Spanish high speed trains in N gauge

[roadstar_na6]

At least yours has the light correct. A member of my club has the exact same set and his has one end car with the lights mixed up.

Go in one direction and both cars have white headlights, go in the other and both have red rear lights 😄

[ronin]

That would be frustrating.   Hope he is able to get it fixed to work properly.

 

Whenever I can set up a double track, I'll get the S 103 out and run them together.  Looking forward to that.

 

Eric

[ronin]

Ok, after some success tinkering with some of the steam locomotives in my stable, I felt more confidence in opening up some of my other trains.  One of them has been the S103 that I got a few years ago.  From the beginning it was not a good runner.  Slow, noisy and inconsistent in maintaining a set speed.

 

Flash forward to today and I am equipped with proper model train lubrication and just enough knowledge to be dangerous, and I opened her up.  First thing I noticed is the amount of difference in the motor to wheels assembly compared to the Green Max Keisei train I worked on yesterday.  Certainly they had numerous similarities, but the Arnold S103 felt beefier and more complex.

 

After lightly sanding connection points, I added some lubrication to the gears and to support points where something was rotating.

 

I then put the naked chassis on the track to see how it worked out.  At first, there was still squeeking noises so I ran ot very slowly and added some more lube to a few points I had missed and the squeeking went away.  To be clear I only add 1 drop from the syringe needle so not alot.

 

At that stage she quieted down, but was still not smooth running so I just let her go for awhile and finally noticed that she smoothed out and held a steady speed finally.

 

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by ronin

[ronin]

After that, I got motivated to pull out the S102 for comparison purposes.  The S102 is quieter, no issues with speed consistency and is noticeably faster at top speed.  The S103 starts moving at a lower setting on the dial and will move when the S102 is still stationary, but past the halfway point of the dial, the S102 is quicker.

 

Having said that, even the S102 is noticeably slower than I think any of my Japanese trains.  I am much more familiar with the Japanese trains, are the typical Euro N gauge trains slower on the top end?