Standard 3 MT and ex LMS Black Five

The poor running Triang Standard 3MT tank did get a little better as the pickups begun to be run in. Then disaster struck – the driving wheel which happens to be the middle one came off its axle along with all the drive shafts and general begubbery. Pushing it back on and reconnecting all the levers etc lasted about half a circuit before it all came adrift again. I tried to stick it with super glue which stuck it OK but the con rods seemed not to be in exactly the right place. I think that we can safely conclude that this engine has been a bit of a disaster, whether it is worth repairing is dubious as it was never much of a runner in the base case. I will ponder what to do with it but at the moment it is off the layout and lurking in its box.
It has however been replaced with a Hornby Black 5 converted to 3 rail and bought off the internet for a very reasonable price. Old Hornby’s aren’t worth much anyway and one converted to 3 rail was very cheap. This is a Hornby tender drive engine. I really don’t like tender drive but it does enable a simple 3 rail conversion. However this one was very dusty and needed cleaning and oiling before it would run smoothly. With small amounts of Singer sewing machine oil applied in the judicious places it began to go very nicely. Except that the tender would derail on at least two curves on the layout – another poor runner! The derailments are probably cause by the fact that the tender has 6 rubber tyres which tend to reduce the amount of flange in contact with the rails. However an experiment with running tender first proved very successful with no derailments of any sort and the ability to pull a full train of HD wagons. Now we are winning. So we have a Black 5 running tender first able to pull a standard load of HD coaches or wagons. Sorted.

One thought on “Standard 3 MT and ex LMS Black Five”

  1. I have a couple of Tri-ang 2-6-2’s to 3-rail later but one I did a while ago was to fit the body onto a Dublo 0-6-2 chassis with the 2-6-4 valve gear and a 2-6-4/8F front pony truck. If you would like to e-mail me privately I can send you a photograph and also ask a couple of other questions.

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