. Took it off the layout (which is all DCC) and shelved it for the past ~2 weeks. Put it back on the layout a few nights ago, it moved forward about 1cm then stopped and now doesn’t move. I’ve pulled it apart and cleaned it with mineral turpentine and re-lubed it but still no dice (nothing obvious looked broken). All my locos use Hornby R8249 decoders and I swapped the 1 in the J15 with another working loco: the J15 decoder works in the other loco and the other loco's decoder in the J15 didn't fix anything. I can hear the motor make a whining/humming sound and feel it vibrate but it doesn’t turn. The wheels can’t be turned fully by hand. When I took off the body and spin the motor itself with my hand it turns freely but it doesn't transfer through to the wheels. I did notiece one of the tender wheels looks 'worn' down to a copper-type colour on the first axle - see below pic. Could this be the issue? My logic is that the power from the track > pickups > motor > worm drive > gears > wheels > loco starts turning. Accordinglly, could it be the soldered joints from the tender wiring (which goes to the motor) have almost broken. I've never soldered before but I'm happy to give it a go if that fixes things (bought a soldering iron and supplies today just in case). Before I have a go at this does the brains trust have any other ideas what it might be? P.S. Rest of my locos still work fine on my layout so I know it's not the track. Thanks in advance

Thanks guys, I found Peter's Spares do them individually but the shipping to Aus is prohibitive and ends up the same price as buying a new pack of the correct Hornby ones. Didn't realise metals, even if metal, would be so expensive Thanks for all the replies!

Hi Guys I was showing our baby my model railway for the first time and she knocked a carriage from Hogwarts Express rake (from R1234M set) off the base board. Fortunately, there was no damage but one of the wheel axle sets popped off and both discs were pushed towards the centre of the axel if that makes sense. I went to regauge it but the plastic insulator ring separated from the axel and is all mangled. Now the disc on 1 side doesn’t fit tightly, causing the wheel to wobble. The plastic ring is beyond repair so I need to buy a new wheel set/axel. The wheel can be purchased as part of R8264 (14.1mm disc, 2 holes), which contains 10 axle sets. I don’t really wany to pay the high price for this as I only need 1 new axle. Is there anywhere I can purchase this singularly? I’ve checked ebay but didn’t really find anything. Unfortunately I don’t have any spare coaches that I could take from. Thanks in advance

Hi guys Thanks for all the replies. I do the same as BM and atom3624 in terms of my regauging technique but all wagons are still jumping. Unfortunately I don't have digital callipers to measure the DCC gauge but needless to say I won't be buying their products again. My issue is now having to manually make everything slightly smaller than the gauge by twisting the wheels along the axles with my finger but this isn't perfectly consistent. I might try file down the gauge to get it narrower as this seems the only option to stop my rolling stock from jumping. Anyone else got any better ideas?

The gauge I have from DCC Concepts is the brass tool for OO/HO. One of my wagons initially had the problem and people said to check its gauging. I did that, but stupidly checked my other Hornby rolling stock (modern stock) and they were all consistently under gauge so I 'fixed' them all in one fell swoop without checking as I went along.

Hi all All my rolling stock are Hornby models produced between 2015-2021. My points are all new Hornby standard left & right hand points (with a set of express points). All track is straight and level. I recently purchased a DCC Concepts back-to-back gauge (DCG-BB145) and re-gauged all my wagon & coach wheels (haven't touched my steam loco's wheels as I'm scared it will stuff up the pickups or con rods). The gauge showed all my rolling stock consistently undersized which the gauge has fixed. Now every single piece of stock 'jumps' on the point frogs as the flanges seem to hit the point of the triangle. I now have to go and make everything slightly narrower than the gauge which then fixes this problem. Unfortunately this is a manual process and I can't get the sets of wheels for each piece of rolling stock perfectly the same. Has anyone else experienced this? I saw in a Sam’s Train's video he did the same exercise and at the end of the video mentioned the same problem. Have I done something wrong here for things to end up like this? Thanks in advance