Model Railway Forum

I have been looking at prices of packs of metal wheels for my rolling stock and it seems Dapol wheels can be half the price of the Hornby wheels. A packet of 20 Dapol wheels a little more than a pack of 10 Hornby.

Are there any problems using Dapol on Hornby stock? Durability/ axel length ? Diameters seem the same.

Thanks

I never had much luck with Dapol wheels on my OO layout. They often derailed so I swapped them with the Hornby version. I don’t know why this happened but it did. Others undoubtedly will have had no problems at all.

O gauge wheels are no problem at all.

Not too sure what the etiquette is about posting links to other forums but if it causes a problem, please remove this post.

I found this on another forum.

https://www.newrailwaymodellers.co.uk/F ... hp?t=52652

Upon investigation, it seems that Dapol have a problem with manufacturing quality, although this may be historic. But main comments indicate that the depths of the flanges can cause problem both with points , crossovers and wagons that have axle alignment mishaps. ( not parallel, worn bearings, etc).

I’ll stay with Hornby I think.

Rgds

The wheels just rode off the rails on curves. I should add that I always ran trains slowly.

I have a rake of 12 Dapol wagons, when they had Dapol wheels they were always derailing.
I tossed the Dapol wheels and fitted The Chinese make Hornby lookalikes from Petersspares, had not trouble since and they come at the right price

The only Dapol kit I ever made was an oil tanker and that came with plastic and metal wheels.
I presume plastic as part of the old Airfix kit with metal wheels as an update.
It runs well after I added a bit of weight inside the tank barrel.

I saw a YouTube video from Sam's Trains where he had problems with some Dapol wagons derailing. They were all the same model in the rake that he was using. I've bought a number of Dapol wagons which I've yet to use in anger (still building my layout, when time permits), but those that I have all seem to have metal wheels. I have one Hornby wagon which derails on radius two curves, and that was double the price of the Dapols.

I have managed to grab a Dapol passenger coach, which has plastic wheels, which seem to be free running. I also have a couple of Hornby Railroad passenger coaches, which again have plastic wheels, and they run very roughly. If I keep them I'll replace the wheels with Hornby metal equivalents.

From what I can make out, not all wheels are made equal, but I think that QA is an issue generally anyway. I've only been back into this hobby for a few months but here's a list of some of the QA issues with new kit that that I've bought:

-- Dapol Class 121 DMU: Broken buffer (keeps falling out), a part is loose on the underside of the coach, and there is a graze on one side of the model.
-- Dapol wagon: broken NEM couplings.
-- Hornby Railroad coaches: rough running plastic wheels.
-- Dapol passenger coach: broken coupling.
-- Hornby guard's wagon: broken NEM couplings, damage to wagon roof. (Replacement shows the same roof marking, it must be a manufacturing fault.)
-- 2 x Hornby R8073 points: cause derailments, or locos to stop dead.
-- 3 x Hornby R603 track sections: bent, will not lie flat without pinning.
-- 2 x Bachmann R607 track sections: distorted, badly moulded sleepers.

Okay, the list is a little off track (no pun intended), but the point that I was hoping to make is that QA seems to be a problem, based on my experience, which in some cases, given the costs involved, isn't really acceptable, although will all mass-produced stuff I suppose that it's part of the game that we play. With track-based faults, like those that I've experienced, I wonder how much is down to tolerances? There are a lot of variables in play.