new aquisition

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Virginian Triplex from Westside, off ebay, owner said it was 2 motor, rear motor wouldnt work. Friday it came quick checkout, wire was off tender motor frame mount, soldered, it works. This is the 3 motor version, each driver set its own motor.

I found the rear truck backwards, flipped it around oookay. More checks has trouble running, rear truck wheels and frame are hitting the tender frame shorting.

Heres the irony, all the drivers pick up one side (right side) the rear truck the left, that is the only power available, one truck, and one wheel is working, I cant get the other the flow electricity, one wheel.

I am going to grind the tender frame where its touching at the truck. Perhaps it will get it to run, kinda. My quick fixit plan, add a water tender for full power pickup, make dcc like connections to/from it. That will get it to basically run and test it.

The engine benchtests just fine it just can’t deal with the shorting on the track till I fix that. Middle driver seems to have a bind, but its not lubed up yet and may need running wearin.

My ultimate plan is to DCC/Sound it, it may take 3 decoders and 2 sound units, why 3 decoders? BackEMF control.

2 sound units, for the engine then tender, the rear driver exhausted thru a rear stack. It has high/low pressure cylinders so its not going to sound like triple exhaust unless it has a simple steam setting.

Usually this model goes waaaay over 1000 bucks on ebay, I lucked out $895, fully painted even. Nice. I think once I work out the kinks it should be a fine operator. I think I may try to add wipers on the drivers for better pickup sometime, but thats a careful and involved process.

In the meantime, enjoy the view, I won’t hide it away, if I get it running I’ll post a video.

Front/rear headlights are jewels so I gotta figger that out.

2

http://hosteamcentral.com/WSM-28884.html

I found this site helps me out and I have been digging about on the model. The right side driver all pickup power the normal to the frame transfer power like most engines of this kind do, On the middle driver on the left side it has spring wire connected to the 2 center brake shoes touching the 2nd to 4th drivers to get power from the left rail. I have to re-bend these to make contact. The rear driver is still exhibiting shorting from the trailing truck, such a simple issue why its a bugger I don’t know yet, but I found the one wheel on it has a metal plate to touch the wheel and is not touching, I tend to think the painter mucked up some things. Regardless, I think its left side pickup power is lacking even if it was working right. so something will still be done there like the 2nd tender idea.

3

Dinwitty:

Holy cow, I took a look at the chassis photograph, and I can’t believe that a 3-motored loco has only one tender truck for opposite pickup. Sorry, but that is the CRAZIEST get-up I’ve ever seen. If nothing else, that driver set under the tender needs to be flipped and insulated from the rest of the loco and set for reverse polarity just to have a DECENT opposite electrical pickup. Either that, or a whole SLEW of insulated Tomar track-sliders installed and connected to the motor.

And I don’t know about you,but every time I see a Canon motor in one of my ‘just-bought’ used brass locos, I head to the hobby shop and look for a replacement NWSL motor the same size. In my experience, Canon’s last about the same amount of time as a camera battery, LOL!

But dang, that’s one GORGEOUS loco. Hope you can get it running as well as it looks. [;)]

Tom [:)]

4

Looks like its a dead engine for a while, I found a broken Nylon gear in the middle driverset tower gear. I found my ALCO VGN EL-2 gears, I replaced it with NWSL, runs like a top now, one of the old gears is practically the same size just 1 tooth more,it almost makes me want to try it in. The meshing would be soooo close.

I will have a talk with NWSL first tho, with the other gears nylon also I bet it may be time to NWSL it all.

I could trick and disable the rear drivers stealing the rear gear for the middle driver letting the rear roll free ALA MTH…while I have a --little-- running fun with it, be nice to check minimum radius etc.

It looks like its a huge project now. wow.

5

I tend to let an idea sit while I think it thru, so now tonite I put the ALCO gear in, too perfect. The little spring wire contacts are in such a havoc. I agree the simple idea is to reverse the tender driver wheels but they made the tender connectors all metal with no insulation. This is debatable, since I plan to DCC this it needs better pickup all round. Some vendor at a recent train show had a bunch of these Y shaped spring contacts, I bought them out cheapo, I have a LL 0-8-0 that needs a tender pickup treatment, so the same is going to happen with the triplex.

But in my little fix I got the middle driverset to run, rather sporadically its a step in the right direction. However, I already ordered 3 NWSL gearboxes. While I wait for them to arrive I’ll fiddle on making contacts.

I have all the DCC parts now after the train show trip today I got interconnections between engine/tender from the DCC vendor I like. (Greenway)

6

The engine has brake shoes and are brass, and are mounted on plastic insulator supports that accept a screw. On the ones that pick up power on the insulated side, a simple spring wire fingers the drivers to pick up power, however these wires are bent, I try to bend them to make contact, with drivers in place, the spin and turn and lose contact. The brake shoe and screw at the mount hold this wire in place, but not good enough to stop spinning.

The wire has not been wrapped around the post, its simply straight. Had Westside continued this idea it would have picked up power on all drivers. Nope. 3 drivers in the middle.

I found Circuitron has these spring wires but trying to find local sources, the alternative is fine piano wire, or if a welding supply has something similar.

I have these pickups I got at a train show I’ll see about modding them however.

Ironically it won’t matter if the pickup shoes touch the driver as it is electrically isolated and they did this on all the brake shoes.

7

I got the Circuitron spring wire saturday from walthers order at LHS, and today I got down and dirty and replaced the faulty ones, NOW they touch the drivers. Quickie test on track and the one driverset ran fairly well.

Inside the frame the brake shoes screws screw into a metal piece wired up to the motor, this is missing on the other drivers so I have to waffle up some design. 3 powered wheels isnt quite enuff on the left side. I am off to power the rest…somehow. This thing’s gonna…run!

8

I would presume that the rear drivers under the tender are really mounted to the locomotive which makes such a flip “conversion” much easier said than done.

9

technically the “tender” is still electrically the same as the engine as it has a drawbar not isolated from the engine electrically, so right side power flows right thru.

It has a one wire connector to the engine to carry left side power up, pre DCC ideas.

When I DCC it it gets a full re-wire job.

One of the valve links eccentric to rocker de-riveted, I took the link off the eccentric (screwed on) to avoid running issues. When ready I’ll re-rivet it. Looks fixable. The rocker is screwed in removable so I can bench fix it.

the engine and tender can run independently separated.