Thanks for the tips on the smoke oil....
A VERY nice running day was had yesterday (Sunday) at a local GSS members' line, and generally the BR24 performed well - the sound was good, the volume pot worked nicely, and it looked very good with a rake of four of the (very heavy!) Piko 6-wheel Rekowagen green coaches. There were two problems encountered - one was a tendency to snag up on LGB R5 pointwork, of which there was quite a lot on the layout. Interestingly, after a couple of rather hesitant laps because of this, the problem appeared to go away! One person suggested that maybe one of the skates had been a bit sticky from new, and that it had just freed itself off after a while so that it was no longer catching on the R5 frogs or check rails.
The other thing we found was rather a lack of traction on gradients - the line had a couple of sections of about (according to the owner) 1 in 30 or so, and the four heavy coaches caused gradual slowing with lots of wheelspin, culminating in a standstill! I took one coach off, and the loco then made excellent headway with the remaining three - I guess the full rake was just too heavy for it, understandable as those coaches probably tip the scales at a good bit over 2kg each. Of course, the loco has no traction tyres on its six big drivers.... I think one would have helped a lot!
With the slightly reduced load and the skate freed up (if that was indeed the problem) the BR24 stormed round the circuit looking and sounding pretty good!
Jon.
