Showtime

The train show was a lot of fun. We had both T-TRAK and N-TRAK set up and running, but I only ran on the T-TRAK on Sunday. The Hudson got a workout pulling its train of green and cream cars and the painter got to see his handiwork in action. That is a good looking locomotive even if it never existed, it's one of those things that should have been but wasn't.

I also ran the J class locos, the 611 for some reason had its headlight on all the time and 601 kept shorting out. When I got them home I took the tender off of 611 and found the yellow decoder wire had a strand that was reaching over and touching the black, once it was trimmed away the headlight stayed off until it was commanded to come on. With 611 quickly fixed I moved on to 601, hoping to find something quick on it as well.

When I first acquired 601 the tender pickups were broken off so I just soldered the leads from the circuit board to the truck tabs. I thought maybe the wire from the tabs was touching the bottom of the circuit board. I took the tender shell off of 601 but really didn't see anything. I trimmed some of the solder joints, taped up the wires at the solder points, and moved the wires around a bit. Then I ran it without the tender shell (I did not know this, but the decoder has a blue light on it) and it ran fine. When the shell was put back on it still ran fine, so apparently whatever it was is fixed now. Hopefully it will stay fixed until the next show, but I think I will go ahead and order a new PC board for it.

I also ran some Nn3. Friday night I glued some Woodland Scenics ReadyGrass grass matting to a 2'x4' piece of extruded foam and when I got to the show I just set the MicroTrains track up on it with a few farm buildings scattered around. I ended up having to buy a new power connector track because mine had lost it's connectivity; fortunately there was one single vendor selling MicroTrains Z scale track. When the power connector track was replaced the trains ran most of the afternoon.

When I got home I worked a little on the K5A project. I had found a Rivarossi Heavy Pacific on the auction site, and I paid too much for it considering I was just going to take it apart and use the pieces. I figured I could just throw one of my spare light Pacific shells on the frame so it wouldn't go to waste. When I put it on the track I found the drivers did not all sit on the track, and when I put power to it there was a blue spark between the trailing truck and the frame. That's not good.

I pulled the shell from the frame and found extensive Zamecitis. It was so bad that the frame just fell apart when I got the shell off, basically the shell was the only thing holding it together. To add insult to injury when I started looking at it and the Kato frame I found it wasn't going to work very well anyway without extensive modification. So, I just put it on an Atlas frame that I had a light Pacific shell on, and I got my heavy Pacific anyway. Since all of the prototypes went to the Erie I'll probably end up decaling it for that road, but not for the loco I had planned to build because it has the wrong type of drivers. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I had previously bought a collection of Kato Mikado shells but I didn't think they were going to work. I took another look at them and realized they were going to be at least as good a candidate as the Rivarossi shell ever was, maybe better. So, I gathered the pieces together for a complete Mikado shell and glued them together.

Then I flipped it over and started cutting. I cut away the middle of the shell sides where they come together just in front of the smoke box, I widened the gap in the smoke box, and then I removed the back wall of the cab.

I then test fitted it to the Kato chassis, and much to my delight it went on pretty well. The Mikado weight even fits up into the boiler, so I will be able to use it as long as I put some insulation in between it and the chassis frame.

The firebox sheets will take some trimming and the cylinders will have to be reshaped, but it looks pretty good!

Unfortunately I'm going to lose the tender pickups. The K5A had a long haul six axle tender, which the Rivarossi came with, but it doesn't have all-wheel pickups.

If I do end up changing the Bachmann J class tender PC board I might just go ahead and order the entire frame, that way I can use the trucks off of the old tender for this project and keep the all-wheel pickups. I will have to do something else with the drawbar, but I was going to have to change out the trailing truck anyway.

The running boards and piping details will also have to be changed, but it's a good start. Maybe I'll be able to get this project done in time to show Grammy when we go up there for Thanksgiving.