NKP prod NKP L1a 4-6-4 Hudson

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I picked up this model thru ebay a seller from australia, I lost the original bidding, but he had a 2nd and sold it the same winning cost to me. So all the way from australia came this engine.

There were no working headlights, just cast headlight-mars light. So I made it my druthers to makem work.

I’ve already done this to an ole AHM 2-8-4, this time is LEDs.

I thought I could light up the numberboards on the side of the headlight using a CAL Scale headlight, but the headlight was larger, and I was also going to replace the mars light, but again the 2 were larger and did not fit the smokebox plate correctly, soooo guess what, I have to use the originals. numberboards also removed because I have a trick to light them up too.

Big silver solder iron removed the headlights, main headlight I clipped the mount off as I had to drill an access hole for the wires, then the headlight is superglued back. Mars light I had to use the mounting hole. Duh…

so to have wire access I drilled two teeny holes slightly to the side of the mars light and the 2 holes in the smokebox, this is how I thread the wires in to the mars light.

thats a super teeny superbright LED in the mars light, I’m getting a knack handling these things now. I lay them down on a reversed electrical tape to hold them down, then solder the wires on.

Leaving the LEDs out for the while while I work on things, then I will finalize them shove them in.

I put a Tsunami medium Steam DCC in the boiler removing the weight, speaker fits in the boiler, but after reviewing the whistles I may change out to a different decoder/sounds, trying to get an accurate L1a whistle.

Yes the LEDs work, I’ll have pics/ video later

2

It looks like you’re on the right path to make it a nice model! Headlight work is always tedious. I love those elephant eared Hudsons. I had a chance to inspect the one survivor at the national museum of transportation in St. Louis once. I’ll get one some day, it would be a nice addition to my NKP fleet. Last year a friend donated some home movies of local railroad scenes from the 50’s and 60’s and there was an interesting scene of a NKP wreck somewhere along Lake Erie with a hudson handling the wreck train. Obviously, the Alco PA units had already bumped her off the passenger runs, and she’s finding work wherever she can. Keep up the good work and let us see the progress.

3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7bK6SDc45A

here we go in action. I will probably wait for the Titan QSI decoder for this model, I need 6 separate functions besides the headlghts to do what I plan.

headlight, mars light, number boards, classification lights (3 for 3 color LED to make the green, white red colors)

4

heres the tri color LED test using the digitrax 4 function decoder. you can turn on the 3 colors to get color combinations tho for marker lights you won’t use them all, but you can get blue and purple and yellow.

I will run fibre optics to the markers to do the effect with the fibre “connected” somehow to the LED, probalbly a micro drilled hole in it glued.