I did my usual tramping to my regular LHs and he had some new old stuff on the bargains. Some old MArklin and old TT gauge stuff. Then another look around there were 3 low boxes of old HO, I looked at it and a lot of it was Varney and this and that of old HO, showing the old metal aging on the wheels but looks restorable. Amongst the goodies, a few tank cars, reefers, cabeese, the a Varney SW switcher, an F7a Varney powered and B unit dummy, some old shorty Streamlined passenger cars (Varney again) and the prize, an old Penn Line K4 4-6-2. He said he would let all 3 boxes go for 25 bucks. All the couplers had the ole precision scale style working knuckle coupler of all things. I looked this idea over and said…huh… I am planning coal trains of hopper cars and they may never be switched around, they would be a unit train, wellll then maybe I could pop these knuckle couplers off and put them on my hoppers, then get kadees on these cars. Sounds workable actually. Bought the bunch. Most of the cars are in fine condition needing TLC cleanup and maybe paint touchuping, and the trucks are the ole goodies, all sprung metal. I laid out all the cars on my layout, then decided to give the engines a workover. Thw SW 7 has one truck powered, dropped it on the track and it the motor ran and it tried to run but it had a hard time moving. Looking at the wheels, one axle had a very hard time turning on the trailer truck. I found that it was maybe just a tad undergauge, so got a teeny screwdriver and nudged the wheel wider, it was pressing against the truck body foulinig up turning. It runs like zip now all lubed up. The trailer truck has everything the power truck minus the worm gears. Varney offered a power truck kit for this engine but hes outa business. However, NWSL gears to the rescue I think I can change out the gears and put NWSL in adding to the trailer truck also, should run sweet after that. All metal body, big puller. F7A has both trucks powered but missing rubber belt drive from motor. I passed wo
Sounds awesome. I’d love to see them when clean. And jusr cause you run NYC doesn’t mean PRR can’t sneak in, the parrallelled themselves alot, or maybe NYC is testing the competition…
Sounds like quite a find to me. Picked up a box of stuff at my LHS a few years back, some useful stuff, but no great deals. I usually just pick up a thing or two from his used stuff collection. Not sure I’d be comfortable taking something like that apart, but what would I have to loose?
Congratulations.
Have fun,
just got it re-assembled, it had no tender connector, I had some extra connections laying around excactly for this issue, some extra Bowser screws handy, hooked engine tender together, already lubed out.
This engine won’t quit now. No it doesn’t need the weights sitting on the right, its plenty heavy.
Previous owner put an NYC emblem on the smokebox, dunno if NYC ran these.
Dead engine yesterday, shining perfection today…
K4’s are all PRR, all the way. Piffle on putting a NYC emblem on one.
Those Varney SW’s pull PLENTY even with just the one truck powered, the heavy body helps. I wonder how many of those kits they actually sold with the gears and shaft to power the second truck. The one I had would pull more cars than it ever needed too, and ran nice and slow, although with a bit of a growl.
Believe it or not, one of the locos I had that could move so many cars that they almost touched around the old 4x8 loop we used to set up was a Gilbert HO 4 wheel industrial switcher. Tiny loco, but it was a solid diecast body so it put a lot of weight on those 4 wheels. Silly train things I used to do when I was a kid. It would slip, but it would get the whole thing moving, about a carlength from running in to its own caboose. I think the only other loco I had that would move it was a Tyco Bicentennial Alco, and that wa because it had traction tires.
–Randy
I’m glad yours worked out! I’m still fighting with mine.
I was poking around yesterday and found a DCC-Ready Spectrum 2-8-0 Consolidation marked down to $39.99 (box’s MSRP was $139.95, but Bachmann hasn’t made the non-dcc equipped ones in a while, so I’m not sure what the MSRP would be today).
I asked the owner what was wrong with it, and he said it was shelfworn (the owner is a good guy, so I’m sure he wasn’t trying to rip me off). Unfortunately, it doesn’t run. On DC power, nothing happens. If I switch to DCC, it buzzes, but won’t move, even with a decoder installed).
Hmmmm. Still trying to figure out what the issue is. No broken wires that I can see.
The Varney F3 turned into a bigger problem child than expected. First the motor is solid mounted to the body, but it has a belt drive, this puts forces on the truck forcing it upward angling it. Cant do that number 1.
2nd it has this large flywheel. The motor freespins on it someohow. I figured out this is a flywheel coasting drive. At first I couldn’t remove it but taking it all apart I put it in a vise, small tool on the shaft and lightly pounded the flywheel off. With pliers I could grip the pulley and turn the flywheel, so I did looking at the flywheel it looked like it had a separation like it could separate, I turned and turned and it came apart.
Inside was a curious device. A circular deep double flange and in the middle was 2 rubberized tabs that looped around inside the flange. They were connected on one end with a small wire then the rest could pivot out curving around the flange. Centrifugal force when the motor ran forced these out and contacted the inside of the flywheel cavity, thus making it turn then driving the loco. These rubber thingies were ineffective, prolly due to age.
It goes to the curiousity box. Then I scrambled around all my gears and found some. I removed the motor mount and found the motor could attach directly to the truck just like their other drives. The SW is this way. Apparently the Flywheel Coasting drive is a mod from their normal stuff. Tinkering I found 2 gears that meshed together and put them on the motor and the drive shafts. (Removed the pulley stuff).
Trials and errors and a washer added to the rear of the motor to tilt it down to mesh better, it ran. Added a wire from the non-motor truck to the frame secured power contact and it runs perfect now.
dropped the dummy B unit behind it. All metal again plenty of power.
Now all 3 dead engines work. Its getting couplers fixed and taking care of the cars which isnt a biggee, and some paint som
DCC ready engines have a small circuit board to power and work the engine, the DCC plug should have a jumper plug, this is removed to plug in the decoder. Could be problems with the circuitry, but you will have to open it and check it over and see what really gives.If it is already DCC it may need a new decoder.
BLI and their DCC ready sound engines ironically have the sound chip then you have the DCC plug, and the DCC sound is DCC able so you can check it on DCC, the engine wont run.