A simple Jouef coupling repair.

Something which may come as a suprise to regular visiters to this blog is that I have a liking for old (1960s) Hornby Acho and Jouef. A small collection resides in the loft, left to me when my grandfather, Ken Andrews, the man responsible for my railway interests, passed away in the early 1970s. More about that later perhaps.

One problem with Jouef models fitted with 'horn'/'knuckle' couplers is that the two limit stops which control the sideways movement of the coupler can break off with rough handling, meaning that the coupler flops about from side to side in an irritating manner. In the photo below the bogie on the left has intact stops, and on the right hand bogie both stops are broken off;

The plastic used is quite greasy and flexible so, as glue won't touch it, another approach was needed. I cut away the remains of the stops flush with the base, then drilled a pair of 1mm holes which were then tapped 12BA. In the photo below a 12BA screw can be seen threaded through the tapped hole;

A pair of screws have been cut down to 7mm long, blackened (Birchwood Casey Super Blue), and fitted in the photo below;

Job done. Here's the complete loco;

Not everyones cup of tea for sure but I like it. This one isn't part of the original collection, being bought recently as a non/poor runner for spares. However the loco which it was destined to provide parts for (one with no motor, my grandfather had a habit of taking things apart but not putting them back together again...) turned out to have a different style of chassis so this one can stay as is. It did need a different motor pinion as the one fitted had split but that came from yet another loco bought for spares.

On a different note I have now aquired another camera, a Canon EOS 1100D. The photos above were taken with it using the rather usefull aperture priority setting. Much more playing needed though.

Paul.