Missing the obvious!

Back to some model making matters. On my bench for some weeks has been the Central Trains Class 156 DMU, a Hornby model that suddenly stopped running for no apparent reason. In true Woody style, I just put it to one side pending further investigation when I had time! That is never a good prospect for a model but it has only taken me four weeks to ge round to looking at this which is almost an unheard of short time for me!

My first thought was that the DCC chip had failed as I could not get any noise out of the motor in either DCC or DC mode. The body had yo come off and I replaced the chip with a blanking plug which should have allowed the motor to run on DC power. Nothing!

Taking the bogie out of the chassis I went as far as actually getting the motor out of its housing and testing it. It worked which was good but putting it back and applying power to the wheels was meet with silence.

Now it might be obvious in the photo below but for some reason it was not obvious to me at the time of looking at the actual bogie that the wires from the wheels and electrical pickups were no longer connected to the motor! It took me about 40 minutes to finally realise this rather fundamental issue was the cause of the problem!

With that fact finally in my head the soldering iron came out and the wires were soldered back in place. With the DCC chip refitted it was ready to put the body back on.

Back on the layout all was back to normal which was great!

Meanwhile as we now have lighter evenings although my body clock is still not aware of the hour lost, I did manage to get out in the greenhouse planting out some tomato, pepper and cucumber plants that I have germinated in the warmth of the house and I also planted some lettuce, spinach, onion and sunflower seeds. Hopefully their growth will be obvious so I don't miss it!