Major Falcon surgery

Last night i had to open up the Falcon after the LED headlights stopped working in one direction. I found the reason was a wire from the main PCB to the lights PCB had become detached (maybe poorly soldered in the first place). So an easy thing to fix... Apart from the fact to get where i needed to re-solder the wire on the PCB was only possible by taking most of Falcon's internals apart!

I've never done this amount of disassembly of a locomotive's internals before so was nervous about it and hoping i wouldn't turn my flagship loco into a pretty paperweight... Luckily it all came back together and runs fine... and the lights are fixed of course!

Well the Falcon is the Falcon, thats why i love that loco so much. It can even survive me and a soldering iron... Lets just hope i never need to do this again.

Re-tyred

Both Lima 31s have had traction tyres fitted now and run a lot better. Still some work to do but hopefully they will both play a part in operations on Knell Lane.

Time for a bit of oil

With Falcon developing a bit of a raspy growl when travelling in 1 direction i thought it was time i performed a bit of maintenance on the fleet and oiled the gears. Growler really needed the oil as it no longer growls now! The nickname will remain intact though. Unfortunately oiling Falcon doesn't seem to have solved its growl but it might just be a case of the oil needing to work its way in. Here is Growler on a post-oiling test, without the cover.