40 years without a motor.

As I've mentioned before I inherited a quantity of Hornby Acho and Jouef from my Grandfather after he passed away in the early 70s. A recent re-organisation of the loft saw me digging out and looking through my modest collection. One loco in particular stands out, mainly because its never had a motor fitted whilst in my care;

A handsome loco, its in rather good condition partly due to the fact that it rarely left its box as it had no motor and therefore no play value. I've decided that its time for it to move again.

On scouring eBay I found this Dutch liveried loco, advertised as a poor/non-runner, which I thought might provide spares;

But although having a similar bodyshell the running gear is completly different. It has drive to one bogie only, whilst my Grandfathers loco had drive to both ends. It seems that Jouef at some stage developed a drive system that powered both bogies, and then fitted that system across its range. But, it looks like only on bogie type was developed, which was a short Co-Co unit unsuited to this type of loco. So, my Grandfathers old model, which is fitted with the superior drive unit, has the wrong type of bogies fitted. In the photo below the blue loco has the correct bogies and the green loco is fitted with bogies that are too short;

A good look around the 'net shows that the short bogie is in fact the type fitted to Jouef's model of CC40101. So one was aquired cheaply in the hope that it would provide the rest of the missing drivetrain. But alas no, it had single bogie drive. However, it did donate a pinion to the blue Dutch loco above;

So, after a bit more scouring I found a second silver electric, this time with both bogies driven, but with an even worse bodyshell (in fact it looks like mice had been nibbling it!);

So, both my Grandfather's loco and the second silver job were stripped down and the motor (a coggy 3 pole job) swapped over;

The silver loco also donated its drive pinions, along with a retaining 'c' washer, a bulb, part of the pick-ups and both couplings. The motor has been cleaned, oiled and I cleaned the the brushes by rubbing the working faces on wet and dry.
Here it is on test;

The drive on one of the bogies is a little tight, hopefully it'll loosen up. If not there's two spares that can be used. Note that only four rollers are used, despite the loco being a Co-Co the middle axles on each bogie don't actually do anything, in fact the wheels are a smaller diameter than the outers.

And a last photo, still on the rolling road but now with the body and couplings fitted;

The rolling road by the way is made by DCC Concepts and is modular, in that by fitting different spacers 9mm, 12mm, 16.5mm and 18.2/18.83mm gauges are covered.

Some, perhaps those that are used to my more 'serious' modelling posts, might consider this exercise to be a monumental waste of time. However, seeing this loco run for the first time in the 40+ years that its been in my posession has given me a great deal of satisfaction. I'm sure that my Grandfather would be pleased as well.

Paul.

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.