Timpo Prairie Rocket.

[Broithe]

Hardly a worthy workbench item, but does anybody have a Timpo Prairie Rocket?

I got roped into 'fixing' one and each step of the process takes a long time - it's been a couple of months to get this far, I only finally got to see the actual problem today.

All I've had delivered is the motorised tender, in a non-functional form.

I've got it apart without busting anything. The motor seemed to be dead, with no circuit through it at all, even when I could get straight onto the motor terminals.

The motor is a bit 'special', in that the mounting requires this actual motor, using the shape of the case to fit and hold it.

On a hunch, suspecting that it just hadn't run for many years and the commutator was merely oxidised, I gave it a 'robust manual spin' to polish it up a bit and did get an occasional circuit then - so I persevered and was then able to get it to run and clean itself properly.

I've cleaned the carpet fluff from the gears and it runs OK now.

Anyway, the real point is that the tender does not have rear, unpowered, bogie in place.

I'm guessing that the two bogie wagons that are part of the set will use a compatible 'dead' bogie and thus I could cannibalise one from there - but, the wagons are 60 miles away and two to three weeks from arriving here.

It would be nice to know if my suggestion of this temporary fix is likely to work, before another month passes and I get to see the wagons.

[Broithe]

Well, I got the rest of it yesterday and was able to remove a bogie and transfer it to the tender.

My assumption that the carriage bogies would be identical was wrong - although they would fit, the connector arms are longer there. It would work, but be a little unsightly. The redundant arm could always be cut off on the final bogie on the train, of course, so we can use either to refit the caboose.

The loco action was binding in a few places, but it's reasonably free now - it would have been an issue with the light weight and the tender-driven layout.

The pony truck was not retained, so it fee off whenever the loco was lifted - it has a wire clip holding the pivot-end in place now.

It's all rather fragile, partly because of the age, I suspect - and I have little faith in it surviving long in service.

We shall see...

 

This is all largely about indoctrinating his four-year-old lad and infecting him with the bug.

[Mayner]

Interesting a British Toy company with a German Jewish refugee background around the time the founders of Bing Toys fled from Germany to escape persecution.

The Prairie Rocket loco and cars are reasonable looking models and appears to pre-date the Bachmann Big Haulier which is popular as both a toy and scale model.

I don't know if there is anything similar is available in Ireland or the UK our equivalent of Walmart used to sell a Chinese made G Gauge battery 'Wild West" Train set with additional track packs for under €60 which occasionally appears for a few Dollars in Charity shops or our equivalent of e-bay. The Train was a characture of an 'old time" American train but reliable and robust in nature and popular for modelling projects among the large scale modelling fraternity.

If the train set runs on G gauge or 45mm track Bachmann 'Big Haulier" trucks or bogies may be an option to replace the missing/damaged bogie, should be available through a Garden Railway shop in the UK or E-Bay postage from Bachmann spare department in the States would be expensive.

[David Holman]

Shades of the Triang Big Big train - battery powered on plastic 0 gauge track. Got a set back in my class teacher days and my Year 6 pupils and I had a lot of fun building a model village around it. Before the National Curriculum came in, of course, when we could do pretty much what we pleased. Happy days!

[Mayner]

3 hours ago, David Holman said:

Shades of the Triang Big Big train - battery powered on plastic 0 gauge track. Got a set back in my class teacher days and my Year 6 pupils and I had a lot of fun building a model village around it. Before the National Curriculum came in, of course, when we could do pretty much what we pleased. Happy days!

Is the Prairie Rocket O or G Gauge?  Nice model by any standards either for kids or so called scale modellers.

Remember the publicity around the Big-Big Train adds on prime time TV for a kids train set and the local (hire-purchase)furniture/bicycle store stocking it, years later bought and re-painted the Ruston Diesel and narrow gauge V tipper trucks which were quite good models. The BR mineral wagon chassis ended up under a MGWR Convertible, Ranks Grain and a Guinness 3 container wagon!

We went non-main stream with Warldorf for our child's schooling rather than the local equivalent of the NC, bringing up resourceful individuals who work on their own initiative and are able to think for themselves.