Neil Robinson

The cynic in me suggests that he may have been "promoted" to a position that was deemed to be non critical from a revenue earning perspective.

Hi Mark and welcome. Personally I feel that a current limiter may not prove as advantageous as some may think. If it were to be set fairly high, say ten amps, to power a multi loco lash up, each with a couple or more motors, hauling a long consist of lighted cars, it may continuously deliver ten amps into a fault causing a circuit board to burn out. What would be nice is a trip that is sensitive to sudden abnormal current surges and trips before any damage consequential to any fault occurs. A visible indication of the trip would be good, as may possibly be an adjustment of the sensitivity.

Thanks guys. Once, thanks to you, I had the part number a fresh internet search revealed a U.K. source. Their price was about the same as the total costs of importing the cheapest of the above. Thanks again, Neil

The improved, metal, trucks for these used to be available as upgrade parts but I guess they are no longer offered as I can't find any listed on Bachmann's U.K. or U.S.A. sites. Does anyone know of a source willing to ship to the U.K. ?

You've got yourself a good loco. As Ray says it could be something simple and the model isn't difficult to work on. If you're not confident of taking a look yourself it shouldn't take a professional repair service very long to get to the cause of the problem. In the unlikely event of the sound board having a fault Phoenix's in house repair charges are very reasonable. In view of the retail price of new examples, in my opinion, it's well worth getting it fixed.

Rayman, I know of one compound in use. It's here in the U.K. and is often stated to be the first Garratt articulated type. Actually the first order was for two locos and the one stil in existence contains parts from both. I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time to travel behind it on it's first day in service after restoration. It was withdrawn in 1929 and returned to service in 2007! Take a look at www.whrsoc.org.uk/WHRProject/k1.htm

Hi, They're not to common over here in the U.K. but the chairman of my local G Scale Society branch obtained one a year or so ago in as new condition and asked me to tweak it a bit. On the tender I fitted trucks with metal wheels and pickups and superglued sound sensor magnets to one of the wheels. By luck the tender wheels chosen were half the diameter of the drivers so the chuff rate was about right. The sound board was that from an LGB Sumpter Valley Mallett as these boards can sometimes be purchased cheaply on German eBay. The loco was fitted with an LGB style Graupner 6V smoke unit fed via a cheap Chinese LM2596 module set to a suitable voltage. A bank of diodes was added to the motor circuit to increase the motor start voltage so that the smoke works O.K. at low speed. Finally I added a couple of bags of lead. This was given to me by a mate as thanks for sorting one of his locos. I think it can still be purchased if you claim to be a recreational diver. The owner is very pleased with the modified loco but it is only run occasionally, I very much doubt that it would be suitable for continuous daily running on, for example, a shop display layout.

I've recently resurrected one of these and installed a new battery. It works fine on slow speed, so I guess the battery's O.K., but when the loco is brought to a stand the sounds cut out after a relatively short time compared with Phoenix, Soundtraxx Sierra or LGB units. Is there any way of extending the time to sound shutdown after the loco comes to a stand?

Out of interest what is a sensible voltage to apply continuously to MTH smoke elements and motors? Up to now my only experience of them has been of pulsed units connected to Protosound boards. From this it would appear that other sources of power would work O.K.

Jim, Thanks for the tip about the three magnets on the tender. I'll give that a go as I've been asked by a good friend to install a Phoenix PB11in his new C19. I tried asking around for a circuit diagram for the C19 in order to compare it with that for the K27. My hope was to try and understand what changes, if any, would be needed to my earlier successful install in a K27 following Phoenix's published metod. Actually the long term plan is to have a go at installing MTH protosound with an MTH smoke unit. I'm hoping this would be relatively simple as, judging buy Bachmann's video the motor is fitted with an easily accessible flywheel. Incidentally, emailing Raymond Manley about this is how I was introduced to this forum.