Model Railway Forum

I know very little about Steam locos, but that looks very nice indeed !

The latest offering from Oxford Rail - LNER N7.

20190526_104143 by Steve Mumford, on Flickr

Very nice model which seems to run very well indeed, but there is an issue or two with the way the model comes apart.
Actually taking the body off the chassis is very easy, three screws and it just slides out provided the pipe on one side of the running plate is pulled out of the locating hole on the chassis.
First impression is that there is plenty of room in the bunker for a decoder above the fitted 8 pin socket - but this is where the problems begin.
Plugging in a bog-standard Hatton’s chip shows a small overhang at the rear, and it’s enough to to stop the body going back on. The socket and the PCB can’t be moved as they are a snug fit in the cab floor.
20190526_102527 by Steve Mumford, on Flickr

I even tried turning the decoder round to give an extra half millimetre but ended up bending the pins by about 30° so that the decoder itself sits at that angle to the socket.

Al this means that the chassis has no back and forth wiggle room when refitting which then highlights the next issue - Oxford Rail pre-fit the various pipes on the buffers which hook under the buffer beams stopping the chassis from sliding back in. All needed to be disconnected with very fine tweezers before I could complete the job.

Looks good though

All worthwhile in the end but you had a fiddly job there Steve. Nice when it all comes together in the end. Well done, lovely loco

Elongate the holes in PCB move forward slightly then cut a sliver off the PCB to fit the cab floor.

brian1951 wrote: ↑Sun May 26, 2019 11:56 am Elongate the holes in PCB move forward slightly then cut a sliver off the PCB to fit the cab floor.

Good suggestion Brian, it’s just ridiculous that the owner should have to resort to these modifications on a new loco in the first place.

A decoder with a harness (I don’t have one in the spares box ) would probably have been ok but I do wish Oxford Rail would take a bit more care with the tolerances for direct fit decoders as this is not the first time I’ve encountered this with their locos.

Maybe it’s time the decoder producers made them smaller.

Did they recommend that decoder?

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Sun May 26, 2019 3:31 pm Maybe it’s time the decoder producers made them smaller.

Did they recommend that decoder?

Definitely agree with the first point but it would undoubtedly increase the price!

Not sure that loco manufacturers ever recommend a particular brand of decoder although the Hornby 4 pin is an exception maybe and I remember an N gauge loco that needed one with pins a 90° To normal.

I guess thats a problem with using the bunker. Does look like it could have been placed further forward.

As the decoder is fitted with heat-shrink protection you can't see, but would it have been possible to file some of the paxolin (?) plate off - therefore making it narrower? I agree, you should not have to do this with a new model.

I don’t see why smaller should generally mean more expensive. That’s not the way most electronic gubbins has gone.