QUOTE (dbclass50 @ 10 Jan 2008, 18:26)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>To add to the BR05 - I had an early original build on photographic grey.
When new it would outpull anything I had at the time, virtually silent, smooth & would run that slow you could count the wheel spokes as they went round & this was on an old H & M variable transformer controller. Eventually, it lost power & seemed to be down to the motor. This model had a can motor & flywheel in the tender.
The earlier Liliputs like the BR38 & 78's that I had used a five pole open frame motor (similar to an X04) driving the driving wheels through a worn & gear. They either ran very well or like old dogs - long since gone.
Strangely, the only "Bachmann" Liliput I have just does not run well at all - an SNCB 2-6-0 Tank, yet the DB version I have, which is a "Liliput" Liliput runs very smoothly.
***I wonder....
Bachann had a bad batch of can motors a year or two back. The plastic endcap bearing (from memory) wasn't well seated - it affected US market K4 pacifics and a UK loco (I can't remember which). Bachmann at that time replaced faulty motors without question as it was a truly "epidemic" failure problem.... I wonder if some liliput production was caught up in that.
The initial symptoms were poor power delivery and they ran hot as soon as a load was on them, and as a motor loses efficiency even more - really quickly - when it overheats (and long term it damages the magnet) they couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding.
The last few Newish Liliput loco's I've done have been very sweet runners, all crawling almost imperceptably at speed step one after decoder adjustment, so it can't be all of them!