No News

 It isn't that I'm doing nothing.

It's that what I'm doing is nothing to write about.

Hopefully that changes soon.

The Brute Gets Her Voice Back

 This time the ESU sound decoder installation went perfectly. Instead of sending the old one back in right away, John opted to buy a brand new one and have the sound profile loaded into it. I bought a new speaker just to be on the safe side, and when the decoder went in it worked perfectly and sounded great.

Reducing the flanges did make for some problems on my tight radius layout while trying to program it, though. When the loco goes into a curve it tends to derail the idler (un-powered inner) wheel set on the rear truck, and in a left hand curve the wheel touches the truck frame and shorts out. The wheels derail in a right hand curve, too, but they don't short out. This was not a problem with the plastic wheels, of course.

I didn't notice this problem on the large radius NTRAK layout at NRV, but when I tried to run it on Kato Unitrack 348 radius curves when programming the speed it jumped and shorted at speeds greater than about 45 smph. That means it will probably do the same on the 315mm radius T-TRAK curves. I really hope we won't have to reinstall the plastic wheels because the metal ones just look so much better. I may end up having to reduce the truck frames on that side of the loco to prevent the problem, or maybe I can cut a disk of very thin styrene to put on the insides of the wheels.

But that is an issue for another day.

The Brute Gets It's Voice Ba...oops...

I took possession of the Brute last weekend to re-install it's sound decoder.

But first, I installed the newly turned-down wheelsets and ran it around the NTRAK layout at the NRV show that I was telling you about in my last post. It ran pretty good, but in one corner it was hanging up at the junction between modules. The corner module was off level by just enough to cause a hump between it and the next module, and the Brute being as long as it is would high-center on that hump.

After the show ended on Saturday one of the other club members and I leveled that corner out, and Sunday she ran all day at the head of a string of Tropicana reefer cars. Not quite 560 of them, though, so she didn't even break a sweat.

After the show she came home with me, and Monday morning she went on the bench. Everything went swimmingly until I put it on the track to test it out. It sounded horrible! The volume was way too low and when I turned the volume up to full everything was garbled. When I pulled up on the speaker to check the connections, one of them shorted against the frame, and now the decoder is dead again.

I am tempted to say this was the problem all along, especially since I have looked everything over and I can't see any way that suspect weight could have moved forward enough to touch the motor leads. I am reliably informed that this happened in Altoona though, so I guess that was a problem. The center weight over the motor had been removed when the Digitrax decoder was installed, so that may have allowed just enough movement to let it happen.

At any rate, the DZ126 is back in place, the motor leads have been insulated with some shrink tubing, the weight over the motor has been reinstalled, and the Brute is back to silent running. I have so informed Mr. President, and instead of sending the re-fried decoder back to ESU he is just going to procure a new one, along with a new speaker.

I did manage to get the rear handrail stanchions replaced, though. When I put them on originally I had installed them with super glue, and when I got the loco on Saturday I found that three of the four of them were missing. So, when I was done with the decoders, I cut three replacement stanchions off of the Gold Medal Models fret and installed them. 

I soldered them in this time, including the one that had managed to stay on. It's the first time I have ever soldered brass locomotive parts together, and it came out looking pretty good. I'm pretty sure they are on there to stay now. I'll try my hand at soldering brass Nn3 cabs next.

At least that went right.

Motive Po...oh...never mind.

 I bought a couple of the brand-new Atlas Classic Silver Series SD9 locos, undecorated, in the hopes that I could put my Life Like Burlington SD7/9 shells on them. I got the silver series because I really didn't want sound, but this newest release comes with speakers already installed just in case you change your mind.

The good news is I was able to mill the inside of the Life Like shells to fit the chassis. The bad news is the chassis are back in their boxes ready to go back to Atlas.

So what was wrong with them, you might ask? Did they run poorly? No, not at all, they were smooth and quiet and the performance was superb. I was a bit surprised to see the trucks are wired rather than having the normal brass contact strips, but it seems to work well.

The problem is in the decoder boards.

For some reason Atlas has decided that the new SD7/9 should use the E24 connector. This is a brand new proprietary connector from ESU, meaning that only ESU is using it, and as far as I can determine it is only being used on one, and only one, of their decoders, the LokSound 58925.

I have no particular problems with ESU LokSound decoders, other than having to have special equipment to program them with their sound "projects" because they do not come pre-loaded (most dealers can do this for you), but I specifically bought the silver series because I didn't want sound. Unfortunately, with this locomotive, your choices are either DCC with sound using this particular ESU decoder or DC.

Swapping the entire interconnection board isn't an option either, partially because of the aforementioned hard-wired trucks and partially because the board is held to the chassis with screws. This means you either have to remove the light board altogether and replace it with a mash-up of a wired decoder and lights, or you go with the LokSound decoder. 

Either way there is no benefits from using the new chassis when there are still plenty of the older ones out there that will serve the purpose. I was able to mill the LifeLike shells enough to fit, but not well, on older Atlas/Kato SD7's, but it is my understanding that the China made chassis are a bit narrower, which is why I wanted to go that route. 

I'm sure that someone out there is buying the Gold chassis to fit older shells, so perhaps I can find some China made non-sound DCC ready chassis to use instead. But I digress.

To say I am disappointed with the new Atlas SD7/9 is a gross understatement. I don't know who the genius was at Atlas that thought it was a good idea to limit the decoder selection like this, but that decision puts them on par with the Bachmann GP7s and their crappy crippled Lenz decoders at twice the price.

If this is their new design paradigm, I certainly won't be buying any more new locomotives from Atlas.

Cotton Brute: The Saga Continues

 While in Altoona the Brute once again started acting up. The problem was traced to the weight just behind the motor, it was shifting forward just enough to short out against the motor contacts. This is no doubt what let the magic smoke out of the ESU sound decoder, but the Digitrax decoder was robust enough that when the source of the short was removed it came back to life.

The offending weight has been Kapton taped and the motor leads have been filed/bent to prevent further contact. When the ESU decoder comes back from being repaired it will be reinstalled, and I don't expect to have any more issues out of it.

The next request was to have the wheel flanges turned down to allow the loco to run on Atlas code 55 track. The idea is to enable it to run on Free-moN modules. To that end a set of wheels was removed from one of the four donor locomotives that the PVRR shops has on hand, and the flanges were turned down by chucking them in a hand drill and applying a file to them until they were reduced to .022". The Atlas code 55 track needs .035" clearance, so this will work just fine.

As an added bonus the loco should be able to run on hand-laid code 40 track as well. That is important because the planned Path Valley rebuild will include dual gauge code 40 turnouts and track. But I digress.

While turning the wheels down I had particular issues with the horrible looking plastic wheels. They would just spin off the axles when they were chucked up in the drill wheel lathe. By fortuitous circumstance, one of the insulated metal wheels also came off when being turned down, and I noticed that the axles were the same size. The axles looked bigger on the metal wheelsets because there is a sleeve over them. I slid the insulated metal wheel on the idler axle in place of the plastic wheel and it fit as if it were made to go there.

Back to the salvage track I went for another set of wheels. The four insulated metal wheels were turned down and fitted to the idler axles. I temporarily installed all of the wheelsets in one of the donor locomotives and ran it across the PVRR system to check for shorts or other issues, and absolutely no problems were found. So, now I have a full set of six metal wheels per truck, with flanges adequate for Atlas code 55 track, tested and ready to install on the Cotton Brute.

The Brute is scheduled to come into the PVRR maintenance shop on the 3rd of November, and then she will be the star of the show on the North Raleigh Model Railroad Club layouts at the annual November Neuse River Valley Model Railroad Show in the Jim Graham Building, North Carolina Fairgrounds, Raleigh NC, on the 4th and 5th of November.

If you are in the area, please do stop by and see us.

Cotton Brute, part ???

Once again the Brute is on my work bench. She will get a Digtrax DZ126 decoder for now until another is selected for her. She will be able to make her next appointments at Altoona and Danville, and then we can worry about it.

But before the decoder gets installed I have to check the stall current on the Sagami can motor that is as old as the locomotive is and fix the lights.

I have two days.

Looks like I'd better get to work.

Dissapointments

 I just got an email from John Wallis, president of NRail, on location at Grapevine TX for the 50th Anniversary of N-TRAK.

Cotton Brute, which was restored specifically for this event, has suffered a burned-out decoder. Kenny from Yankee Dabbler installed a second decoder, which operated fine on the test track. However, when the loco was put on the track it, too, failed.

So, the star of the show has been sidelined.

When it returns from Texas I will once again diagnose and repair it and get it back into shape for Altoona and for it's return to Danville in September.