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.