No.37 Castles in the Air – further observations on the Hornby New Castle

Some six months have elapsed since my Blog entry commenting on the Hornby New Castle:

In fact I have acquired three or four models, all ‘new’ and with one exception, all from UK retailers.  During this time I have been able to run the different engines and make a few adjustments.

First a view of Hornby’s all purpose nylon washer or spacer.  Seemingly they are used to position the front bogies on the Schools Class.  They are used here on the New Castle to pack the gear train.  They also make appearances on some of the driving axles.  I say ‘some’ because not all my Castles have the same chassis arrangement.

I have shown above a view of the chassis from ‘Earl Cairns’.  This I think is my newest Castle.  The slidebars are nicely parallel with the ‘frames’.  The leading driving axle is packed on both sides with nylon spacers to reduce sideplay and prevent the nuts holding the coupling rods rubbing on the connecting rods from the cylinders.
 

Those of you with an eye for detail will note that in contrast to earlier models Earl Cairns does not come with rear sand boxes, just wires for the sand pipes.

Whilst most of my Castles ran reasonably well I was not happy with the performance of Ince Castle which I believe is one of the earlier models.  It had a tight spot at low speed and a definite wiggle at high speed.  Its performance did not improve with use and I made the decision to take it apart and re-quarter the wheels.  This did not improve matters and I was left with a suspicion that perhaps the coupling rods or one of the wheels was not to specification.  For the record Ince Castle had three nylon spacers, one to each axle.  The spacer on the centre driving axle was cut in the manner of a Circlip, possibly added after the wheels had been quartered.
 

The picture above shows the replacement Hornby parts.  Perhaps you should note that the wheels are supplied quartered but the axles are not fitted with any nylon spacers.

Above is a view of the underside of Ince Castle.  My first attempts at fitting the replacement wheels as supplied with no spacers was a disaster.  The engine ran smoothly, very smoothly until it came to some curved track.  With so much sideplay available the coupling rods and connecting rods locked together – very unpleasant. 

Returning to the view above of Ince Castle Chassis you will note that one set of slidebars is parallel with the ‘frames’ whilst the other is angled outwards – obviously to provide additional clearance between the coupling  and connecting rods.  Again for the record I did attempt to run the engine with only one spacer on the leading axle.  Whilst it generally performed well going forward it was not at all good in reverse and could not negotiate Peco Medium radius points.  Replacing all three spacers (on the same side of the engine as on the wheel set that had been removed) solved the running problems and the engine is fine.  I am none the wiser as to why the original wheel set produced such rubbish running.  I am slightly bemused by Hornby’s use of nylon wheel spacers.  Earl Cairns has a higher model number than Ince Castle – so is this the improved version?

One of my Castles came from a well known auction site – Brand New - never been out of its box.  I should know by now that this can be code for covering up all manner of problems.  On first sight it was a good engine.  It didn’t look to have been out of its box and it looked new and ran well.  However – there was something odd with its appearance.  I should have taken a picture.  When two engines were placed together the buffers on ‘Great Western’ were a good 2 or 3mm higher than any of my other Castles.

Removing the body from the chassis revealed a ‘blob’ of glue on the underside of the body (location B) which had been used to attach the inner cylinder detail.  I smoothed the glue away as I thought that it was perhaps preventing the body sitting tightly on the chassis.  There was very little improvement, the buffers still pointed upwards.  Time for more something more radical.  The body is very rigid but gently flexing the buffers downwards opened up a gap beneath the front of the boiler (location A).  My solution was to open up the gap and pack it with a piece of black plastic – in my case a tiny piece of black PVC cut from a file divider – problem sorted. 

Am I too fussy or are there lots of other Castles out there with niggling problems.