More Wickham Trolley Testing

 Our little standard gauge curiosity has been undergoing some test running on Minffordd.

It's coming up to two weeks since our sound-fitted Wickham trolley broke cover with a little video I posted on our other social media feeds of it having an initial test run on one of the club layouts.

It's certainly attracted a lot of attention with the clip having been played more than 50 thousand times on one site alone as I type this!

Although the chip and speaker were as effective as we'd hoped it was clear there were some mechanical tweaks needed.

Traction troubles

These ingenious Bachmann models have the drive hidden in the truck behind, but only one axle - the front - is powered.

On this first test we could see it was struggling to cope with anything beyond billiard-table level track, and on rising grade, on a curve, would slow to a halt with the wheel spinning, and indeed lifting itself up off the track.

Something that tiny is never going to be very heavy so the wheels on the geared axle are fitted with traction tyres, but Himself suspected perhaps this had lost some elasticity - and grip - over time.

The excellent Bachmann Spares website doesn't list traction tyres as an item, but you can buy replacements for the complete front axle, which we did, but replacing them is quite a tricky job because the drive train is packed in there like a watch mechanism!

The other thing we've done, taking a tip from discussion on a forum about these models, is use some lead sheet to make a 'tarpaulin cover' for the ballast load which adds a precious few grammes of mass but enough to keep that powered axle in contact with the rail.

The trolley has now run successfully around the layout, coping with the grades on the main line and also the ramp up into the exchange yard.

It's also had a Modelu crew fitted which will hopefully draw the eye and disguise where the speaker, chip and stay-alive have been hidden.

I'm hoping to get a look at it in action myself soon and when I do I'll try to record some video of it running on Minffordd and post it here, so come and check back again if you'd like to see that.