front bogies william whitelaw

[Darren-366722]

hi

my front bogies are literally hanging off my loco and cause it to derail around bends . can i fix it myself or is it a return job?

cheers all

[Skelton Junction]

Darren, the usual culprit for this has been a small square of black tape above the bogie. Removal has been known to improve the performance.

[Skelton Junction]

*a pair of tweezers is the tool of choice

[Rallymatt]

If you search the threads that deal with derailment etc there are details of how to rebuild/adjust the front truck. Easy job with just basic tools needed but can transform running 😁

[Fishmanoz]

https://uk.hornby.com/community/forum/front-bogies-on-a4-william-whitelaw-353921?ccm_paging_p=1&ccm_order_by=&ccm_order_by_direction=

and

https://uk.hornby.com/community/forum/tt120-flying-scotsman-bogies-358535?ccm_paging_p=1#end-of-replies

[Rallymatt]

Fishy, you are way better than me at searching stuff out. The search on this app is chronic but you find it, thanks 😁

[Fishmanoz]

I spent some time looking through early pages of forum topics for those two. I had some idea when.

[Timothy-350163]

My recent purchase of The Easterner came with a poor running William Whitelaw. The poor running was attributable to the front bogie.

First thing wrong and quite obvious, was the right hand wheel on the front axle of the lead bogie was not not square on the axle and would oscillate. Physically moved it back to square with a right angle plier and checked gauge. It looked correct but the derailments still occurred.

Second thing wrong was an interference caused by the front bogie rubbing against the streamlined cowling of the body. A quick fix was to remove the flange guard from the front of the bogie. Removed one screw and the part came off. The binding of the bogie against the cowling in a curve would cause the rear axle of the front bogie to lift in the air and then the front axle geometry was wrong and it would derail. Had to get eyes to track level to find this out.

The loco now runs as it should with no problems whatsoever.

Will the flange guard ever go back on? Don’t miss it, so it will most likely be quite a while before a solution is explored.

Have six locos and two were sent back to Hornby. They did a great job of replacement for one and repair for the other. Probably William Whitelaw should have been returned, also, but the expense is just too great from the US to the UK.

Hope this experience helps someone.

[Fishmanoz]

Thanks Timothy, adds to the story.

Expensive from the US? Try from Australia.

[Darren-366722]

thanks for your help it was the dreaded black tape i removed it now all is good :)

[Peachy]

My recent purchase of The Easterner came with a poor running William Whitelaw. The poor running was attributable to the front bogie.

First thing wrong and quite obvious, was the right hand wheel on the front axle of the lead bogie was not not square on the axle and would oscillate. Physically moved it back to square with a right angle plier and checked gauge. It looked correct but the derailments still occurred.

Second thing wrong was an interference caused by the front bogie rubbing against the streamlined cowling of the body. A quick fix was to remove the flange guard from the front of the bogie. Removed one screw and the part came off. The binding of the bogie against the cowling in a curve would cause the rear axle of the front bogie to lift in the air and then the front axle geometry was wrong and it would derail. Had to get eyes to track level to find this out.

The loco now runs as it should with no problems whatsoever.

Will the flange guard ever go back on? Don’t miss it, so it will most likely be quite a while before a solution is explored.

Have six locos and two were sent back to Hornby. They did a great job of replacement for one and repair for the other. Probably William Whitelaw should have been returned, also, but the expense is just too great from the US to the UK.

Hope this experience helps someone.

 

 

I think a lot of people have had similar experiences, it’s certainly rewarding finding out what’s wrong and then being able to remedy the problem.

I guess at this scale the tolerances are so close the slightest misalignment in production particularly with the hand added parts have a very real knock on effect.

I’ve had the front bogie steps on all my A3’s off and put back on straight by me just so I can get the locos to traverse radius 4!!!! 😬