Portadown Junction

[dropshort105]

I was having derailment issues with a hornby class 73, was using it as a donor chassis for a C Class, anyhoo, after a lot of frustration I discovered the motor bogie didn't have enough clearance from the chassis frame, a couple of minutes with a file and it was sorted, I was very surprised as it was a brand new loco, if I wasn't going to chop it up anyway I would have been very annoyed, not saying you are having the same issue, but might be worth a look.

[leslie10646]

1 hour ago, Galteemore said:

Great stuff. Presumably a longer traverser for Dundalk works came with it  

Well, no @Galteemore, the idea was to do the overhauls at Inchicore.

Cute answer, eh?

The real issue is the length of the turntables at Portadown and Dundalk. The "Tango" is 61 ft long. Now where can I check the LENGTHS of the turntables? 60ft is enough. Of course, the turntable at Portadown Jct is a Fleischmann one, so much longer than that and I haven't modelled Dundalk, so I don't care ......

[Paul 34F]

I’m sure George Glover would have known Gresley.  Most Locomotive Engineers were members of one Institute or another.

Paul

[leslie10646]

Accurascale had a "Wheel of Fortune" on their website last week.

So, I spun it.

30% off, so I bought this .......

Don't they pack things well?

And in the bottom was this ......

I'll give it a run tomorrow.

By the way, thanks, lads, for the nice big box and packing material - it'll keep Provincial Wagons in packaging for a month!

[leslie10646]

You won't be giving me "Likes" after you read my next entry as to why a sound-fitted loco needs to be dismantled to set witches before it will move ........

Furious of Frimley

[leslie10646]

11 hours ago, leslie10646 said:

You won't be giving me "Likes" after you read my next entry as to why a sound-fitted loco needs to be dismantled to set witches before it will move ........

Furious of Frimley

I got this notice in my box:

On the other side it said and note the word MUST:

Now:

I thought, this is rubbish, the loco is factory fitted, so should work out of the box.

So, I stuck it on the track, turned the knob a bit (enough to send anything else shooting halfway to Armagh) and nothing happened. So, I took the lid off:

at which point I found that the fan unit does not "just come off".

I did the obvious thing and PM'd @Darius43, who has a shed-full of these things. ""It should work out of the box". "please don’t remove any parts.". Thanks, Darius, you were RIGHT!

I didn't go any further but tried it again this morning, after checking that other locos on "03" worked.

It moved imperceptibly - no wonder I really thought the thing needed adjustment! It's just factory-set ultra low speed!

So, I've admitted to being an eejit.

WHY, I ask Accurascale, does a factory-fitted loco have this stupid notice put in the box?

I've run it round for twenty minutes, ANY of my steam locos would out-run it, including the smallest 0-6-0, so when I have time, onto the Programming Track it will go, and the speed controls will be drastically reset - I run trains, not a shunting layout!

I had a run behind the real thing when it was weeks out of the box - its time to Lisburn was five minutes faster than anything I'd had with steam, so they COULD run. Why set an express loco up for a shunting yard .......

Yours

Slightly-less Furious of Frimley

 

 

 

[Tractionman]

On 2/8/2026 at 10:35 PM, leslie10646 said:

Accurascale had a "Wheel of Fortune" on their website last week.

So, I spun it.

30% off, so I bought this .......

I did the same, too good an opportunity to miss! (Mine's DC only...)

[Horsetan]

3 hours ago, leslie10646 said:

...It moved imperceptibly - no wonder I really thought the thing needed adjustment! It's just factory-set ultra low speed!

So, I've admitted to being an eejit.

WHY, I ask Accurascale, does a factory-fitted loco have this stupid notice put in the box?

I've run it round for twenty minutes, ANY of my steam locos would out-run it, including the smallest 0-6-0, so when I have time, onto the Programming Track it will go, and the speed controls will be drastically reset - I run trains, not a shunting layout! .......

 

....and this type of thing is why I've stuck to plain DC. 

[leslie10646]

Well, Mr Impatient continued with his running in of the (very noisy) Hunslet, and as this was a test run, the Dynamometer Car came along:

Then, I discovered that if you rev'd it up and eased back to about 80 on my Digitrax, you got a very nice sound.........

After light engine testing, the Inchicore test train of old GNR coaches had arrived and is about to hand the train over to the new Hunslet.

Meanwhile, the loco which had brought the test train up from Inchicore had run forward out of the way, leaving the coaches to be picked up at the Junction.

So, all is well.

A very fine piece of model engineering, even if the manufacturer tries to bamboozle its eighty year old customers. I really like the throttled back sound effect - I'll demo that another time without the B Class interfering!

Mind you, I have to read volumes of stuff to find out how to turn lights on and off on my handheld Digitrax.

Thanks, @Darius43 for keeping me on track!

Edited 22 hours ago by leslie10646

[jhb171achill]

Heard one of these yokes at a friend's house on Sunday. Sound effects very impressive! Took me back to my teenage self who heard them often....

[leslie10646]

19 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

Heard one of these yokes at a friend's house on Sunday. Sound effects very impressive! Took me back to my teenage self who heard them often....

Yes, the Hunslet sounds are impressive. By the time they arrived, I was in England, so I have no real knowledge of them, bar the run mentioned earlier.

I now need to play with it a bit to get the sound effects which show it to advantage, as after p[ractice I got the 121 B type to sound exactly as I remembered them - DCC has its mpoments!