The little detailing bags and working couplings

[Bealman]

Yeah, I'm not getting a service page either.... I get what appears to be the Bachmann home page, saying this page has been moved.

[railsquid]

Unfortunately Bachmann reorganized their website a while back and zapped a lot of the useful information.

Fortunately the waybackmachine has it: https://web.archive.org/web/20170630174132/http://www.bachmann.co.uk/service/gf_assmbly.php

[Bealman]

Oooh, that's pretty cool.... well done, squiddy! 

[Graham]

that is a really neat tool, will have to remember that when something goes missing

[crewearpley40]

whoops sorry


in the search box i discovered you have to type the loco eg class 47 but everybody go with squiddy 's idea !!!!


maybe i have odd systems ?? doing it that way helped me but wont argue with squiddy's link, a useful tool

[Newportnobby]

I have the Feb 2018 service sheets but think it's the same (or not as good as) Squiddy's link.......

http://service.bachmann.co.uk/knowledge-base/instruction-sheets/

[njee20]

I had a look at this this evening with my class 47, but realised that I needed some finer tweezers to do this properly, so have ordered some and will report back when I have had another chance.

In the meantime, I have taken delivery of some very nice Dapol Class 50s, which get around the problem ingeniously by using shortened pipes and having the coupling pocket pivoting independently of the bogies. I have tested these on my ~305mm radius curves coupled with a Dapol Easifit coupler to a Farish mk. 1 (albeit pushing it around as I have not DCC fitted them yet and only a small fragment of my layout is wired so far), and this is able to navigate the curve successfully.

Are the pipes shortened? Having just received my 50 it seems to just work through brute force, defecting the pipes as the coupler turns, they're most certainly not out of the way!

Assuming it's adequately robust it's certainly a solution, but I'm not totally sold on it.

[jamespetts]

The manual claims that they are shortened, but I suspect that this may be incorrect.

[njee20]

Its possible they are, but it's moot as they still foul the coupler, which simply bashes them out of the way when swivelling.

[jamespetts]

My tweezers arrived yesterday, so I have been able to undertake some brief exploratory work this evening, albeit my time has been limited as I am going on holiday to-morrow. I am not sure that I have correctly unpicked what cable should go where, exactly, and there are some mysterious non-cable items, but I have been able, I think, to get the cables into the buffer beam on the Farish Class 47 so that the working coupling pushes them out of the way when going around a corner as with the Dapol Class 50. I had to enlarge some of the holes with a 0.45mm drill bit (hand held) and use PVA glue to put others in place, but it appears to work well with brief testing.

The pipes I have had to push outwards from the coupling area at somewhat of an angle (a little like curtains with tie-backs), and, while this does not look ideal, it is better, I think, than having no pipes at all. I shall have to test more comprehensively and take photographs when I get back.

[Jonas]

You can fit all the detail and add a wire coupling that will hook the rapido if you have gentle enough curves;

[jamespetts]

I need automatic uncoupling, so this is not workable for my use case. It is an interesting idea, though.

[jamespetts]

Having returned from holiday, I have been completing my work on this to-night.

Here is the appearance of the detailed end with working coupling:

Farish class 47 with detailing and coupling by James Petts, on Flickr

This is what it looks like coupled to a carriage:

Farish class 47 by James Petts, on Flickr

And this is a comparison of it next to a class 50:

Farish class 47 and Dapol class 50 front ends compared by James Petts, on Flickr

As we see, the pipes are swept aside somewhat to allow the coupler to travel around the corners. Whilst this does not look as good as the pipes hanging straight, it looks better than having no pipes at all.

This definitely seems to be the way forward for these locomotives. Next, I will have to investigate the equivalent detailing packs for the carriages. I am interested whether anyone has any experience with these.

[crewearpley40]

looking very good james. can you please provide a step by step guide for how you managed to achieve this please ?

[njee20]

Yes that does look good. I've removed the coupling from the leading end of my 50 and it now looks a bit bare, as the detail obviously accommodates the coupling, so without it there's a gap. I noticed there were snowploughs, I didn't see if there were other bits to put in place of a functional coupling.