i will be following this , really interesting 
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Unless your motor is very different from mine, the brushes are already insulated from the motor, which is grounded to the frame via the flat spring supporting the motor, and also through the gearing. There’s no need to insulate the engineer-side drivers, as you need to include a ground wire connecting the engineer-side rail to the tender. The simplest way is to bolt a small wiring attachment to the frame. Another very difficult way, which I used, is to add a ground wire attachment to the long bolt in the motor, insulated from the other attachments on it. Or just solder a ground wire to the bolt, if you never expect to remove the bolt.
I will just say, my preference is for insulated chassis, because I like the frame and tender to not be live to the track, So I’ll take the tyres off the live wheels and refit them with insulation. It just makes everything easier later.
What will you use to pick up power from the rails? Insulated sliders? I’d love to see what you do, as enough of my engines, and tenders in particular, have pickup problems that I’ll be happy to try something different.
probably flange scrapers made of phosphor bronze wire. I’m thinking also of disguising them as sander lines as well, though I may disguise them in a different way.
I will add that recently I’ve been making some progress on stripping the epoxy off the motor, and I also turned down the flanges on some of the wheels. I’ll have quite the few photos soon.
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Sounds like a good approach, but would the ability of the drivers to move up and down, because they’re sprung, be a problem?
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Looking forward to those photos. I have been following this thread with interest.
Rich
Just getting back onto the forum, saw this thread, and thought, “I bet Darth Santa Fe is here!”
And he was!
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the flange scrapers would push against the side of the wheel and would be very lightly sprung, but because the contact area is so small, the contact pressure is very great, so any dirt gets scraped off. Also, I’m currently in the middle of the making new lead wheels after I realised that the original lead wheels were a bit small to compensate for the size of the flanges, but the closest wheels I have in size are much bigger, but have some meat to take off.
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In my restorations, I add power pickups to the tender wheels, which is much easier to do than adding wipers to the drivers. Wipers on the drivers can add a lot of drag to the engine. I find it unecessary to use the drivers to pick up power, although I must admit that I recently chose to add a power extender to my decoder to avoid brief power gaps (a keep alive, to use another vocabulary). The motor of that particular engine does not have a flywheel, which is usually sufficient to help an engine go through a small power gap in the track. I believe that will be your case also (no flywheel).
Simon
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interesting… I usually base most of my practice and principles from Scalefour Forum - Forum Index and CLAG – the Central London Area Group, who have found much benefit from the use of phosphor bronze wire wipers, mainly on driven wheels, and they haven’t found any problems with drag. I have plans for the tender, mainly being a new, bigger one, with sprung trucks, into which I’ll put in metal pinpoint bearings (a standard in UK finescale), and use split axles to maximise pickup, and minimise drag. Pickups! - Scalefour Forum
My Mikado has a cast lead boiler, so drag is definitely not a problem. In 1955 I once put 70 cars (many had the old blunt-end axles) behind it on level curving track, and it started the train with no trouble. I think that even with the cast brass boiler and a lead insert, it should be able to handle at least 50 cars on level track.
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with a tungsten insert (and the Lain Rice trick of balancing the tender so that it applies weight on the engine), the brass boiler in mine wont be much of a handicap! XD May I ask how much your Mikado weighs though?
I don’t have a suitable scale to weigh it, but I believe it weighs at least two pounds. If I find a way to get the weight, I’ll post it. I have two other old Varney engines with cast lead boilers, and they’re also very heavy. All three will “pull the plaster off the wall”. Too bad Varney went out of business, as those V2 motors were way in advance of their time, but assembling the valve gear was not easy.
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I found a scale to use. The mikado weighs 2 lb 1/2 oz. The consolidation, which has a shorter boiler, weighs 1 lb 13-12 oz. I didn’t weigh the pacific, but it has the same boiler as the mikado, so it probably weighs about the same.
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Most impressive! I need to weigh my mikado, though it has no extra weights yet. I will lose some when I go to reduce the running boards to blend them in with the PSC etched treaded material that I’ll be using and because I plan to make a compact smoke unit for it, but there still will be plenty of room for tungsten in block and powder forms! Hanging a tungsten and lead filled tender off the rear should hopefully let it pull the walls down instead of just the plaster.
How is the motor rewind doing? Any progress in the last month? Wouldn’t having a very heavy tender reduce the pulling power? It turns out one of my V2 motors is dead; won’t turn over with DC placed directly on the brushes. How much would you charge to fix it (Mostly just kidding).
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I’ve been super busy lately and the epoxy has not wanted to come off. Since the 6th of Jan, I’ve had the rotor soaking in epoxy stripper and kept it in acetone for 2 of the weeks. Once all the epoxy is gone, I’ll go and strip off the wire and rewind it. Hopefully I can post some new photos of the engine now with a bit of paint and 1 wheel turned down to be finer.
How big is this Lindsay motor? Got a picture, with something to use as a size reference,?
Darth, if you are following, would a lindsay motor from a MEW 44 tonner be compatable, or at least the armature be interchangeable? Dan