One of my very reliable Bach A1's well and truly failed out on the layout earlier this week, slowing down very rapidly and moving jerkily as it slowed to a halt, so was set aside for investigation.
Got around to it this morning, and the problem was immediately obvious once the mechanism was got out of the body, which process had been achieved with some difficulty. There had been a strip of insulation tape on the ballast block forward of the worm, and the worm had caught what must have been a flappy end and 'wound it in'. The other end of the tape had still been firmly attached, thus the difficulty getting the mechanism out of the body.
First the good news, no damage at all, with the tape pieces removed from the model mechanism and the ballast weight the normal smooth running is fully restored.
Now the question, where did that tape come from? Could it have been a previous owner (the model was a s/h purchase) or was it applied by Bachmann?
The reason for asking is that I have never seen tape on top of the forward ballast blocks of A1's, a good number of which have been through my hands and taken apart to pack in the lead ballast required for traction, until I arrived at the simpler process which was applied to this last A1 purchase of a lead cylinder installed forward by removing the smokebox front, and a balancing lump behind the motor. Do I need to inspect all my Bachmann steamers of similar construction (A2, K3, Fairburn 4MT, 3F tank, 57xx) that haven't been fiddled with overmuch internally, to check for tape?
Got around to it this morning, and the problem was immediately obvious once the mechanism was got out of the body, which process had been achieved with some difficulty. There had been a strip of insulation tape on the ballast block forward of the worm, and the worm had caught what must have been a flappy end and 'wound it in'. The other end of the tape had still been firmly attached, thus the difficulty getting the mechanism out of the body.
First the good news, no damage at all, with the tape pieces removed from the model mechanism and the ballast weight the normal smooth running is fully restored.
Now the question, where did that tape come from? Could it have been a previous owner (the model was a s/h purchase) or was it applied by Bachmann?
The reason for asking is that I have never seen tape on top of the forward ballast blocks of A1's, a good number of which have been through my hands and taken apart to pack in the lead ballast required for traction, until I arrived at the simpler process which was applied to this last A1 purchase of a lead cylinder installed forward by removing the smokebox front, and a balancing lump behind the motor. Do I need to inspect all my Bachmann steamers of similar construction (A2, K3, Fairburn 4MT, 3F tank, 57xx) that haven't been fiddled with overmuch internally, to check for tape?
