How deos the quality of the current Hornby rendition of the Dean Goods compare to the original Airfix/Mainline model? I have one of the originals which is a poor runner, I am not sure that the gear train is intact, though I've yet to open it up to examine closely. I appreciate that the Hornby release remains tender driven, but is it likely to give me less hassle? Cheers, Bill.
"Bill Davies" wrote
Both are effectively identical. Hornby acquired the (ex-Airfix/Mainline) tooling for the Dean from Dapol and I've been unable to identify any changes to the design.
John.
IIRC the Mainline model does look as if there is something wrong with the gear train. Apparently the orginal intention was to drive more axles than are actually driven on the model, but on test versions this caused derailments so the drive to one of the axles was disconnected by omitting one gear. This means that there are still some gears present that are not driven and makes it look like there is a missing gear.
Hope this is correct. The source of the information was whichever shop sold me my badly running model 20 years ago!
Steve
-- Dr Steven Noble Admissions Tutor Department of Mathematical Sciences Brunel University UK
My mainline runs very nicely thankyou and I think it looks very good.
Peter A
Thanks very much, that's exactly how mine appears. Traction is very poor with lots of wheelspin, traction tyres doing nothing whatsoever. At least I now know how the drive mechanism is supposed to be so I can investigate further.. Cheers, Bill.
Thanks John, I won't rush to buy another then until I've worked out what's wrong with this one! Cheers, Bill.
Perhaps you need to replace the traction tyres. In "old age" (say 3 to 5 years for Hong Kong blacks), most get either hard and don't grip, perish and crumble or a combination of both. This doesn't seem as common with the German tyres.
Peter
Hi Peter, Now that I know the front axle isn't supposed to be driven, this looks like it's an obvious case of the tyres being at fault. In an ideal world I would get rid of the tyres altogether, but I don't think there's space to add any substantial weight to restore traction. One day I'll get round to building a properly driven loco chassis for one of these, Cheers, Bill.
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.