British N gauge Mechanical Quality

[David Bale]

Good idea I will, should be correct as I have not deliberately changed anything.

[David Bale]

Ref noisy dapol class 121

All CV settings are correct.
The only sign of a possible cause without dismantling the loco, is when I try to turn  the main shaft without the bogies the shaft does not turn too far smoothly. Although it may be just magnetic resistance.
I am sending the loco back to Dapol for a replacement!

[Chris Morris]

Kato has been making N gauge locos a lot longer than Dapol which helps. As has been said above Kato don't do sound of DCC (maybe they do now) and so they have less distractions when designing a chassis. I had a Kato Euromed a few years back and it looked great and ran very smoothly. It was very impressive except for the power unit to coach connections which were very hard to use and eventually broke. I believe this was a design fault which has since been fixed but it illustrates that even Kato aren't always perfect.

Early Dapol were noisy and geared stupidly. In my experience the latest Dapol locos are smooth and quiet. I'm talking items made in the last two years or so here, not to be confused with locos bought in the last few years which may been made quite a dew years ago. I have two class 50s, 2 of the latest batch of HSTs and one of the new run of class 33s. All very smooth slow runners and sound sweet when running at higher speeds. I'm pretty sure all the class 121s are earlier production. I therefore commend Dapol for firstly bringing in very well detailed N gauge locos about 20 years ago and for making big improvements to the running of these in recent years. I do think the latest Dapol are a shade better than the latest Farish; something I would not have expected to be saying four or five years ago. All my  Farish purchases are also smooth quiet runners but they were all made in the last 5 or 6 years. They maybe not quite up to Kato levels of quiet but they aren't far behind and certainly very acceptable.

Union Mills locos pull well and are smooth and quiet but the level of detail is not very good. They are what they are and are fine within the context of what Colin is trying to achieve. With careful fettling they can be made into nice models but I wouldn't use one straight out of the box.

[David Bale]

Interesting comments about Dapol Class 121 not been a most recent design. I wonder what was the weak link? design, materials used, bad assembly, poor tooling, cheap tooling, too many poor runners not scrapped.
I won't give up on Dapol and Farish until I've tried some recent designs.
Like most N locomotives I find Kato locomotives difficult to repair without breaking something. Fleischmann used to be easy to take apart relatively.
Kato DCC - a few years ago I considered starting a business selling Japanese Kato Dcc locomotives. I bought 6 electric Kato locomotives that were designed for digitrax decoders then fitted them separately which was quite routine. They work really well, it doesn't seem Dcc is massive in Japan still now. I have heard that this is influenced by lack of space? But the average UK house is not that big!

I will have a look at the locomotives you recommend.

[longbow]

Recent design or not, my 121 is an above-average performer.

[David Bale]

Good!
I hope dapol will replace with a better one.
As mine was new I couldn't investigate to much.
Although it run smoothly slow I'm sure it was struggling, perhaps the motor or worm was rubbing on something. I want to support British companies.

[Newportnobby]

I find Dapol locos take a LOT of running in to bed down, and even them some just don't. My 121 is acceptably quiet at the speeds I run it at but I do have some horrors that just squeal their way round the layout. I'm no fan of the cardan shaft arrangement but find it does bed in and my A4, in particular, is just superb. They do have to be handled very carefully.

[David Bale]

An A4 sounds hopeful, I am fussy on noise level. When I was running my 121 I was reluctant to run it too long as it didn't sound healthy. A few years ago I inherited my dad's dapol n voyager with Dcc. He never raised any issue's about the noise it made, at speed it sounded terrible! When I sold it on eBay I didn't know whether to mention it!
I agree about handling, these n models are precision products. As your 121 is a bit noisy do you think the shaft is just rattling about? Surely the motors wouldn't be a problem. The bogies were okay on mine because I took them off.

[mickeyflinn]

If your 121 is anything like mine, if you take the roof off it will be a little quieter. I've found that this, and a couple of my Farish diesels, are louder with the bodies/roofs on as they act like amplifiers.

[Newportnobby]

There is quite a bit of space for noise to echo around in but as I run my 121 quite slowly it's not bugging me. I've always liked the ability to just pull the bogies off mainly as, in earlier models, it made it easier to remove the ghastly transport grease they used to pack them with (as witnessed also with the far more recent EFE class 17) and to then oil the bushes as advised.

If your 121 is anything like mine, if you take the roof off it will be a little quieter.

There'll be no open top railtours on my layout!

[David Bale]

My 121 was covered in white grease in the worm area. I assume unless it gets hard it would not create a noise?

[gavin_t]

I am fairly new to the scene and have only got Farish locomotives myself which are all the newer DCC ready type.

However my experiences with them out of the box have not been great to be fair.

Class 101 DMU - flickering running lights and only picking up power from one bogie, turned out to be a loose PCB

Class 60 - would only run smoothly without the body shell on - turned out to again be a loose connection

Class 37 from the highlander train set - runs rough as a dog, still haven't worked out why a year later 

Class 47 from the capital connect train pack - constantly de-railed and stalled - turned out to be poor clearance on the body and bogie - small bit of filing later good as gold.

So most I have fixed myself barring the 37 and it has given me some good learning opportunities. However it doesn't speak well of their QC levels. Anyone what was hoping to pop something out the box and enjoy it would have been disappointed. Surely that is part of the point of ready to run 


Got my eye on a Dapol locomotive at present, if I get it I will have to compare it.

[railsquid]

Kato has been making N gauge locos a lot longer than Dapol which helps. As has been said above Kato don't do sound of DCC (maybe they do now) and so they have less distractions when designing a chassis. I had a Kato Euromed a few years back and it looked great and ran very smoothly. It was very impressive except for the power unit to coach connections which were very hard to use and eventually broke. I believe this was a design fault which has since been fixed but it illustrates that even Kato aren't always perfect.

I had to send the first ever Kato loco I bought back as it seemed to think it was a Dapol loco (very noisy and the directional lighting didn't work). But that was an outlier, everything else I've bought new has Just Worked™, and the vast amount of second hand Kato stuff I've acquired has also been fine or very easily fixable. Not that everything is 100% perfect, as mentioned with the Eurostar couplings, and over on another forum I'm just reading about some issues with a US-outline train.

They do dabble a little in DCC (and have done for the last 15 years or so), many of their Japanese products are now labelled as "DCC friendly", which means they're designed with DCC in mind, AFAIK with locos that means the PCBs can be replaced with DCC ones, and with multiple units (which are a big part of the Japanese market) there is space to add a decoder (in the motor car and the end cars).

Like most N locomotives I find Kato locomotives difficult to repair without breaking something. Fleischmann used to be easy to take apart relatively.

It can be tricky to get the body off sometimes, but locomotives (diesels and electrics at least) are built to a fairly standard design (like Tomix, but unlike MicroAce, who seem to be on a mission to come up with every possible chassis design variation possible, but I digress...).

Kato DCC - a few years ago I considered starting a business selling Japanese Kato Dcc locomotives. I bought 6 electric Kato locomotives that were designed for digitrax decoders then fitted them separately which was quite routine. They work really well, it doesn't seem Dcc is massive in Japan still now. I have heard that this is influenced by lack of space? But the average UK house is not that big!

Despite Kato's occasional efforts, DCC is very niche hereabouts for a number of overlapping factors. The market appears used to comparatively cheap products, which is achieved by economies of scale, relatively simple mechanisms and a degree of outsourcing the end details to the consumer. The price of a DCC chip would increase the cost of a loco significantly, and for a multiple unit (which like I said make up a big part of the market) you'd need 2 or usually 3 chips (even if the ones for directional lighting would be simpler), then there are all the formation end cars/brake vans with built-in tail lights to consider... Then there's the fact that the only  manufacturer providing any kind of DCC support is Kato, and they're not the only player in the market. And Tomix has a very sophisticated range of DC control systems which do a lot of what DCC can do. And complex operations are not so much a thing in Japan, partly because temporary floor layouts due to lack of space are not uncommon, and partly because Japanese railways in general rationalised their operations comparatively early (lots of multiple units at all levels, block freight etc.).

FWIW I do possess a couple of Dapol railcars which I do find somewhat noisy, but it saves building in a speaker .

My main gripes with British N gauge ere the propensity of Farish items to develop split gears, and the habit of Dapol items to suffer lighting failures. Oh, and the relatively high rate of new "duds" - I've actually found that buying 2nd hand from reputable sources means I'm not risking acting as QA for the manufacturer, which is particularly important when living in foreign climes.

[David Bale]

Kato has been making N gauge locos a lot longer than Dapol which helps. As has been said above Kato don't do sound of DCC (maybe they do now) and so they have less distractions when designing a chassis. I had a Kato Euromed a few years back and it looked great and ran very smoothly. It was very impressive except for the power unit to coach connections which were very hard to use and eventually broke. I believe this was a design fault which has since been fixed but it illustrates that even Kato aren't always perfect.

Early Dapol were noisy and geared stupidly. In my experience the latest Dapol locos are smooth and quiet. I'm talking items made in the last two years or so here, not to be confused with locos bought in the last few years which may been made quite a dew years ago. I have two class 50s, 2 of the latest batch of HSTs and one of the new run of class 33s. All very smooth slow runners and sound sweet when running at higher speeds. I'm pretty sure all the class 121s are earlier production. I therefore commend Dapol for firstly bringing in very well detailed N gauge locos about 20 years ago and for making big improvements to the running of these in recent years. I do think the latest Dapol are a shade better than the latest Farish; something I would not have expected to be saying four or five years ago. All my  Farish purchases are also smooth quiet runners but they were all made in the last 5 or 6 years. They maybe not quite up to Kato levels of quiet but they aren't far behind and certainly very acceptable.

Union Mills locos pull well and are smooth and quiet but the level of detail is not very good. They are what they are and are fine within the context of what Colin is trying to achieve. With careful fettling they can be made into nice models but I wouldn't use one straight out of the box.

As you recommended I bought a Dapol Class 33 ! I am impressed smooth and quiet comparable with Kato and Roco. The Class 121 I sent back to Dapol because it was noisy has not returned yet, but I am encouraged!

[railsquid]

Funnily enough the first batch of the Class 33s contained a few very noisy runners, including the one I got, which did an excellent rendition of a tiny angry chainsaw. The replacement, and another one subsequently acquired second-hand, are however perfectly satifsfactory.