TTiimm

Thanks for the video. The push down the track test at the end I have found very useful for diagnosing which of my tankers needs work done. I have one fissons and one carless that go like rockets. The second Carless I have was pretty bad until I regauged it. It is still not as good as the others but is tolerably close. The two mobil tankers I have are awful. One barely moves an inch. I need to get a pin vice first before I try your fix on those. Glad I only bought two!

I have two Mobil, two Carless and one Fissons. The Mobils do bunny hops going through the Hornby points. The Carless and Fissons don't do them at all. I wonder were the Mobils the first production batch? Will have a look at them tomorrow and see if I can sort them out. Thanks for this.

This is a longshot! If you are interested in expanding TT120 into the Irish market the CIE 141 class would be the way to do it. You could also do a 121 on the same chassis as it is essentially the single cab version of the 141.

Just one screw to remove. Below is fig 6 on the maintenance instructions. I have circled it in red. You should be able to see the tabs and if they are catching on the front bogie without having to remove it.

Here is a photo with me pointing at the area where the little metal tabs were. There is a tiny white spot where I snapped the one on this side off. Diagnosis is simple enough, push the front bogie from side to side and see if the flanges are catching on little metal tabs that are just behind the front of the the bogies truck.

My Nighthawk was delivered last week and was having exactly the same problem. I swapped the bogies from my William Whitelaw on to the Nighthawk and the Nighthawk worked perfectly. So it was obviously the bogies were the problem. I had a closer look and discovered the front bogie wheel flange was catching on a small metal tab on the front of the truck. It was stopping the bogies moving fully from left to right on the curves. I tried easing the metal tab out to get it to clear the wheel flange and it snapped off. Put it back on the track and it worked fine. I turned the loco around and it started lifting again. So I took the bogies off again and snipped the small metal tab on the other side off with a xuron snippers. It worked. It goes both directions fine now. It looks like a casting error in some of the bogies trucks. I will see if I can get a photo of it and will post it later.

It is two peco sheds together. William Whitelaw fits well inside. It could be made into a engine shed easily enough. Here is what it looks like from the other side. Goods In / Out.

I have made all my sidings from peco flexitrack. Each are 18 inches long which is a length of flexitrack cut in half. So you get two sidings out of each length. You only have to join them at one end which makes trimming easy. You can put subtle curves in them to space them apart evenly. Buy a xuron cutter, some hornby fishplates(not the peco ones) and a packet of peco sleepers and you are all set. The xuron cutter is great for trimming wires, cable ties, etc - they have multiple uses and are well worth having. You can see below what fits on an 18inch siding comfortably.

5 vent wagons. I've already changed the livery on one to early CIE. The railtec transfers arrived the day before.

Of course use the correct tools as stated above by Nick. I didn't have either on hand and wanted to move on so I used what I had, a needle, lighter and a pair of pliers. It worked out fine in the end!

Hi Nimbus, the couplings get glued into a dovetail that is glued to the underside of the chassis. I had them just pushed in(not glued) when I did a few laps of the 2nd and 3rd radius loops so maybe they weren't so stiff then. No derailments and they went over the points fine. Of course they were between the tender and the brake van, so had the benefit of the pivot on the couplings they were joined to. It might be different withe a rake of them.

Ha! Good luck with that, I'm in Ireland and even Hornby is struggling to get things through customs to me these days! Got three points done today. Get the smallest sewing needle you can find, heat it and melt a hole to the left of the hole that is already there. Moving the spring to the new hole is the fiddly bit. Will do 3 RH points tomorrow(without modification) and that will be my two loops done. The other 4 points are on my sidings so they can wait.

I have 5 left hand points and 5 right hand points in my layout. Counting the points in the track packs there are 2 left hand and 4 right hand. I had bought 3 left hand and 3 right hand separately a week before the track packs came back. I have tested 3 left hands and 3 right hands this morning. The right hands work and the left hands don't. I will have a go at putting in a new spring hole. If it works for me I will take off the cover and modify all 5 left hand points and will know for sure then if they are all single holed. I will let you know what happens.

Okay. Another update. It appears the left hand points have only one spring hole while the right hand points have two. I have just swapped in another left hand point and had the same problem with the twistlock. I removed the cover on that point and low and behold only one hole. Looks like the problem was rectified for the right hand points..

My post above with the picture wasn't okayed until this morning. I bought a load of twistlock point motors last week so it was timely that this thread has reappeared! So what more can I add? This morning I have fitted the first twistlock to my layout. I had the same problem as above - point not working properly. I took off the spring cover plate and found only one hole. This point probably came with the Easterner set. I swapped it out with the point with the two spring holes that I had taken the spring cover off last night(the one in the picture above) and the twistlock is working fine.

This is curious.. I just took the spring cover plate off a Hornby point of my own. Mine had two holes bored where as yours only had the one. I moved the spring into the other hole and the point would spring back on its own when I took my finger off the tiebar. Could this have been a mistake in an earlier batch of points that only one hole was bored under the spring cover? Below is my point, if you zoom in, you will see the second hole.

Just one bit more to add. The couplings need to be shimmed down a little to line up with the hornby couplings. We are talking fractions of a millimeter. Definitely needs refining, but it isn't like it is made in a multi-million quid factory! Fun to make, but it is very fiddly work.

@ Too Tall, chassis is laser cut ply, thicker than the laser cut ply sides. The chassis parts fitted together very well. The top provided was a laser cut piece of card. I found it didn't bend well so I used it as a template to cut two pieces of paper which I laminated together with glue in between. There were a few issues with the kit. The roof joists were too long and had to be cut down to size. The floor had the floor boards etched in but as it was only on one side the floor was warped. There was a mistake in the etching of one of the ends too. Definitely needs refining but it was fun to make, and it is something I can practice weathering/transfers/etc. on.

A big box of point motors and switches etc. A hidden(under the baseboard cost) for sure! Here is a picture of my arch laser cattle wagon that came in kit form a few days ago. Not as smooth running as the hornby brake van but it goes round the track fairly well. Waiting on decals to finish it off. Needs a bit of rust too.

Osborns models have a TT range of laser cut models with quite a few buildings. https://www.osbornsmodels.com/arch-laser-1380-c.asp I received a Cattle Wagon kit today and have been working on it this evening. Has gone together pretty well. It is fiddly building a wagon at this scale though!

A Night Hawk for 40 euro ordered this morning. Can't argue with the 15 euro extra for postage at that price!

I am using the clips on a track pack layout. They work very well. Very easy to install. Even if you go down the wire dropper route later you can pop them back out of the points again. I'm waiting on the Android app so I am still using a single DC controller. I actually needed them to power up the second loop when I got my track packs. There are more than enough on one packet for all the points in the track packs.

The close coupling is very impressive. They haven't uncoupled on me yet, I will keep an eye out for that. Track packs are arriving next week, so the 2nd radius curves will really put the couplings to the test.

I received 4 Arnold TT rekowagen coaches from Germany. Working out at 25 euro each. 6 wheelers which are more like what would have been used on my local branch line. I am going to replace the DR logo with a flying snail/ cie decal, paint the roof black and they will look more Irish than the BR mark 1s I have, that is for sure!

They are not the same. Locos have different names. There are two Mk1 coaches and a lit Pullman in the Silver King bundle. There are 4 lit Pullmans in the Flying Scotsman bundle. There also appears to be an issue with track pack 1 in that there is a 4th radius curve included that should be a 6th radius curve. A 6th radius curve is included in the train sets.