I attended the Fairgrounds show today,and purchaed a used steam loco. I walked all around looking for my first steam loco to practice repairing. I will purchase a new steam loco eventually, however I’m confused. After walking around looking for a good HO repair my father, and I walked in a kinda tented area called BRASS EXPO. I noticed a White Elephant Sale with NICE TRAINS.
I just recently joined the NMRA, and heard of these sales and i just did it was better than the rest of the show. I saw a $60.00 Tenshodo steam loco (laugh) however i thought it was a good buy gears (need help). I’m still trying to figure out how i got this what i think is a good buy, but yet found less attractive items on the rest of the grounds? How do i get some of those NICE B&O locos those guys had, and How some of you think i did just curious? Tenshodo 2-8-2 GN / need help finding gears (laugh?
Looking for B&O, WM, C&O,PRR, etc steam loco.
Why did I find a nice buy in the BRASS EXPO, an not on the regular floor, need another White Elephant Sale?
Depending on its year of being built I’d rate your find as anywhere from very good to an excellent find,you don’t say whether it’s painted or bare brass,a professioral paint job will increase its value while a poor one will devalue it.bare brass is easiest to do,check either the Brass price guide by Dan Glasures or failing that find a copy of the Brown Book,while older it’ll give you a baseline of value.
For one thing, Tenshodo produced a lot of those G.N. 2-8-2’s, so it’s not a rare engine. Rarity would push the price up. If it has a bad gearbox, the only possible purchaser would be somebody like yourself who wants the challenge of doing the repairs. A lot of folks would pass on the engine for that reason. So the seller might have had the thing for a long time without finding a purchaser. He might feel that he’s glad to get the relatively small price you paid.
Those “nice B&O locos” are fairly popular in your area, so they might have a higher price. On the other hand, your G.N engine would probably be more expensive in Minneapolis, and the B&O engine might be inexpensive in the West or Midwest.
Now what you need to do is go home and take off the boiler. When removing or tightening very small screws, I suggest using a “gripper” to hold the screw. Try running the engione to see what is the problem with the gearbox. Take the motor off and set the wheels down on a flat surface (I use a small piece of plate glass). See that everything moves smoothly without binding. Work on it till it does. If there’s a problem with the bearings, or if an axle is bent, that’s how you’ll discover it. Once that’s resolved, get a NWSL wheel puller and quarterer, plus a new NWSL gearbox. These tools are worth the investment. Remove the old gearbox and install the old. You’ll also want to check all wheels to be sure they’re all quartered alike. Put her back together and she ought to run. For the future, you might consider installing DCC and/or installing a new motor, or new magnets in the old one.
Welcome to a very satisfying new aspect of the hobby!
I have a number of old brass steam engines. I have been going through my roster and cleaning, greasing and oiling these engines.
I have also on a few engines replaced the old open frame electric motors with new can motors in order to increase the smoothness of their running characteristics.
Not long ago I was working on a recent CPR FMS ten wheeler getting it ready add to my active engine roster.
I intended to replace the old open frame motor with a new can motor but had run out of the replacement motors. So I thought I would at least replace the old magnets on the motor with a set of new rare earth magnets.
In a matter of 15 to 20 minutes I had removed the old magnets, cleaned the motor and armature as well as the brushes and replaced the magnets and reinstalled the motor back into the engine.
i was very pleased with the performance of the engine, I checked and the draw on the engine had been reduced from 1.8 amps to just over 1 amp.
I was very surprised, just by changing out the magnets I has reduced the load on the engine to that of the engines where I had swapped out the electrical engines.
I have bought a lot more rare earth magnets that I have replacement can motors since.
A Tenshodo brass 2-8-2 for $60 is a good deal. There is nothing that can go wrong with a brass steamer than cannot be fixed. Get her running and she is worth a couple of hundred easy.
What makes you think it has gear trouble? It could be that just a cleaning and relubrication are all she needs. And perhaps some shimming of the motor to improve the worm to worm gear meshing. Swapping out old open frame motor magnets for supermagnets is easy and will give an impressive performance boost, better low speed creeping, less current draw at full throttle, more motor torque.
It’s true that you probably shouldn’t just assume the gearbox is defective. I know of situations where “noisy gearbox” has been traced to the motor. The situation has been cured by replacing the motor, or remounting it to realign it for a better motor-to-gearbox position. I can imagine this type of alignment problem could cause a bind in a gearbox that is otherwise fine.
You chose a very good engine for a first project. Those early brass engines were assembled in a pretty straightforward manner. Many later models became much more complicated because even more complicated details were added. This means the later engines had more factors to consider in disassembly and reassembly.