Tri-ang Hornby Starter Loco repair

[Rana Temporia]

I thought I'd post this as I know in the past there have been a few questions around these cheap throw-away locos. This relates to the chassis for the bright blue continental tank, the black one with 7744 on the tanks, the Swedish diesel and the bright blue (and possibly red/orange) early barclay diesel shunter which was a conversion of the NB one.

The chassis will look like this (possibly black as well)

This one looks a bit worse for wear but was working until recently. A common fault is that the crown gear on the axle wears out. The locos use the Nellie wheels but on rubbishy plastic axles with a gear moulded on. This wears out. I decided to replace the axles with some spare metal ones from an old Nellie chassis and also eneded up using the other wheeel sas well.

The crown gear is 12.5mm in diameter, the closest I could find was 15mm and on trying it it worked so i drilled out the centre of the gear to 9/64", positioned it on the Nellie axle (using the original as a template for location) as a very tight interference fit and flooded it with superglue then left it to harden.

On re-assembly I found that the new larger gear rubbed on the chassis so had to cut a clearance slot in the base.

With the new wheels the pick-up was much better and the chassis runs as well as any of these ever did. I have ordered a new motor which is unique to these locos, it's basically a Scalextric motor but back to front. I think it's a copy of a Mabuchi FC-280SC-20150 but can't confirm that until it arrives. They are used in car mirrors and door locks.

Another common problem with these locos is the rubbishy pick-ups. They were never designed to be repaired and there were never spares made available for them. I have a few, and had the steam loco set with two yellow coaches as a child. The set came with a battery controller that took three D cells so these locos will run on 4.5v and go a bit silly on full power. I have found that glueing the pick-ups in before re-assembly helps.

[Rana Temporia]

I can confirm that the Mabuchi motor I ordered is NOT the right one for this chassis. Back to the searching online!