|
The early Farish motor was a really strange two pole device which was nothing like the Hornby Dublo motors at all, neither vertical, 1/2" or Ring field. The early OO Prarie Tank had plastic driving wheels and plunger pickups acting directly on the track.
The early two pole motor was used in the King and Merchant Navy locos and in the GP5 a sort of elongated black five, I've never seen it in a Prarie but it's logical that the ones with plastic wheels had the two pole motor. The tender engines had a drive shaft connecting a tender mounted motor to the loco wheels with a crown wheel and pinion like a scalextric car to turn the drive through 90 degrees and not a worm and wheel which makes them run very freely and coast over bad sections of track.
I have parts of a GP 5 and it has traction tyres on the centre drivers and picks up through a split Tender chassis with the wheels live to the stub axles and insuated sleeves between the wheels, like an early bachmann chassis, it works very well and looks awful.
Later in the 70's GF made a 94XX Pannier and a revised 81XX Prarie with a conventional 1/2" armature motor like a cut price Triang X04 with worm and fibre worm wheel, yuck.
I have two of each, the 94XX run on modified Triang Jinty chassis with Romford 18mm wheels, while the Praries use Triang Albert Hall chassis with Hornby Dublo 2-6-4 Tank (or possiby A4 or Duchess) 22mm wheels. I use Triang Princess connecting Rods and Triiang Hall cylinders as the Farish Cylinders have no holes for the piston rods, and fabricate a new front and rear frame extension, including drlling and tapping the bottom of the coal bunker to take a rear mounting and cab floor, I also fit a grain of wheat bulb for a firebox glow!, Maybe I would use Bachmann 43XX chassis today but I did mine 25 years ago. Anyway it makes a very good loco which pulls 25 Hornby Dublo wagons easily, roughly twice as many as a new Hornby one, and one has been my main banking engine for 25 years.
|