Hornby rubbish

"Roy" wrote

the right hand cylinder jammed up at about half speed, seized solid and scrambled up the running gear.

It ran just one circuit before the RH side running gear partially locked up and before the loco stopped the con rods had twisted and mangled themselves up beautifully.

An appalling display of some of the trash currently available on the UK model scene. Incidentally this type of quite common problem is one of the reasons that we run German and East European locomotives only :0)

Cheers.

In message , Andy Sollis- Churnet Valley model Railway Dept.

Both of the owners in this case are system operators who handle literally hundreds of locos on our layout. I do take you point with the modern image although our main layout is steam/diesel in the 60/70s time warp.

If you refer to network rail and the operating companies, the mainline signal man, driver, and S&T manager who are members of our group would at times take issue with statement. that I assure you :0)

Cheers.

"Roy" wrote

A widespread problem usually caused by careless handling of the loco - i.e. the valve gear being 'grabbed' rather than the model being handled properly. I'm not suggesting that it should bend so easily, but it does - Bachmann's valve gear doesn't have this problem.

We've reported the problem to Hornby on numerous occasions, but they never respond. We now send all such locos back to them when this fault occurs, and whilst they happily repair or replace the fault, it strikes me that they don't comprehend that the models are not up to the slightest bit of rough handling.

Send them back to where your friend got them from and ask for them to be repaired or replaced and for your postage to be refunded. That's all I can suggest.

John.

Yup! I have had the same experience with the Hornby Black 5. The problem is sloppy assembly in China which allows the connecting rod to contact the expansion link. It tends to do a real demolition job on the slidebars which are far too fragile and are also inclined to be out of line making the above mentioned coming together more likely. My other Hornby Black 5 has so far not suffered from this and I have repaired the damaged one, but I think a fairly major redesign of the slidebars is required as they are far too thin.. I may scratch build some new bars to replace the mangled items ( I have my own kit business so no problem doing this) and meanwhile I have made sure that the offending parts do not contact each other again by tightening up the rivets and bending the expansion link bracket outwards. I agree this is a very poor advert for Hornby and a great pity as they are making real progress towards a finer scale model these days. I have two other kit built

5s on Alan Gibson chassis (Ian Tattershall design) and these are excellent. I may just see if I can etch a complete set of new valve gear for the Hornby locos and may offer it as a kit.

Alistair Wright '5522' Models Scotland

In message , John Turner writes

Not fit for the purpose spring to mind.

I contacted Hornby earlier today and have already sent one of the loco's back. The other will go off tomorrow. I am sorely tempted however to keep all of the US Hornby locos that fail and put them on display behind glass with full details of the approximate time that they have run and a full list of faults for the general public's information. We already book downtime and overhaul costs for all of the commercially run stock that we operate and so this shouldn't prove to be a problem. We literally have thousands of visitors to the model railway every year :0)

Hornby were quite willing to repair the units however taking a minimum of five weeks to do so is just not good enough. Either they are producing crap or have a one man and a dog attitude toward service and repairs.

Cheers.

In message , Alistair Wright writes

While I appreciate that they are making great strides toward detail, they seem to forget that they are not selling cased display items. In the present situation where units are expected to fail it's nothing short of a disgrace. I hate to say this but I don't find this with Fleischmann who make some extremely well detailed locos.

Quite honestly that short [and extremely helpful] statement says it all. We actually have in this country a whole plethora of kitchen industries that are needed to make good the shortcomings of poor initial design and slapdash manufacturing by major manufacturers. Best of luck with the idea.

Where our commercial kit is concerned we modify almost all of the stock and buy in a great deal of second hand items specifically for rebuilding. We actually collect the 'Thomas' group loco bodies for rebuild purposes. The chassis of these locos even on a new unit out of the box unit has a very short life. Unfortunately the kids love to see these running so we are virtually forced to use them :0)

Cheers.

"Roy" wrote

There service department is generall MUCH quicker than that, with most repairs being turned round in little more than a week (including postage times).

John.