It’s now been a week since the Decatur train show, and I still haven’t posted about what I got from it! I haven’t taken any pictures yet, but I got:
A mint in the box MDC Harriman 2-8-0 kit (open frame motor), $55
A painted Tenshodo GP20 in very good condition, $50
A mint in the box Athearn Genesis 2-8-2 Mikado, $80
The MDC 2-8-0 has Nickle Plate RR lettering, and is a pretty simple kit to build. There are few detail parts and no valve gear, so it’s about as basic as kits get. The motor is very fast (probably 15,000RPM), but the gear ratio is so low that it only travels at about 40 scale MPH at full speed. The double reduction gear can be very easily destroyed if mounted wrong, so MDC was nice enough to put a replacement in for just incase.[:D]
The Tenshodo GP20 is custom painted in Burlington Northern. The paint and decal work is good, but it’s very heavy and fills some of the detail. It’s also flaking off, so I’ll probably redo it. It’s one of their earlier diesels with a huge open frame motor driving a single gear tower over the rear truck, with a worm over each wheel. The gear tower has a noticable whine, but it’s not real noisy if adjusted properly. The worms and axle gears are all metal, and seem to work smoothly and quietly. The universals were kind of poor, so I put together some new spring universals which work well so far. The open frame motor is noisy and draws a lot of current (was 1.5A, but I’ve got it down to 0.75A at 12V), and has poor low speed control. I have an 18x37mm coreless motor on the way, so the GP20 should be a very smooth runner when I’m done with it.[:D]
The Athearn 2-8-2 is unlettered, and only needed the handrails, whistle, marker lights, and tender ladder put on. The parts press fit very tightly, so glue isn’t necessary. This is one of the smoothest running steam engines I’ve gotten so far, and can crawl steadily at less than 2 s
If you might wish to convert your MDC 2-8-0 from inside to outside valve gear check the Dec '77 RMC for an article by John Swanson titled Variations on Harriman’s 2-8-0; among other things he talkes about using parts from Bowser for this conversion. I was going to use his techniques for a conversion of a Ten-wheeler which stayed in my manaña box for the better part of a decade before I finally disposed of it.
And now, some pictures![:D]
The MDC Harriman 2-8-0. It needs to be painted, obviously.
Tenshodo GP20. I’ll probably replace the handrails and grab irons, and repaint it. I may add other details too.
I replaced the universals with springs, which seem to work smoother. It’s actually a pretty decent mechanism, and it’s not too noisy. The open-frame motor will be replaced soon with a coreless, so then it’ll run quieter and smoother, and won’t draw between 0.75 and 1 amp.
The Athearn Genesis 2-8-2. The stock detail may not be as good as Trix or BLI, but it still looks great (especially next to my IHC Mikado!)![:D] It’s an incredible runner, too.[:D] It’s just a little too light to pull a long string is all (I don’t have real long strings on my layout anyway, so it doesn’t matter so much).
Another successful day at the train show![:D]
I would consider getting the replacement bull gear from NWSL for that Mike before you start putting effort into it…
David B
I got the coreless motor for the GP20 in the mail today![:D] I’ve already mounted it and wired it, and I’ve also done a little more tweaking to the drive (put the upper universal shaft back in, and replaced my spring coupling on the bottom with an Athearn universal). Man, does it run smooth now![:D] It’ll run nice and slow at less than 1V, has a top speed of around 70 MPH, and draws less than 0.1A at full speed![:D] The gear tower still makes a pretty good whine, but I wouldn’t consider it to be a real noisy runner anymore. I don’t think it ran even close to as well as it does now back when it was brand new![:D] As far as smoothness goes, it’s about as good as my newer high quality diesels.
davidmbedard, the stock 2-8-2 gears aren’t giving me any trouble right now, but I will keep an eye on them. It looks like NWSL still makes both the axle and idler gears for them.
I have this 2-8-2 also and had to have the drive gear fixed in it,it was brand new and the gear was split…Sent it to Athern and got it fixed free…This was over 2 yrs after I bought it ! [2c]