Last week I received my Eureka 50 class. Just like a kid with a new toy, I raced home from work to play with it. After picking it up from my local post office, I took it straight to my local hobby shop in Hornsby (Hobbyland) to buy a chip (and thanks to Ian for putting it in) before heading home to give it a few laps of the layout.
Every new model seems to show a few weaknesses in your permanent way and the class 50 is no exception. It's no fan of second radius curves. This is not too surprising but as my loco depot is full of set track points, there is some replanning in the works.
I did find that the wheel on the leading bogie was a bit narrow. Not by much but enough to make it derail on some of my older Peco points. I adjusted the wheel using a wheel gauge and gave the blades on some of the points a gentle squeeze to bring them in a bit more. Over the years these standards and construction of the points have changed and even though I still use code 100 the difference between new points and points which are fifteen years or more older is fairly noticeable. The last post which I made can show the difference between an old double slip from last century and a new double slip from last year.
It was with the former that I had the most difficulty, especially when going backwards. It appears that the tender doesn't have enough weight in it. When running backwards, the bogie next to the loco derailed. I adjusted the wheels using the wheel gauge but to no avail. When running backwards trough the vital piece of trackwork this bogie kept coming of and shorting the Digitrax Zephr. It wasn't long before the red LED in the tender for the marker lights refused to work.
From what I was able to conclude from observations on straights and flat track (Let's face it, that track was great when it was laid two years ago but expansion and contraction aren't a railway modeller's friends.) when running backwards it appears that the bar between the loco and the tender pushes the front of the tender up. Both bogies are sprung and that can cause a little wobble but the spring doesn't seem to be strong enough to push the bogie onto he track. I stopped the loco from revers on the test track and the bogie next to the loco was not sitting on the track and was easy to push off.
A thumping large nut did the trick but it's too big to fit in the tender. However, the loco and tender ran well through all of the trouble spots on the layout.
I messed about with a couple of sinkers and weights from other sources. In the end, as I had a strip of lead, I folded it to triple thickness and placed it into the area where the speaker will be fitted for the sound version. I cut one of the sinkers above in half and attached it to another strip of lead. The half sinker is placed between the plugs on the left and the e DCC chip with the strip of lead sitting above the chip. The lead is wrapped in electrical tape to avoid shorts and any weird corrosion that may occur.
It is important to remember that the weight needs to be over the leading bogie, otherwise the bar will continue to push the front of the tender up and you will have the same problems.
I have now bought these weights from Hobbyland which should be easier to use next time.
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