Conversion of Tri-ang/Hornby locos to Dublo 3-Rail

Many thanks Barry, it's much appreciated!

Here are my attempts:
- An old Jinty with à missing funnel I picked up cheap in a joblot here in France. I had a spare pannier body, so that went on. It has the early solid sintered wheels which function very well on 3-rail and has quite good traction (the panniers are packed with lead fishing weights!), but is very hesitant over points. The position of the (short) Marklin skate is not ideal, but I couldn't figure out another way of avoiding the cog on the centre axle. The 2 rail pick ups are retained and earthed to the chassis


This Lima 94XX pannier came in the same cheap lot off the french website "LeBonCoin". Again she has a Marklin skate fitted and pick up from both rails is sent to the same motor terminal. She goes OK over points, but the plated wheels mean she can't pull the skin off a rice pudding unfortunately, and there's no space to fit extra weight.


I've still got a fair number of Marklin skates in my spares box, and probably plenty of suitable candidates in my 2-rail reserve, which is patiently awaiting the new layout that retirement should bring in a couple of years time. So any suggestions for likely Triang/Triang-Hornby candidates would be welcome!!

 

Here’s a question which I’ve been pondering for a while. Given how freely available Marklin is here, I’m wondering if they will run on 12V DC. I know they are intended for 16V AC, but as I haven’t a clue how an AC motor works I hope you’ll excuse what might be a stupid question

If they are that would mean plenty of potential chassis suitable for projects

 

I think I just found the reply to my question on RMweb, so here’s the link in case anyone else is interested:
https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/99676-running-marklin-on-12v-dc/
Hmm, I’ve always fancied one of those big German BR52 2-10-0’s, or the streamlined pacifics, but I fear they wouldn’t appreciate Dublo standard 15" Radius curves and points! So maybe I’ll start with one of those little German 0-6-0T’s

 

I’ve had this 2-rail "Gronk" sitting a round for a while now.

I’d been wanting to do this since I picked up this one here in France last year, but I didn’t want to do anything permanent and didn’t want to mess up a perfectly good 2-rail model.
The original plan was to use the 3-rail pickup unit from a dead 0-6-2T I had lying around, but everything I read about such conversions warned of poor running due to the fact that the insulated wheels would only return on one side. Solutions such as using conductive paint have been used by others with mixed results.
I figured that ideally the 2-rail pick up would need to be retained. But how ?

This is the solution, the wire from this Marklin slider shoe is simply passed up through the hole in the chassis. The two rail pickup wire is cut, lengthened and soldered to the brush holder. The wire from the motor is soldered to the wire from the skate. Then some insulating tape is cut and stuck onto the pick up plate and the Marklin skate is positioned and superglued in place on the tape.

The result us an easy to reverse conversion and a very smooth running loco. It only took about 30 minutes to do. Writing up, posting and editing this has taken longer than the conversion!
"Coughs and sneezles, spread diseasels" as a certain GWR tank engine once said.

 

All very interesting. I've been meaning to tackle a three rail conversion on a "Hornby" 0-4-0ST for some time now, but never seem to get around to it.....