E3002

I have a wish list of Hornby Dublo locos that I still want to collect, sadly after over eight years of collecting (or is it nine?) the locos I've yet to find are on the more expensive side.

I've bid on, and lost at least a dozen of these electric locos, so when I spotted this boxed, two rail loco (as they never actually produced the three rail version) during Saturday's exhibition, I decided that I had to have it.

So I'm now the proud owner of E3002, a little playworn, the numbers are faded on one side but I think it adds to its charm so I have no immediate plans to resolve this. Three railing one of these should be easy, in fact it turned out to be easier than expected, in fact there are some clues that suggest that this two rail loco isn't all that it seems...

First of all there's the box - it's mint, in fact it's too mint. I suspect it's a reproduction box, while I'm happy to be corrected I'm pretty certain that the original box would have had in internal flap and some packing rings.

Next there's the wiring, again it's very good and the many tales I've read of wires breaking and wires being too tight to work on the loco properly, don't seem to be issues here. The wires look very clean and the solder work very shiny for a 50 year old loco.

Then there's the wheels - pretty certain it wouldn't have left Binns Road with mis-matched wheels, the only logical reason that I can come up with is that at some point in its life it's been three-railed and then put back to two rail again.

So I've stripped the loco by this point and removed two of the isolated wheels, replacing them with some spare black wheels I had in the spares box...

Needless to say, regardless of whether it's spent time previously as a three rail model, it'll spend the rest of it's days in that state! For now I've fitted a Märklin skate as these models, like the EMU & Co-Bo, use a shorter pickup than the version found under most steam locos. Eventually I'll replace it for the right version.

Up & running in under an hour - result!