Here Comes Another One

I acquired another Minitrix K4, this one in Santa Fe livery instead of PRR.

The only difference between this one and the two previous ones is this one only has a single wire connection to the locomotive (even though the second wire's hole is present on the back of the locomotive cab) with the front truck conduction being handled by way of a stiff wire to the locomotives trailing truck. Either way it suffers from the same pickup woes as its sisters, and when I attempted to remove the tender shell I found it had been glued to the tender frame.

Fortunately for me these locomotives have long been kitbashing fodder, so there are more than a few orphaned tenders out there, and without a great deal of effort I managed to get one. I shaved off the extra detail on the pilot as I had done with my previous locomotive and installed the replacement tender, which was painted in the Pennsylvania Railroad livery, and with a quick bit of IPA the lettering came off the cab, so I now have three PRR K4 locomotives.

I think I will spend some time on this one to see how good I can make it look.

DCC'ing

I have four Digitrax decoders.

I put one into a Minitrix K4. It doesn't work. I open it up and find the black wire has somehow gotten cut and is touching the gray wire. D'oh!!!

I have three Digitrax decoders.

I install one in a Minitrix K4. It doesn't work. I open it up and can find nothing wrong. I remove it and the locomotive still doesn't work. I clean the motor brushes and now it works. I give up on this Minitrix K4.

I may have three Digitrax decoders.

I install the suspect one into a Bachmann Spectrum N&W J class. It works. I am happy.

I have two Digitrax decoders and a locomotive with DCC.

I install one into a different Minitrix K4. It works. I am happy. I also now have four Pennsylvania Railroad locomotives with DCC; two Bachmann GP7's with factory decoders, one Model Power Mikado that I got the bugs worked out of last weekend, and the K4.

I have one Digitrax decoder...

Sigh

I tried to put a decoder in a K4 last night.

I failed miserably.

One of these days I'll be able to do this without all this bother...I hope.

Pilot Program

One of the biggest visual eyesores of the Minitrix K4, in my opinion, is the pilot.

I like the looks of the pre-war pilot, that's not it. It's just the way that it is attached to the front of the locomotive shell instead of being free floating. To attach it there is a fair amount of structure that was not present on the prototype.

I took a look at it to see what I could do about it, and I came up with two different ways to reduce this visual aberration. The first way is to detach the pilot from the shell and attach it to the frame, unfortunately this is not easy to do. The second way is to carve away as much of the offending structure as possible while still leaving the pilot attached to the shell.

The pilot that was left attached got all of the plastic between the steps trimmed out, as well as all of the structure around the sides. A piece of plastic was then added to the bottom of the smokebox to prevent light from the headlight leaking out and illuminating the pilot truck. I need to paint the frame that is now exposed but I think it looks a lot better.

The second method was to cut the pilot from the shell and then attach it to the frame. To do this I sanded off all of the top step and then put new top steps on, attaching the backs of the steps to the frame. It's not the best looking way to do it, the pilot is farther forward than the other locomotive, but it does look better than the way it came from the factory.

The biggest problem with the second method is now I can't swap another shell onto the chassis unless I detach the pilot again. Another problem is the cylinders are not the right size or style because the chassis is of European design and was used for the K4 because it was close enough.

I wish I was good at 3D design, I'd come up with a better solution and make it in Shapeways. Both ways look better than the original at any rate. It should do until I can afford the Bachmann locomotives I guess.

I've Been Working

The other day Mrs Hades asked me to clear off some bookshelves that I had under the train table so that she could use them.

This led to a multi-hour cleaning and repacking session which culminated in my taking apart the pedestal for the long-gone 4x8 layout.

At which point Mrs Hades asked if I could build a work table out of the old pedestal, and when I said I could she insisted I do so.

This gave me a place to put all the clutter that was on the layout itself, so for the first time in a pretty long time there is nothing on the layout table that will not eventually find a permanent home there.

Just in time, too, because the second of my Pennsylvania Minitrix K4 locomotives arrived the other day, along with a new set of Bachmann tender trucks to put on it.

So now I have a semi-matched pair of Minitrix K4 locomotives. The new one doesn't run as smoothly as the old one so I may end up putting the motor kit that I have on order into it instead of the one I ordered it for.

Today I cleaned and lubricated the trucks on the SD7 and got it to run like it should and repainted the tender and streamlining boards on the newest Model Power Pacific. I think I'm going to paint those side boards red to match the Bachmann J class, I think it would be a good look for that locomotive.

A pretty good week for playing with trains.

K4

The Bachmann trucks for the Minitrix K4 have been received and installed.

The slow speed performance is vastly improved, before the locomotive would stall repeatedly unless running at ludicrous speed and even then the headlight would flash like it was sending a message in Morse code. Now as you can see it runs smoothly (albeit noisily) at slow speeds, and I have clocked it at a scale 4mph.

I have a remotor kit on the way, hopefully it will improve the low speed running even further and reduce the noise as well. The remotor kit consists of a RE13 maxon motor (a 7 pole precicion coreless motor with precious metal brushes and commutator and Neodymium rare earth magnets) and a custom built compound gear to replace the single red gear, which should give me smoother operation and better gearing.

The GP7's got a new set of duds as well, they are now sporting Pennsy shells. That means I have a nicely detailed pair of Northern Alberta Railroad shells looking for a new purpose in life.

Additionally I have purchased some Kato Unitrack and some Rokuhan Z scale which will be used to create some T-Trak modules with an elevated Nn3 line. As far as I know this has not yet been done, so it should be a first. It is surprising to me that no one has done it yet, but it should be interesting.

Happy Railroading!