As part of the preperation for the NGRS, I've been sorting through the 32mm gauge stock to assemble a (hopefully) reliable collection for the day. I'm going to run through the trains, as much as an aide memoire for myself as anything else. I plan to update these posts with details of how reliable each loco was, so I can remember to do something about it.
First up, the IP Engineering passenger train. I built most of this in a weekend at Peterborough show year ago, then finished it for the NGRS years later. On its first outing, it ran perfectly, and for a long while on its single pair of AAA batteries.
Emboldened by this, the next year I tried again, and the coaches kept leaping off the track. Adding weight by pouring stones from the ballast in through the open windows helped a bit, as it did the following year, but we really need proper weight. I've now stuck sheet lead under the floors to see what difference this makes.
The loco could do with some better switch gear, all we have is an on/off on the battery box floating around in the cab. That will have to wait as I can't work out where to mount an easily accesible switch yet, but it would make operation a little easier.
At the show: Not good. The guard's coach kept hopping off the track, for no obvious reason, so the trains spent the day in the box under the layout. I'll need to have another serious look at this coach. Maybe it's unsavable?
The loco on the other hand worked well. Towards the end of the day, we put it on some Big-Big skip wagons, and it handled six of these with ease. One of the axleboxes is delaminating, but that's an easy fix with PVA another day.
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