Got A Hornby Flying Scotsman - Teething Troubles Fixed

captainkman

You are reading this.
Hello!

You may know that my birthday was last week. I received a Hornby Flying Scotsman train set from my Dad. I already had a well-thought-out layout with the track already set up in the garage. But my track was really dirty. So I spent 3 hours cleaning it until it reflected light.

The set came with an oval of track plus a siding and a transformer and controller but I won't use those parts. I'm only interested in the loco and carriages.

I put Flying Scotsman on the track and the three Gresley teak coaches in the siding, out of the way. I plugged the extension cord into the wall socket, the transformer into that, then the transformer into the cheap Piko controller from a starter set, and that into the Peco track. The problem with my Piko controller is that it is only either full power or no power. The Hornby one isn't compatible with my track. So I switched on the power and turned the knob and sent Flying Scotsman on her way. She constantly derailed on almost every point on the layout. I only got her to do a maximum of three revolutions without derailing in a day.

I figured the problem was that the transformer was giving out too much power. So I searched around for phone chargers and the like. First, I looked at the transformer from the Hornby set. 15 VOLTS!!! The other one was 13V and it was too fast!

I found many, many phone chargers around the house with plugs that fit the socket on the Piko controller. In fact, only one didn't fit.

First was a 6V one. Nope, too slow. This is a passenger train. I'm not shunting here. Then a 12V one. Nope, too fast. Still derailing on every point, albeit less frequently. Then there was a transformer that output 9V. I tried it. It's perfect! It looks like a passenger train's speed and I've only had 3 derailments in a long running session due to the track not being pinned down yet.

I am soon going to record and upload a video of the locomotive running on all aspects of my layout and even a bit of shunting.

A side-problem I had was how to uncouple the carriages from each other and the tender, which use tension-lock couplers. First I tried a wooden skewer and a metal one. Too thick. Then a toothpick. Still too thick. The best tool I've come across for uncoupling OO-scale tension-lock couplers is a paperclip. I bent one edge so it's straight and left some of it still curled up so I'd have something to hold on to. It works fantastically and I'll show it in my video.

I'll make another blog post when the video is up.

Kieran.
 
Wow! I can't believe that the transformer puts out that much power! I hope that the Bundy fowler loco "perry" does not suffer the same that ( that is if it ever happens)happened to the other sugar cane loco you have talked about.
 
I'm sorry but I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. the Bundy (Bundaberg) Fowler locos are Trainz models and this Flying Scotsman is a physical model. 12-15V is about the average put out by model train transformers, but the controller usually allows the voltage to be varied, unlike mine.
 
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