First things first, let me introduce you to the problem I have that needs rectifying: as I have said previously in the projects thread, my Anthony Manor is an extremely noisy runner to the point that it just becomes cringeworthy unless I'm pretended to run a heritage railway train at a sedate speed. Another issue is it frequently stalls on uneven track and points, and on further inspection, one of the wires connecting the loco pickups to the tender had broken at the loco end, so only the very rigid 6-wheel tender is picking up power. Now, I could have taken it back to the shop and... I don't know why I didn't, to be honest (probably didn't want the hassle at the time).

Now, before I attempted any of this, I needed to build up some personal modelling confidence - I've always been a "player" of model railways and never a proper modeller that gets down and dirty with a paintbrush or a kit or even just stripping an expensive model down for heavy maintenance. I did this back in September when I started painting my very first Hornby Flying Scotsman, with a horrid ringfield tender drive, which I'll probably continue next week. I also completely dismantled the locomotive chassis to remove the wheel sets and unseize it, as the supposedly free running wheels had jammed. After a lot of swearing at the brass axle boxes, I finally managed to do it all in an evening and the chassis now rolls sweetly, even though the model will never run again on a layout. I was a bit, no, a lot cack-handed with it and probably would have done some damage had it been a super detailed model, but it gave me the confidence I needed to just get on with it and not be afraid to be a little bit forceful, especially where pressure clip-fits are concerned, otherwise it will just defeat you.
Now it's the little Manor's turn.

Unscrewing the drawbar and wires at one end was the easiest bit, although make sure you have a) a small enough screwdriver, preferably star point, that will properly grab the screw head (I nearly wore one screw out by not realising that I was just turning a slightly larger screwdriver over the surface). B) make sure you have enough light - I find 00 scale fiddly enough at the best of times, but N gauge is on another level, especially if like me you have fairly crappy hand-eye coordination and the tip of your screwdriver doesn't always go quite where you were aiming.

The carden shaft was the more corcerning bit to me, being as it looks quite delicate and if you break it, you're screwed and will have to source some spares or delegate your model to permanent static display. As it turns out, it was quite easy to part. Being so small and painted black, it's hard to see how exactly the carden shaft is constructed, so I will describe it in detail.
The carden shaft is composed of three components. There are two plastic 'cups' with two splits down the centre line on opposite sides, and one of these is pressed onto the end of the tender motor's drive shaft, whilst the other is similarly pressed onto the gearbox shaft in the locomotive cab.
These two cups are united by a single piece capital "I" shaped rod. The ends are little balls that can slide freely inside the cups, and on opposite sides of each ball are two little lugs that slide in the two splits of the cups, so that rotating one cup will rotate the rod by pushing against the lugs, and the second cup will rotate as the lugs at the other end push against the sides of the splits.
Thanks to the ball ends and the free sliding movement, the carden shaft is fairly flexible and in my experience, durable.
After uncoupling the drawbar and wires, I carefully pulled the loco and tender apart until I felt a stop when the carden shaft was fully extended. To stop the connecting rod from sliding out of either cup by accident, the split in the cup narrows slightly to catch the lugs. I didn't really want to force the thing apart so after confirming the setup and having a good look around it, I figured I could gently push the split of the tender cup open by inserting a narrow screwdriver through the two splits and levering. After a few attempts, I found that pressing against the end ball gently with the screwdriver in the cup was enough to give a satisfying pop and disconnect them.
Getting straight down to business, I supplied power to the track with the tender on and tested the motor. Somewhat to my relief, the noise wasn't coming from the inaccessible gearbox in the loco, so I don't need to worry about the loco at all. The tender motor is horrendously noisy though, and unsurprisingly, it's very unbalanced at high RPMs. Watching the carden shaft cup at slow speed shows that it doesn't sit square and wobbles slightly, but the motor shaft is dead straight. I could try pulling the cup off and pushing it back on again in an attempt to try and straighten it, but considering how far the drive shaft penetrates (

The problem with the unbalanced centripetal forces is that it is causing the very lightweight tender to vibrate on the track. The wheels are rigid as anything and there is absolutely no give, so you get the whole tender propelling itself along the test track by the vibration alone, a bit like if your phone vibrates on a wooden surface and goes skating off. Obviously once the tender is decoupled to the heavy loco, it won't be going anywhere on its own, but it gives you an idea of just how bad the vibration is.
In theory, the solution would be to weigh the tender down, and indeed pressing down on the coal load did seem to reduce the noise a bit, although the motor whine was still ear piercing. The problem with weighing it down is that I can see absolutely nowhere on the little Churchward 3500 gal tender to add any weight.

As the tender is currently uncoupled, I could now properly inspect the wiring situation. The two wires are not insulated, which means no wire stripping required thankfully as they're damn narrow in diameter. I did discover the probable reason for why the wire snapped in the first place as well. Half of the broken wire had been trapped under the tender body, which meant that there was very little available movement at that side of the loco-tender coupling, and of course the body wasn't quite sitting on the chassis properly. Just a very careful squeeze and the body lifted up at the front, so I could pull the trapped wire out and sit the body squarely down on the chassis. Doubling the length of available wire will not only reduce the chance of having to do all this and repair wires again in the future, it will make life easier when I come to try and solder the ring back on the end tomorrow.
So that wasn't bad at all, and in my opinion it was a much better way of spending my evening than watching Downton Abbey. Next comes the challenge of using a soldering iron for the first time since I was probably 12, and then coupling everything back up again.

Kind regards,
Chris