Part of my preparations for any exhibition is a wheel cleaning session a few days before we pack up. I'll admit I quite enjoy this bit - stick all the locos upside down in the trusty Peco cradle, give them a dose of 12V and shine the treads up with a fibre pen. Whirling wheels and disappearing dirt is fun. Useful too as the last thing you need after a long drive is running problems caused by poor electrical pick-up.
The session will also show up any issues with the locos themselves. Luckily they all seem to be behaving themselves, at least when inverted !
The only problem is one that is unique to the Hospital stick, slow running. On a layout the locos fitted with 108:1 gearboxes are wonderful. They drift around the track and take ages to go from one end of our short boards to the other. When cleaning though, what you want is whirling wheels and yet even on full power they rotate sedately and thus take 3 times as long to clean !
Every silver lining has a cloud, as they say...
I doubt this one takes too long to get from one end to the other being fitted with a 24mm spud. I've never had too much luck with small locos fitted with these; a bit too excitable.
ReplyDeleteThe body is a great big heavy whitemetal lump. This makes the SPUDs run very smoothly and suprisingly controlably - scale walking pace is achievable. OK so the steam engines with their super gearboxes work better but then they ought to for the money and effort that goes into them.
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