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& Barnstaple Manning Wardle 2-6-2T
No.760 'Exe' This is Heljan's model of a Lynton & Barnstaple Manning Wardle 2-6-2T locomotive in Southern Railway livery as number 760 'Exe'. I bought this model as I found it a very appealing little model. It is nicely detailed and well finished, looks great. Now, the following is my experience and opinion on the particular model I have and may not be representative of of everyone else's model. The problem I had was trying to run it! The chassis is extremely poorly designed and it ran like a bag of nails. Very disappointing for such an expensive model. If we are being asked to pay this price, I think we are entitled to something that works much better than this. The first thing of note is the rather stuttering running. This was tracked down to the very fine wiper pick-ups touching the back of the driving wheels. Well, I say touching, it would have helped if they did! There appeared to be not quite enough pressure on these pick-ups resulting in few, if any at times, actually touching the wheels. A very careful adjustment was made by removing the keeper plate and trying to persuade the wipers out a bit more. Having done this, it ran better. The pony trucks also have pick-ups of a different pattern. Here, contacts touch the wheel rims at the top. Whilst this does work, I found there was too much pressure causing the truck to press down on the track too much, subsequently lifting the driving wheels of the track! This was particularly bad at the back (cab end) of the locomotive. To be fair, the instructions do mention this and an adjustment was made. These measures did improve running. I then tried fitting the supplied coupling to the rear after removing the cowcatcher. Well the result is that the coupling points upward and cannot couple onto any of my rolling stock, especially my Peco L&B carriages! Far too high. Not only this, but having fitted the coupling, the buffer beam now sits on the coupling, lifting the rear of the locomotive off the track! Remove the coupling and everything is okay again! But how do I couple anything too it? I will have to resort to fitting a Greenwich type coupling as used on some of my other narrow gauge stock. A test fit showed that they can be inserted into the coupling pocket and secured there. Some other issues occurred. One of the nameplates fell off, presumably insufficient glue holding it on? Fortunately I managed to find it and re-attached it. The second issue was more major. One of the tiny bolts holing the rear coupling rod onto the crank fell out. Unfortunately, I did not manage to find it. However, I did have a 14BA steel cheese head screw that I reduced in length (to about 3mm) and fitted that. Seems to be holding so far and is not too noticeably different to the other bolts. The other problem relates to the lining. Possibly due to my repeated handling in an effort to get it to run, small sections of the white lining have rubbed off (on opposite side to the photograph). I will have to carefully re-apply this at some stage. I have heard stories about the locomotive derailing on points, but as I don't actually have a proper narrow gauge section at the moment, I can't comment. The solution seems to be to either change the wheels and set to the correct back to backs, or carefully adjust the sideways truck springs. So, a very attractive and appealing model badly let down by poor chassis design. For over £200 it should run perfectly, without any issues, straight from the box. After all, Bachmann managed it with their little WDLR Baldwin locomotive for a lot less money! A bit disappointing I'm afraid
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