After over a week of sickly cats, who are now seemingly getting better, I made Mrs. Woody and myself a sandwich and we had a drive out into the countryside to consume said sandwich. Mrs. W likes to overlook a bit of pleasant scenery whilst eating a sandwich which I can fully appreciate as well. However, what I cannot understand is that whilst eating she reads her Kobo. However that is good for me as over the years I have developed an ability to choose from various locations that provide a pleasant view of scenery and also of railway lines therefore enabling me to do a bit of train spotting. Today we returned to a spot that had previously yielded trains on an almost 5 minute interval. Today nothing for the first 25 minutes. One train goes by and then another 25 minutes before another by which time sandwiches have been consumed and it is time to move on. It was only listening to the radio news broadcast on the way home that the unusually few train numbers was explained by the fact that it reported that today was a strike day on the national railway system. Only I could go train spotting on a strike day!
Back at WMD HQ, nourished by my sandwich and with Mrs. W settling into the sofa for some prime time TV, I returned to the Hornby Open Cab GWR Pannier that needed a new motor. Having that delivered yesterday meant that it didn't take too long to put it all together and it was running wonderfully. That is what I would have liked to have reported but it did not quite work out that way!
Having put the wheels back in the chassis it was evident that there was a bind somewhere. Whilst pushing the un-motored chassis along the workbench once every revolution the wheels became difficult to roll. It was not the coupling rods directly causing the problem - they just were not aligned correctly because the quartering on the wheels was out of sync. In very basic terms, the coupling rod on one side of the loco has to be at the 12 o'clock position whilst on the other side is at the 3 o'clock position. If there is a wheel out the coupling rods bind causing the loco to stutter on each revolution of the wheels. I found the culprit and normally it would need some persuasion to come of the axle to then be realigned. However, in this case, it more or less fell off which may explain why the quartering was wrong.
Putting it back onto the axle in the right orientation, some super glue now holds it in place. To get the distance between the wheel rims to the right dimension I used a 'back to back' gauge. A bit like feeler gauges for car spark plugs, my gauge should just be able to slip between the wheel rims if they are correctly spaced. Whilst I was at it I checked the other two wheel sets and found them a little tight. A bit of gentle persuasions and levering with a screw driver got them right.
Putting it all back together and onto the track it runs well. It will never be up with todays locos with coreless motors, but it will run slowly and through most points. Result! At least I know I can always spot this loco on my layout any day - even if it is a strike day!
