Relics

I took another trip up to the barn where I store all the junk I can't bear to throw away.  The main purpose was to dig out my box of enamel paints in the hope that they hadn't all dried out in storage (they hadn't, even though some of them must be thirty years old by now).  On the way out I bumped into a box which I had ignored because I thought it contained yet more of my late mother's gardening books.  The box moved in an un-booklike way, so I opened it and found a large quantity of model railway items that  I had either forgotten owning, assumed lost or thought I had flogged on eBay years ago.

The haul included various building kits and materials, four BachFarish maroon Mk1s, two Minitrix Gresley coaches, two locomotives, my old H&M Clipper (bought second hand in about 1978) and a little hand-held Gaugemaster controller.  So I set about trying to bring some of my old DCC-resistant locos to life, thinking that if I could get them to run I might be able to sell them.

First up was a Class 29 diesel, built many years ago using a Langley whitemetal body kit on an American Atlas chassis, and probably the only loco kit I ever actually finished.  I wired up the old Clipper, applied power to the track and the '29' ran after a fashion - jerky and hesitant, but it had never been a great runner so I wasn't expecting much.

Next for testing was an Ivatt 2MT 2-6-0.  An old Minitrix model, bought cheap as a rather battered non-runner and remotored with a Mashima can motor, back in the days when I still had steady hands and good eyesight and hadn't yet discovered High Commissioner whisky (available at all good petrol stations).  I put that one on the track and it just buzzed at me.  Ho hum.  I took the body off, found the motor had seized through lack of use, freed it off and applied a few spots of oil to the gears and bearings.

I then decided to try the little Gaugemaster controller.  The 2MT moved: I galloped it up and down the track a few times, then tried a bit of slow speed running.  Good as gold: no stalling or hesitation over the points, controllable down to a slow crawl, a slight wobble in reverse but then it always used to do that (probably a slightly distorted traction tyre).

I tried the class 29 again with the Gaugemaster.  Noisy, but good.  I don't remember it running that well ten years ago.  Metro-Cammell DMU (Farish body, Kato chassis) lurched forward a few inches and stopped.  Strip, oil, reassemble and I now had three exceptionally good slow runners.  By now I was on a roll, so I thought I would tackle the Class 26 (TPM resin body, Farish chassis, Hanazono 5-pole motor, split gears on two axles).  I dropped in the new wheelsets that I had bought and never fitted, dab of oil in the appropriate areas, and... same again.  No stalling, no hesitation, slow speed control as good as anything you might get in the larger scales.

So after an hour or so happily 'playing trains' I realised I have a problem.  The only reason I decided to go down the DCC route was in the hope of achieving the reliable slow running that had always eluded me in 'N'.   I don't need directional lighting, sound, or the ability to run two locos on the same section of track. Yet here I am with four old relics from the bad old days and a controller I found in a box, getting exactly the kind of dependable, consistent operation I wanted, without a single chip in sight.  Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Maybe not.  Two problems with the Gaugemaster.  Firstly, a whole lot of motor noise from all four locos.  Secondly, the motors are getting very hot even after a fairly short period of slow running.  Whatever waveform that little controller is putting out it is a long way from pure DC, and Japanese motors don't like it. I didn't have that problem with the J39 on the Dynamis Pro controller, and that has a Japanese can motor as well.

We need some trials.  Of the relics, the easiest to convert to DCC is the Class 26.  So I will fit a chip to it and see how it compares with 12V DC control, and report back.

Belstone goes all West Highland on me, circa 1967.  Class 29 pauses between shunting operations as a Class 26, newly outshopped in rail blue, runs into the station with a passenger train

Normal Working Resumed.  Ivatt 2MT heads an absolutely typical Border Country branch line train.