Wednesday 13 April 2016

In For Repair

In an unprecedented - and most likely never to be repeated move - Himself has agreed to take a look at a friend's troublesome Backwoods NGG16.

(This is not about to be offered as a regular service so, to paraphrase the famous shopkeepers' sign, please don't ask for your locomotive to be looked at as a refusal often offends!)


This model was purchased from eBay as a complete locomotive built from the kit. You can probably see where this is going...

Although it seems to have been finished very nicely there would appear to be some fundamental issues in the way it was put together mechanically, but it will need to be fully stripped down to find out exactly what went wrong, and when, in the process.

The front unit looks like a plane at the point of take off, and if you look closely you can see that it's not just a question of the tank not sitting flat - see the way the cylinders are inclined.


When we look at the back, although this time things appear like they're on more of an even keel there is something awry which is causing the leading pony truck to be suspended in mid-air, and those cylinders look a little racy as well.


Himself's experience of putting together these Backwoods kits show that it is essential to stick to the construction sequence and check each at stage before moving on.

It seems as if finding out what has gone wrong here is going to mean running the process in reverse to discover at what point the mistake was made - a bit like unpicking your knitting to get back to the moment when you dropped the stitch.

No comments:

Post a Comment