Years ago I was given an old Mantua Hudson that I never imagined would run again after going through Hurricane Andrew. When I found replacement parts I was thrilled to be able to return it to running condition. Even the original Pittman motor is in good order, after cleaning.
Then I finally got to visit a good hobby store - I live way out of the way in a rural area - and was blown away to find they had a ‘junk’ shelf of odds and ends for sale - and I picked up two more Mantua locos, one a Hudson and one a Mohawk, both in adequate running order, for $15 each! I will be overhauling them, and since they’re all the exact same body and frame I’ll also replace the trailing truck on the Mohawk to convert it to a Hudson.
I’d like to install sound decoders in them and make them a new sub-class in my fleet. It’ll be the first time I have three same-sub-class locos and I’m kind of excited at the prospect, so I want to do this well.
Any decoder recommendations, or other pertinent comments, suggestions, ideas or experience? Thanks in advance for your help!
The first thing to do is take some amp draw readings on those pitman motor mechanisms. Second is to decide weather to remotor them or super tune the pitman motors. Once you get the amp draw around 1 amp at 12 volts DC then you can think about decoders and speakers. When I do my decoder instals I fit the largest speaker with enclosure first and then decide where the decoder will fit. You can’t go wrong with the Loksound Select or the TCS WOW.
Install a Digitrax DH123 in the locos first. Work out any issues and run them HARD for a while. If the DH123s don’t melt or blow AND and loco runs they wY you want it to, unplug the DH123 and plug in a TSU1000. I wouldn’t do it any other way. A DH123 costs 20 bucks and a TSU1000 costs 100. David B
David’s advice to start with a cheaper motor and light control decoder instead of sound is very good, but Digitrax is not the only option in this regard, or the cheapest. Check around for NCE or TCS decoders, too.
These locomotive are going to require hard wiring of the decoder, but if you wire in a 9-pin JST harness, the Tsunami will be a simple plug-in.
You’ll also need to insulate the engine from the frame. I’ve just removed the motor, put down a piece of tape, and reinstalled the motor using plastic screws.
Since the Mantua engines pick up from one rail on the tender and the other rail from the locomotive, they sometimes stall going over switches or crossovers. I recently tried one of the TCS “keep alive” decoders in an engine and found it worked well, I’ll probably use them in all my Mantua engines.
BTW a New York Central “Mohawk” was their version of a Mountain, a 4-8-2. Adding a four wheel truck to a 4-8-2 would give you a 4-8-4 Northern - or Niagara if it’s an NYC engine. I suspect what you actually have are Mantua 4-6-2 Pacific engines. Mantua added a 4-wheel trailing truck to it’s existing Pacific model to make a “Hudson”. The Mantua engine - particularly the later ones with the revised boiler - is probably closer to a USRA Pacific than it is an NYC Hudson.
Thanks to all of you for some “sound” advice! (They made me say that. . . ). I’ve been collecting stuff for over 25 years, waiting to have somewhere to build a layout. It hasn’t been wasted time, though. I’ve gone a little 'round the bend customizing building kits. I can’t imagine a roundhouse without full sets of power and hand tools in it, air, lube and water facilities, lights, people and the one thing nobody seems to put in their building kits - a bathroom. A power house with steam turbine generators and no steam lines? Naw, the old ex-Navy machinist’s mate in me wouldn’t tolerate that. Thank heaven for rivets on decal sheets too! And last week I figured out a great way to manufacture 36 office desks for the price of buying one cast in resin, and how to make steam radiators for transition-era building interiors. It gets cold in the Great Lakes region!
Best of all is asking a question here and getting such really cool advice and observations. Over the years I’ve kept a spreadsheet of my purchases and I’ve put over $35 grand into this hobby. It’s pretty daunting looking at catalogs today, wondering how we really think we can recruit new people - young folks especially - into a hobby where a decent basic sound locomotive costs at least half a week’s pay. If it weren’t for the help available here, from people like you, I doubt I’d ever overcome the terror of disassembling a loco for the first time to overhaul and upgrade it. (Yeah, I used to run a nuclear reactor and steam plant on a submarine, but geez, guys, this is my HOBBY! I don’t want to break a single thing! This stuff’s important!! [:|] ) You guys are great! Thanks again!
Currently I´m also thinking of purchasing a Mantua 4-6-4 and installing a DCC decoder with sound, cab light, firebox light and smoke inside it, but I´m absolutely not familiar with Mantua engines, so I have a couple of questions.Here is the model that I wanna buy:
The engine is unused, so we can call it new old stock. Does anybody know what the production date of this model could be by looking at the engine or the box?
I know the motor has to be isolated when installing a DCC decoder. But what kind of motor does a Mantua 4-6-4 have? A can motor or an open frame motor?
Is the smokestack of these models open so that a smoke unit can be installed or is it closed?
On the photo I´m very surprised to see that the center drivers are blind. I thought this is only necessary on 2-10-2/2-10-4 typed to make them run better through tighter curves, but a 4-6-4? I thought that the minimum radius of a Mantua 4-6-4 should be 18 inches, but now after I saw those blind center drivers I´m not sure anymore about it. Can anyone tell me if the Mantua 4-6-4 runs on 18 inch radius curves or not?
In case I should purchase the engine I would let it pull a passenger train which is made up of 9 IHC heavyweight cars. Do you think the engine can handle 9 IHC heavyweights without problems or should I think about adding traction tires? I actually searched already for traction tires, but there seem to be no traction tires available for the Mantua 4-6-4/4-6-2. Only small drivered engines like the 4-4-0, 4-6-0, 4-8-0, 2-8-2, 2-6-6-2 and so on.
Currently I´m also thinking of purchasing a Mantua 4-6-4 and installing a DCC decoder with sound, cab light, firebox light and smoke inside it, but I´m absolutely not familiar with Mantua engines, so I have a couple of questions.Here is the model that I wanna buy:
The engine is unused, so we can call it new old stock. Does anybody know what the production date of this model could be by looking at the engine or the box?
No, But the engine shown has a open frame motor with the worm mounted to the motor shaft. Note that you can see the worm and front of the motor in the image.
I know the motor has to be isolated when installing a DCC decoder. But what kind of motor does a Mantua 4-6-4 have? A can motor or an open frame motor?
Both, Mantua locos of that era went through a series of improvements. The 3 basic versions:
Ver 1: Open frame with the worm mounted on the engine shaft. Good
Ver 2: Open frame with the worm mounted in a gear box. Better, easy to add a can motor.
Ver 3: Can motor w flywheel and worm mounted in a gear box. Best, currently sold by Model Power.
Is the smokestack of these models open so that a smoke unit can be installed or is it closed?
The smoke stack contains a screw to hold the boiler on
On the photo I´m very surprised to see that the center drivers are blind. I thought this is only necessary on 2-10-2/2-10-4 typed to make them run better through tighter curves, but a 4-6-4? I thought that the minimum radius of a Mantua 4-6-4 shou
The Hudsons and Mohawks are leaning between medium and heavy steam. I would lean towards a medium for the smaller hudsons with a bass boost eq and a large steam for the mohawks. (The mountain types were a bit of a beast)
With a good speaker you’ll run about $100/engine. Not sure if it’s worth it with the mantuas. That’s up to you.
There are many good models of these engines on the market with can motors and gear towers for not much more then what you paid. If you asked me, that would be a better place to start if you are insistent on sound.
It would help if you could post pictures of the engines. The Mantua Pacific was based on B&O’s P-7c 4-6-2, except it had a generic Mantua cab & tender. At some point, they started selling it as a Hudson — same engine with a 4-wheel trailing truck, which probably made it closer to NKP’s 4-6-4 than anything else. They never produced a 4-8-2 Mohawk (or Mountain), but they did produce a generic heavy 2-8-2 Mikado.
Do you have pictures of how you isolated the motortor from the frame and how you wired it? On the Bowser motor it was easy, you just needed to replace the metal brush plate with the fiber brush plate and plastic brush springs and wire the orange and grey wires to their respective brushes.
Mantua of the era picturesd won;t have Pittman motors. They have cheap chinese knockoff versions of Pittman motors. A REAL Pittman motor is actual very high quality, and other than the magnets becoming weak with age (easily fixed), are good motors. By the 70’s, most massed produced stuff had long switched to knockoffs that LOOK like DC-70 and DC-91 motors, but aren’t nearly in the same league. Yes, even Mantua. This was far removed from the original Mantua Metal Products company. I believe English aquired the rights sometime around when they also bought Bowser, although the Pittman name today seems to be owned by Ametek, who sells a line of motors of all types under the Pittman name.
Thats correct. Pittman decided they did not want to make hobby motors any longer. So the tooling to those motors was sold to Bowser. The rest of Pittman remained independent from Bowser.
79/80 - they LOOK like Pittman motors. LOOK being the key word. I seriously doubt they are actual Pittman made motors. I don’t think Pittman properly protected their model numbers or just didn’t have much chance of winning a fight against the knockoffs, so you had motors generically listed as “DC-91” which is the small open frame motor with the angled base, common in steam locos that did not have an idler gearbox. But they weren’t actual Pittman motors.
Some are definitely better than others. You never know exactly what you get until you test it out. Even the knockoffs can run fairly low current if the magnets are strong (replace with the rare earth ones if needed) and the brush tension is set right and the commutator is clean. The really cheap ones were only 3 pole, so are better off being repalced, but the real Pittman and decent knockoffs were 5 pole. Those old Lindsey 7 pole motors should be quite smooth if in good condition.
Forgot I had this link. Dave at NWSL has been very helpful also. Some years ago he re-motored and re-geared an all metal HO MDC 4-4-2 that had what looked like a Pittman motor. Nearly two amps at 12 vdc.
Alliance also has Helix Humper replacements for Mantua steamers. So that’s another option for remotoring the old things.
If the motors are genuine Pittman, it might be worthwhile to tune them up, but the knockoffs - just replace them. Think about the often hit or miss quality of Chinese products these days - in the late 70’s and early 80’s it was WAY worse.
