| Have a “What-I-Did” to alleviate the stalling with the New Tooling Oldtime Bachmann 4-4-0: http://www.chainsawjunction.com/1879/nt_440/wipers/  Thank you if you visit Harold |
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Nice clean solder job. Good work!
I don’t see what the problem was with the factory setup. I haven’t seen one in person - just looking at your photos.
The factory setup doesn’t work. If there wasn’t a problem I wouldn’t have done anything. If you owned one you would know that the locomotive has poor tender pickup.
Harold
All Righty Then…
I do understand the Hot Pepper avatar now.
The 0-6-0 has the same problem. This seems like a good solution. Now I need to find some time…
Harold:
Great tutorial! Very clean work.
I have used both .010" phosphor bronze wire and the Kadee springs. Mounting the Kadees is definitely easier than the wire.
Old Thumper:
One advantage to Harold’s method is that the tender is now picking power up from all wheels. The factory supplied wipers are only getting power from one side of the truck so the tender actually has four dead wheels.
Dave
Yes - having all 4 wheels on each side making contact would be an obvious advantage, but the photo shows just 1 truck is wired (although the retrofit setup looks like it was intended to wire both). That’s why I was curious as to why the retrofit setup would work better, since both OEM and retrofit have 2 wheels contacting the track. The only difference being that the retrofit contacts both sides of the track with 1 truck, but the OEM setup has each truck contacting a single side. I’m wondering if the downward pressure of the OEM contact springs is preventing the axles from floating within the truck bearings. Maybe adding some clearance to the truck pivots so that the entire truck can float a bit more would improve the function of the OEM setup. Or adding some weight to the tender, (though I know space is very tight) would help to keep the wheels planted on the rails.
You obviously do both trucks!
That was a picture from the article about testing the intial truck.
There is no reason to mess with half-baked attempts at improving the OEM setup.
It is best to do a clean install.
Harold
So is the New Bachmann 4-4-0 a good peformer or not?
i was thinking about getting one in the Santa Fe colors and 3 Con Cor 1880’s (1 Baggage-Mail, & 2 Coaches) painted pullman green to go with it, but after reading this, I’m not so sure.
Any thoughts ?
Other than the tender pickup problem the locomotive is really great.
Once that is addressed the locomotive looks, performs great and the sound package is really good.
Really nice to have a good running 1870’s locomotive.
Harold