Lady Anne uneven running and noisy motion

[martin.retired]

Can anyone help with this?

I have a 9 year old Lady Anne which has been only run a few times a year. Yesterday we had some good weather so I ran her a few times on my garden railway. At first she ran really well - easily pulling a load of 9 Bachmann Big Hauler wagons. On the third run she seemed to lose some power, ran unevenly and made what I can only describe as a loud 'clattering' noise.
I lubricate regularly and nothing seems to be loose. Any ideas?

[Sir haydn]

The return cranks may have slipped causing the valve gears timing to run out.

Other than this, a crankpin may have worked loose, one of the cranks on the end of the alxe may be loose. another place to look is if it is going into full forward and reverse gears as the reverser lever linkage may have slipped.

[MDLR]

He's located in Horley, Surrey!

[martin.retired]

Greetings from sunny Horley, Surrey.

Interesting comments about R/C and batteries. I've just replaced the 4 recently installed rechargeables with with good old Duracell AAs which have served me well for years. The radius bar is travelling further across the expansion link now, so off to give it a try.

I suspect my rechargeables have been dropping off. At nominal 1.2v each as opposed to 1.5v for non-rechargeables, I suppose this kind of thing was always a risk. I'm a retired electronics engineer (who doesn't even possess a voltmeter) so why didn't I think of this?

Anyone else had problems with rechargeables?