7mm Heljan Class 47s

[richard carr]

The Heljan Class 47 locos have now arrived so here are some details from mine.





The first thing to say is that this, to my mind at least, is their most detailed model yet. There is a very detailed bogie, albeit making some of those parts fairly fragile, the same goes for pipe work around the fuel tanks etc. It is the best cab interior they have done too.
There are both clear and frosted front lights, nice snow ploughs and front steps that you need to add yourself , they are the parts on the black coloured sprues. There are 2 short pieces of wire which maybe NRN radio aerials and 2 othe other parts which I have no idea what they are.
All in all, it looks very good to me.



The first one I opened (the blue one) had a number of broken parts, nothing major, 2 of the bogie spring brake actuators, a guard iron and a vacuum pipe, all annoying but nothing that can't be fixed fairly easily. Part of the problem is that the models are getting well detailed, but that means fragile parts that need careful protection in the packaging. Thankfully the green one is fully intact.

Here ae the broken bits



Taking it apart was also easy, as usual there are 4 screws that need to be removed, these are accessible by moving the bogies to one side and all 4 came out easily, the body then lifts off easily and you should remove the fan connection from the PCB to fully separate them. So here's the chassis




Now you can see the cab detail



And here is where the brake actuator has broken off the corner of the bogie.


If you are installing sound the speaker is designed to fit like this in the roof of the loco



I'm going to put a big Zimo decoder in mine and hopefully a bigger speaker than that, the instructions do offer a wiring diagram, but I'm not sure it's that helpful. There are separate lights for the head light, the marker lights, tail lights and cab lights on this version





I'll post some comparison photos to the original Heljan and a DJH one later.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

Here are a few comparison shots of other models and the original Heljan 47



So from the left a DJH kit built 47, a new dutch liveried Heljan 47, then an original Heljan green 47 and then a new green Heljan 47, and finally a cut off cab of a JLTRT 47. To me there are some small differences, the front windows are not the same shape, the ventilator on the cab roof is wider on the DJH and JLTRT models, and is probably more correct looking at photos of real 47s but it is only about 1.5mm.
Here's a closer look at the JLTRT cab and the new Heljan 47



The front windows are different shape but I couldn't tell you which is "correct"



The windscreen is also flatter on the heljan locos than the JLTRT model.



But at the this distance the Heljan models look great if you ask me.






I'll be adding DCC sound to these, in fact the blue one is under way already, there is quite a bit of helpful information on the "otherside" but the key bit is identifying which lighting wire is which and thankfully someone else has already done it

• Cab lights: red = negative, blue = positive
• Red tail lights: green = negative, orange = positive
• Headcode lights: red = negative, black = positive

Once you know this wiring up the decoder is relatively easy, it is worth testing the lights with a 9 volt battery just to confirm things if you want to, and is quite safe to do so as the resistors are part of the lighting boards.


Richard

 

[Overseer]

I think the JLTRT 47 cab was pretty close to matching one of the prototype versions following the discussion on here at the time, it had quite a few revisions during development. To my eye the new Heljan is not great around the cab fronts. The new injection tooling joint lines in the cab roof are just sloppy. The mechanism looks interesting, I would be tempted to replace the two hair dryer motors with a good sized Pittman can, available for $60 US from PD Hobbies, but you shouldn’t need to in a model in this price range.

 

[djparkins]

For me it is far more about paying £590 odd pounds for a loco and opening it up and finding a broken buffer and brake linkage. Every time you unbox a Heljan loco something else seems to fall off! In my view they are far too heavy for a plastic bodied loco.
I thought about returning it but the replacement would probably be no better. I wonder in what other area of trade would such a thing be acceptable. I struggle to think of one.

 

[Jordan]

The mechanism looks interesting, I would be tempted to replace the two hair dryer motors with a good sized Pittman can, available for $60 US from PD Hobbies, but you shouldn’t need to in a model in this price range.

Must admit I thought "why not just a single big motor?" when I saw the photo of the chassis.
Not sure Pittman would be my choice, though, through experience....

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

Every time you unbox a Heljan loco something else seems to fall off! In my view they are far too heavy for a plastic bodied loco.

I suspect this would be down to the packaging probably being too tight and not a great deal of care taken in the factory when packing.

Must admit I thought "why not just a single big motor?" when I saw the photo of the chassis.

Does make you wonder given Roco achieved this years ago when they produced the O scale F7 and the drive used in the Red Caboose GP9.

 

[djparkins]

I suspect this would be down to the packaging probably being too tight and not a great deal of care taken in the factory when packing.

I was thinking more that plastic fittings on a loco of that weight is just asking for trouble.

 

[uk_pm]

I have now worked on two of these, and am not convinced that Heljan have got the shape wrong. Quite the reverse, I think they have captured the prototype well. As always, the model comes with the superb Heljan mechanism, and the chassis is now friendly for both DCC sound and smoke.

Here a few pictures of my pair of BR blue examples to stimulate debate.

 

[Overseer]

I have now worked on two of these, and am not convinced that Heljan have got the shape wrong. Quite the reverse, I think they have captured the prototype well. As always, the model comes with the superb Heljan mechanism, and the chassis is now friendly for both DCC sound and smoke.

Here a few pictures of my pair of BR blue examples to stimulate debate.

Thanks for posting the photos. They confirm that the cab front windows do not look like the prototype. The 'glass' is too square (as in taller in relation to the width than they should be) and the cab edge gutter is not curved enough in plan so the centre pillar is too far back.

I previously posted these crops of a couple of @oldravendale 's lovely photographs in the discussion about the JLTRT 47, see page 5 of the 'News from JLTRT' thread, where there are also some good head on views illustrating the shape of the windscreens and the front of the locos.

 

[oldravendale]

Brian

 

[mickoo]

The other part that almost all variants fail to capture 100% is the top of the nose, it should be more rounded and sloped, some are near flat, others are slightly sloped but the real think is quite bulbous.

This is Toton when we snuck around one Saturday, 81 maybe 82, you can see the sloped section at the base of the windscreen where the washer jets are, conversely directly behind is a class 56 (001 - 055) which shows the screen and roof profile are almost, if not, identical but the top of the nose is flatter.

It still has the same hump in the middle like the 46 but was not as rounded or as sloped. From 056 onward the node became a completely flat plate right across.

The current 47 seems to mimic the early class 56 nose top beautifully but it's not a 47 nose top, not to my eyes anyway, there are some models that replicate that feature to a greater extent but fall down in others.



Behind the 56 is a class 25 followed by a 45, another 56, a 20, another 25 and the side of a class 40.

 

[Focalplane]

Am I being thick or would 3D scanning have helped? I seem to remember someone at Birmingham's ThinkTank told me that 46235 City of Birmingham was scanned by Hornby when they produced an updated model a few years ago.

 

[class27]

I have often wondered if there was variation in the real thing. The fact that they were built in different places, by different people and there must have been multiple moulds which all would have been handmade and hand finished. Just a thought.

 

[mickoo]

Surprisingly given the huge numbers, the class 47 were only built by two manufacturer's, Brush at Loughborough (310) and BR Crewe works (202).

It's a valid point though, but there would technically only be two variants at best, may be very minor ones due to the hand built/formed nature of that area, but I suspect the jigs were pretty much uniform and I've not seen a variation in the class nor seen one written.

That doesn't mean there isn't, but there are folks (with serious anorak collections.....I put my hands up to owning one or two on GEVO's ) out there who scour engines for the smallest of details, so I'm sure it'd be well published if there were

 

[Allen M]

Sort of a bit of topic. I don't know anything about 47s except the following. back in 1981 I was working in an office between the Rotunda and New Street station, Birmingham. Drive to Stourbridge Junction and catch the 07.40 train to New street. One morning the train was in, a bit early, so jump straight on about half way along the 6 car set. Whistle went and we rocketed away but no engines running. The same at every station but cold in the train. A look at (correction not Snow hill) New Street showed we had a 47 towing the train.
Regards
Allen

 

[Renovater]

The other part that almost all variants fail to capture 100% is the top of the nose, it should be more rounded and sloped, some are near flat, others are slightly sloped but the real think is quite bulbous.

This is Toton when we snuck around one Saturday, 81 maybe 82, you can see the sloped section at the base of the windscreen where the washer jets are, conversely directly behind is a class 56 (001 - 055) which shows the screen and roof profile are almost, if not, identical but the top of the nose is flatter.

It still has the same hump in the middle like the 46 but was not as rounded or as sloped. From 056 onward the node became a completely flat plate right across.

The current 47 seems to mimic the early class 56 nose top beautifully but it's not a 47 nose top, not to my eyes anyway, there are some models that replicate that feature to a greater extent but fall down in others.

View attachment 152414

Behind the 56 is a class 25 followed by a 45, another 56, a 20, another 25 and the side of a class 40.

You're right, concerning the cab front, the looks just not there. If we could copy the image of the model onto an image of the real thing it would show up. There seems to be a problem as well with the corner of the cab roof above window level.