great sound and great detail. thanks again for the review.
I had Hornby clockwork and electric trains as a kid - how far they’ve come! Have to think about buying one if only to remind me of the old days.
Looks like someone needs to do a bit of work on the couplers.
Great engine though…wikipedia has info on the company and were you can see and ride the prototype.
nice bit of engineering on this loco.
Chris from New Zealand: Keep in mind this is a Rivarossi engine originally offered about 15-20 years ago. Hornby bought Rivarossi’s product line a few years back. So this is a “Hornby” engine but in a way isn’t…if you see what I mean?
Wonderful and run very slow, very nice model.
Nice review Dana! Nice engine, I was wondering about the universal on the drive shaft that you can see on the low shots. It looks a little out of scale. There are some smaller ones available. Do you think it could be replaced for a better look?
Hello Mr. Bohan,
I haven’t seen any of the smaller shafts available for the Heisler, so I’m not sure what would be involved for the installation. Personally I don’t think the stock shafts look that far off, and since the drivetrain works quite well out of the box, I’d be a bit hesitant to start making modifications.
Thanks for watching,
Dana Kawala
Senior editor
At my Railroads On Parade and Station At Citigroup Center Exhibits we have been running Rivarossi (and now Hornby) Climaxes for twenty years or more since they first came out. While I will grant you that the detail isn’t up to the latest standards, this little guy will pull three lit 45 foot Passenger cars up a seven percent helix grade eighty times a day, seven days a week without blinking. And that’s year in and year out. Not all of our original Heisler fleet are still around, but some, re-motored, are still plugging along two decades on. So obey my “five foot rule” (that is, from your viewpoint five feet away, it looks just great pulling those passenger cars up that seven percent curved mountain grade). Buy this guy for what he will do, not what his drive system looks like. Then buy a brass one, paint it, and put it on your shelf where you can observe that fine-scale drive system that just loves to bind up.
Too bad the “chuff” was not even close to being in sync. One can easily see the drive shaft spinning WAY faster than the chuff sound. The article in the real magazine said they fixed it using CV 57 &58, must have been after they shot the video. Otherwise, I agree with others that this is an older model, not quite up to todays standards for plastic steam, but with some weathering, these little guys will be right at home on any logging layout.
After seeing the video, I got my hands on one. This is a very nice engine. Once I decipher and work my way through the manual, I hope to get it sounding even better. As was noted in the video review, the coal shoveling sound is a bit overwhelming. There are one or two other things I may modify in the sound system. I will convert my engine to Sn3 using the V&T Shops kit. When all the work is done, I hope it resemble Biles-Coleman Lumber 102 (which is an outside-frame engine).
Don’t try to synchronise the chuff rate to the drive shaft speed, but instead to piston travel. I would recommend that you first download the LokSound Version 4 manual, and study it very carefully before attempting to modify the sound effects. I did notice in the instructions that came with the engine that the factory default setting for V6 is higher than that for V5. To paraphrase the guy in the Dos XX’s commercials “Program carefully, my friends.”