Me and my husband brought the Flying Scotsman Live Steam during Christmas. To cut a very long story short, it didn't work properly and had to go back to Hornby, they replaced the engine with a new one (which has a blob of solder or gold paint on the left side cylinder - not impressed), tried it last night - needed to push start it twice made it round the track twice. Followed the manual exactly and still not impressed.
Is there anyone out there who can give me some tips on running a Live Steam engine, because at this present moment £500 seems too much money for an engine that is hard to control and won't work properly. Do you think the retailer will refund our money??
What were the symptoms that made you send it back to Hornby?
I sent mine back once and didn't get the same mechanism back, I assume they have some advance replacement units to speed up service response
I have a Live Steam Mallard and find that it is fairly high maintenance, particularly with regard to lubrication where it's as important not to add too much oil.
Mine did take a bit of running in before any of the settings became even remotely repeatable.
Are you just using the track that came with it? make sure all the joints are tight and the track is clean as this can mean that it doesn't steam up properly although once you have it steamed up and start it running it should get round the supplied track several times even without the power.
I found it useful to run the loco without the body fitted so that I could see where the throttle control was.
Problems I have had with mine include the gland nuts on the pistons coming loose and the timing slipping both of which result in very 'jumpy' running.
Also, the pawl which engages the gear to start or reverse the engine bends out of shape which means you have to push it and it won't reverse.
One thing to check is if it runs better in reverse than forwards, this can mean that the timing is out.
I can explain how to check the timing but I'm not sure if the timing setup is the same on the Flying Scotsman as the Mallard, I'd suggest you talk to John Humphries (or Humphry) at Hornby customer service as I've found his advice very useful.
Your posting in there on ABPR but the attachment hasn't made it - probably because the group FAQ only recommends JPG attachments. The norm with PDF files is to upload them to some webspace and then quote the URL for the download.
Not if you happen to have chosen an ISP that offers as an alternative a news server that doesn't carry the binary groups to give a faster text-groups only option. And not if you choose to take up that alternative :-( Such is life - I thought I would never have anything of interest to see on the alt.binaries groups!
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