Sometimes the plastic gears in early Heljan locos split. This is due to the gear being too tight a fit onto the axle which results in a failure. A split gear can usually be heard as a regular tick as the loco moves. This happens when the split is small - when it gets bigger the gear can jam and the loco stops moving.

Jim Snowdon had a number of brass gears made but these have all been sold as far as we know and no new ones have been ordered.

Replacement plastic gears sets are available from Heljan and their supplier Gaugemaster. We believe that the gear issue occurred mostly in the older models and that newer models do not suffer the same problem.