Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Hi,

This morning disaster!  Because the Bird family; small in numbers is a bit spread out it is unusual for us to celebrate Christmas on the 25th.  We hold it in December on a date when hopefully all of us can get together; our daughter has just finished a job in the Crucible in Sheffield and has returned to her home in Central London and will visit us with family this weekend before going onto Manchester, our son is working on a project for Liverpool and will visit having gone home to Gloucestershire to collect family before going to North Yorkshire.

The disaster?  Thomas broke down!  So, who will pull Santa around the Christmas tree?  The grandchildren will be very disappointed!  As usual Thomas was check out a few days before; today in fact, he pulled Santa around the track for several laps and stopped the motor still going; the wheel of the worm and wheel drive system had come loose on its axle.  The problem corrected; off Thomas and load went after a few laps stopped again now with no sound, problem the motors commutator was worn and shorting out; new motor fitting the test ran a lot longer before stopping, batteries needed charging.  Batteries charged; Thomas and load bounded off to stop about 5 minutes later; after quite a long time checking it was found that the two of the batteries were defective! New batteries charged and fitted Thomas managed his usual three-hour running time.

This took up most of the morning and being a bit of a fatalist, I near didn’t go to the shed.  In the event things went quite well and the layouts entrance base board wise is finished.

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Regards Tony.