The trouble with setting up an oval of track like that is it sparks ideas.....

Dropping back onto a project I talked about a couple of weeks ago, Mr. B's Triang Hornby Britannia which he left with me some time ago. The Britannia looked good but it had a dodgy motor. Given that the motor was the old X04 one which was probably well over 40 years old it was time to replace it which I had nearly got to as outlined in this post.

The new and different motor was fitted without many issues despite being different to the original.

This was done whilst I was building the control panel that I have posted about over the last few weeks. What it really needed was a running in session to get the new motor running smoothly with the old running gear of the loco. 

I set up an oval of track on the floor of the Man cave and left it running whilst changing directions and speed. So it runs well and the body can now go back on. Hopefully Mr B will soon be reunited with his loco.

The trouble with setting up an oval of track like that is it sparks ideas.....

Next job is to get the motor in place and see if it runs!

Some progress on Mr. B's (husband to loyal blog reader Mrs. B) re-mototing of his beloved Triang Hornby Britannia. The new motor is not quite a slide in simple replacement as there is a need to rewire things.

First off a wire needed to be soldered to the underside of the motor and then to a tag which replaces the all live chassis pickup of the old motor.

Next up the old motor and syncro-smoke unit were removed from the chassis.

I had never seen the inside of one of these smoke units that were a fad in the 1970s. There is a small heating element that is supposed to heat up the oil soaked fibre and the cog drivers a puffer to emit smoke from the locos chimney.  Looking at that fibre and seeing that the unit got surprisingly hot on the outside during my previous testing I thought that to avoid a possible fire it would be better to disconnect the unit. I would leave the unit and wiring in place though just in case Mr. b really wanted this feature working.

Turning the loco over I removed the base plate so that I could solder the wire on for the other part of the motor.

Next job is to get the motor in place and see if it runs!