Gidday Mark, Pleased to see you’ve got that loco running to your satisfaction and that the hobby is working for you. [tup] [:)]
Keep Having Fun.
Cheers, the Bear.
I think I had one of those years ago. Despite the name, they weren’t very life-like and were only meant for the off the shelf train set market. My advice like so many others is to put it back on the shelf and look at Atlas, Bachmann or a some of the other manufacturers that have been suggested. When you are ready, also buy the product called Bullfrog Snot - it’s amazing stuff and will increase the pulling ability of any loco. Here is their link. http://bullfrogsnot.com/index.asp#
Great that you got it working, Even though it will be replaced w/ a better quality unit they are always good to let the “lil” ones play with. My kids had a ball running Tyco and Bachman “trainset” engines before graduating to Athearn BB. A little weight added to these will help w/ pulling power. Should be plenty of room under that shell, some lead tire weights or even a couple large nut/ bolts hot glued help.
Always good to have a couple open hoppers and gons for the young ones to fill up w/ all their “stuff”. Once my son loaded baby carrots in a hopper as it ran around on the floor. The family pet Guienea pig would chase the train and pick off carrots- what a riot!
I’m glad you have the loco up and running, although, like the other posters here, I’d recommend buying some better stuff if you’re about to make a serious attempt at the hobby.
A couple of your other notes have escaped comment thus far, so I’ll take a shot at it.
First of all, you mentioned “corroded silver rails”. Do you know whether these are steel or nickel-silver? If they’re steel, they’re junk. Recycle them and invest in some nickel-silver. These don’t conduct as well as brass, but the oxidation (black gunk) still conducts electricity. Since you had to clean them up with 220 grit sandpaper, I’m guessing they are steel rails. BTW, you shouldn’t clean track with sandpaper, unless you’re using a really fine grade (like 600 grit or finer), because the scratches left by the sandpaper will fill up with all kinds of gunk. I use a rag dipped in denatured alcohol to do most of my cleaning, and use a Bright Boy (basically, an old fashioned ink eraser) to remove things like paint and glue.
Secondly: grades. A 3% grade is ridiculously hard for a real train, and tough enough on a model. Try to keep yours under that; although as a previous poster pointed out, grades require lots of real-estate to keep them manageable, and you may not have that much space available. Don’t even think of trying 6%. It will cause all kinds of headaches (stalling trains, uncoupled cars, derailments) unless you carefully manage an easement at each end, which is not something a beginner should undertake lightly.
Hello, You can order traction tires on E-Bay, look for : HO DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE TRACTION TIRES. They will be about $10.00 s&h for about 12 pcs. When you pry off the side frames look at the condition of the gears, some of my old engines have gears that split apart. I’ve converted two of them to single axel drive, not much pulling power but ok for short trains. You might convert non-operable engines to dummies to work with the better Athearn type engines. Good luck
I had that same GP38-2 when I had my Life Like train set. It ran okay but for some reason I noticed the rear truck had metal wheels while the front one had cheap plastic wheels. As crazy as it sounds, that leads me to believe the rear truck provides the power, while the plastic wheels on the front truck simply just “slide” along the rails when the train is running.
That dosen’t sound like a very good design to me.