Pickup Lines

 Several years ago I obtained a layout complete with trains from a gentleman that was moving out of his house into a retirement community and had to downsize. His focus was more artistic than model railroads, the train served as a component in one of his displays, so he wasn't going to miss it much.

I ended up taking the whole thing apart and using the pieces elsewhere. All told there was a full collection of DPM buildings, quite a few houses of various makes and sizes, a couple of built-up structures and all sorts of little N scale people. And the trains, let us not forget the trains.

The trains consisted of an oval of Bachmann EZ Track and a couple of turnouts and sidings, a Bachmann 0-6-0 in Southern livery, and a handful of  Bachmann freight cars with a Santa Fe caboose, new enough that they were equipped with fake knuckle couplers rather than Rapidos. The loco was one of the newer split-frame designs that actually run pretty well for a train set Bachmann.

The major problem these new run 0-6-0's have is pickups. As in, there aren't nearly enough of them, and the ones that are there aren't the best in the world. Only the front truck has pickups, and they consist of brass wipers that ride inside of the wheels. A better method of pickups is brass plates on the side frames of the trucks that the axle points ride in. All of the newer Bachmann steam locos have pickups of this type...except the 0-6-0 (and the non-J class 4-8-4, that has absolutely no tender pickups at all).

Once upon a time Bachmann carried a line of tenders that had all wheel pickups of the axle point kind in several different shapes and sizes. I managed to snag a slope-back tender for my Pennsy 0-6-0 and the difference is amazing. I picked up a few of these for other locos as well, but unfortunately Bachmann has long since dropped these tenders from their lineup. They do list the axle-point trucks as separate line items, but at this time they are all sold out However, they still have the 0-6-0 trucks with pickups as separate items. Not as good, but adequate.

The Southern 0-6-0 has a short square tender instead of the slope-back tender that came on my Pennsy switcher. I have been told this is more prototypical, but East Broad Top #3, a standard gauge 0-6-0, had the slope back tender so I guess it's a matter of what the road preferred when they ordered the locos. I decided to make this one a Prairie, so I got the leading and trailing trucks for it. While I was at it, I got a set of the not-as-good pickup trucks for it.

The front truck was fine as it was, so I drilled some holes in the bottom of the tender floor, one on either side of the bolster, and soldered wires onto the drawbar. I then drilled another set of holes on either side of the rear truck bolster and soldered the wires onto the pickup tabs of a new truck. It bolts right in, so no modifications were needed, and now the Southern switcher is now a Prairie with full tender pickups.

It runs much better than before as well, so we'll call this one a win.