Truckin'

I have to work tonight so I had to stay up all night last night. So to keep myself amused I played with my trains.

Yesterday a package arrived in the mail from Bachmann containing the replacement pieces to N&W J class 601's tender. I only got one truck although I had ordered two, so I ended up cleaning the solder off of the old trucks and reused them. I've sent an email to check on the last tender truck, but if it doesn't show it's no big deal now. Anyway, with the new tender frame and PCB board the locomotive runs like a champ and does not exhibit any of the shorting problems that were coming up on the old tender, and the sound is still just as good as it was before.

Something else that came in the order was a pair of K4 tender trucks, which is a different design than the Bettendorf type trucks on the rest of their tenders. I usually get the replacement tender trucks for their 2-8-0 when I want to put tender pickups on anything, and that's what I had on the Minitrix. However, with the correct trucks available it seemed a shame not to put them on. I had to trim the tender ladders a bit to clear the truck swing since they are a bit longer than the Bettendorfs, but they went on beautifully and look great. That loco also made a few test laps around the layout (the first time in a while that it has been out since being relegated to backup power for the Bachmann K4) and still runs good.

Now since I had an extra set of Bettendorfs with four wheel pick up, I decided to put them on that formerly great running now poorly running Model Power Pacific in the N&W livery. I drilled out the tender truck bolsters for the bigger screws and cut some holes for the pickups, then wired them in. I also cut out the problematic center wheel pickup on the locomotive that was regularly coming out of place and touching the track, shorting out at the switch frogs. I then carefully adjusted the driver quartering and ran it around the layout with a string of streamlined cars. I am happy to say that locomotive now runs as good as it used to. The only problem with it now is there is no headlight, a victim of the multiple disassemblies (it came out of place and got crushed). I think I have one from another junk Model Power, but I'm not really worried enough about it to risk taking the damned thing apart again.

Last but not least I put a decoder in the second of my Kato Mikados. The first one has a GHQ L1 kit on it with a Bachmann tender, I picked the chassis up during a sale that Kato was having and it never did have the correct tender. The second one I picked up on the auction site, it hasn't ever run as good as the first one. I later found out it has the typical first-run problems with the pickup on the loco itself, and the multimeter shows that the tender pickup isn't all that great either. It's a shame because when this locomotive is on straight tracks with no turnouts to deal with it runs just as beautifully as it is advertised to do, but as soon as the first turnout comes up it stalls unless it's at light speed. I'll probably end up having to hard-wire the tender trucks together to get the pickup to be reliable.

During the decoder installation I also managed to break the drawbar in half (for the second time), so I had to splice it back together again. This time I added some styrene on the sides and bottom in an attempt to strengthen it. During the repairs I managed to cut the tab off that connects to the trailing truck as well, so the connection to the loco is now strictly via the split ring to the trailing truck mounting post. It's difficult to remove so hopefully it will stay put; if not I'll have to figure out a way to either add another mounting post for the trailing truck or close the split to keep it in place. Since these items are made of unobtanium it will have to do, one way or another.

Everything has been put away from the train show as well, and all my prizes have been sorted and examined. I bought three wooden kits for structures as well as a couple of N and Z scale cars; no locomotives this time although there were a pair of Erie FA and FB units that was tempting. I also got some light posts that I was hoping to use on the police station but it looks like they are going to be oversized.

This is a work weekend so that's all I will be able to do with trains for a while. It's a heck of a way to have to make a living, but I've got to support my train habit somehow.