Okay, hate me if you want to, but this is kind of a poll. How many people with steam locomotives don’t hesitate to tackle any problem they experience, versus the “send it back” brigade (possibly regiment) ? Oh, and I mean models, and not 1 : 1 scale stuff either.
No hidden adgenda; in case you can’t tell, I do it myself. I think I am in the minority, I just got curious as to how much so. Also, if you will tackle the electronic but not the mechanical issues, or vice versa, I’d like to know that too.
I have taken a few apart and it is scarry. I got them back together however. I have not sent any in because I am too cheap, and I am not sure I trust the guys who do it anymore than I trust myself. I am sure there are some true craftsman out there, but how do you learn that without risking a good piece of equipment. References seem hard to come by.
I tend to be risk averse, and I don’t like it when I muck things up. I removed the drivers from my P2K 0-6-0 one time for a reason I don’t recall, and I had a [censored] of a time getting the square brass journals and the rod quartering to line up and restored before I screwed the retaining plate back into place. I think I was literally sweating.
Does that answer your question?
I don’t know if I speak for anyone here, but I will say for myself, I am very happy that there are people like you who feel no temerity, and who tackle these things with skill, determination, and with knowledge. It would be a great service to do a clinic online with maybe 10 photos over three sessions showing how to do basic steamer maintenance and trouble-shooting.
I have always fixed my own stuff. If it is under warranty, I will contact the manufacturer and they send out the parts to me free of charge. No long waits, service charges or shipping fees.
The first time you take one apart it can be a little intimidating, especially when you are first starting out.
Try and get line art showing all the various pieces before you begin. Note the screw lengths and group them accordingly as you disassemble the engine.
Every time you make a repair you are the better for it. Success breeds success.
I do my own ‘tweaking’. Been doing it since the 1960’s.
Now, before everyone is properly amazed, LOL, let me tell you that 85% of my steamers are brass, and extremely easy to work on. I haven’t had to get into the electronics of my newer steam locos yet, and I don’t plan to, because I don’t run them very much, since the novelty of bells and whistles has worn off pretty quick and I plan on selling them off BEFORE anything goes wrong with them.
Anything that goes wrong with my brass steamers, I just get out the screwdriver, drop three screws, lift off the superstructure and–VOILA!–there’s the motor and the gearbox and everything just waiting for me to tweak. There’s only one brass loco that I’ve ever had to send back to the manufacturer for a small problem, and that’s my PSC brass Rio Grande 2-10-2. Impossible to get into. However, PSC, bless their kind hearts, repaired it for me and had it back within two weeks.
So even though it may sound to some of you that I am stuck in the Early Jurassic Period of model railroading, my brass runs nicely, thank you, and is VERY easy to repair.
My perhaps mistaken impression is that there is a marked difference in the construction and engineering between brass and plastic locomotives. I would think that brass, because of the nature of the metal, would be engineered for quick disassembly and repair. No prying or bending required. With plastic, though, we encounter carefully hidden, randomly placed (or so it seems) tabs, and undercuts and ramps that you can actually hear giggle as you try to find them and get them apart. I don’t want to have to face my wife when I tell her I broke my steamer shell trying to fix it myself…heck, I wouldn’t want to acknowedge it to myself!
However, I have had my first loco’s shell off, the BLI Hudson, and that was no big deal, although the shell had to be carefully rotated at the front to avoid dislodging the LED and its mounting. That was a surprise to me, the way it is rigidly mounted, and not embedded in the shell. I could not tell by the diagram.
When you build them from kits, you know how the go together and come apart. Not much that could be called “electronics” in my steam locomotives, I still run standard DC, but a couple of my cars are equipped with working FRED’s that I built from components.
I do all my repairs, tweaking, and upgrades. I have no problem with figuring out how to remove a boiler from its frame. Spectrum at times can be the hardest, esp the 2-10-0, but I did it. Replaced the gear on the axle as well for one of our club members.
Learning to do all this is a matter of patience and perseverence. None of it is really hard, but can be tedious.
As to sending back a loco that has crashed, I don’t do this. I don’t even send in the warrenty registration. On some locos with warrenties, if you read the fine print, it seems even repainting some of them results in nullifying the warrenty, so I don’t bother.
I haven’t found a loco that mechanically, I couldn’t repair. And none gets to be run on a layout until I have taken it apart and tweaked it to run the best that it can.
I think that I’m a bit of a rarity: I’m under 50 and not only do I “fix” my own steam, but I don’t hesitate to strip them down to component parts, remove ALL of the detailing, and start over to create prototype-specific engines.
My dad tought me to work on steam when I was a kid (early 1980s) by handing me some of his old (1960s era) Mantua and Varney steam. I’d run the engines until they stopped, wander them over to dad and say. “It’s dead”, whereupon he’d show me how to disassemble, clean, fix and reassemble the engines. Eventually I didn’t need to ask dad any more, unless I ran across something really strange.
Nowadays, he’ll come over to my house, hand me a box full of an engine and parts (he’s now in N scale) and say, “I want this (pick a prototype) for Christmas.” Not hard to understand when I’m cranking out engines like this:
In fact, just this morning I dragged out three steamers, two brass and one Spectrum 2-8-0, which need to be worked on. They all need to be stripped and redetailed into specific engines.
Unfortunately, I do think that we’re a rare breed overall. The vast majority of “modelers” in this hobby are afraid to scratchbuild a simple section house, let alone build a resin kit, so it’s no surprise that there are VERY few of us that are willing to completely redetail a steamer or even take it apart for servicing. It doesn’t help matters that most of the younger generation doesn’t know one end of a screwdriver from the other…
I do ALL my own work/service. There is nothing mysterious about a locomotive. A poorly running example can usually be put right with disassembly/re-assembly, taking care of details the “highly trained” factory workers may have missed or ignored. It only takes a very small imperfection to cause poor running. Also, proper lubrication, is your friend…
The quoted comments are the whole deal, [tup] but, I don’t see it occurring! [tdn] From discussions on other forums and this one as well, most will not even bother to try. Because, if as they say, they don’t assemble car kits because they don’t have time, I doubt if they will take the time that may be necessary to troubleshoot, and repair a loco.
[soapbox]
Instead they will box it up, pay the shipping back to the maker/distributor and then come on a forum and complain at how long its taking! [banghead]
One thing I’m hearing more and more of on this forum is the frequency of cracked gears on a lot of the newer models, both steam and diesel. Anybody know what’s going on about this? Is it the material being used, or just poor quality control?
I NEVER used to hear about this problem until several years ago,but almost every thread now has a complaint about it.
Frankly, that’s one reason I’m not planning on running my newer stuff very much, and getting rid of most of it ASAP. I’ve got 40-year old brass that the gears don’t even look WORN on, much less think of cracking, but I hear about newer stuff that is the price of used brass, and after a couple of months, it’s going back to the manufacturer with–you guessed it–a cracked gear.
Im probably a rarity among the rare. The first thing I do when I get a loco (mostly steam) is to tear it down to a comfortable level, and reassemble it. I am currently planing to super detail a 0-6-0 shop switcher I have. All this and I’m 17[wow]
I think the cracked gears come from specifying an interference fit, with maybe too much interference, too, and not specifying a plastic formulation closely enough. Or not controlling the plastic manufacture closely enough. You never hear of a NWSL plastic gear cracking though, do you?[:)] I have called NWSL and given them the specs on a cracked gear and had them send me one that was not an exact match in hopes it would work, and both times it has.
From my experience with NWSL, if they don’t have a cure for what ails a gear, motor, or flexible connection from motor to gearbox, then NOBODY has! That company is worth their weight in Platinum, IMO. I’d simply be nowhere without them!
For me it depends. If it is an engine that I just purchased, and it has a problem when I open the box, then I will send it back for repair. If it is something that I have had for a while or is something that I bought off second hand, then I will repair it myself. An example is a Proto 2000 0-6-0 that I bought from an on-line dealer. When I received it and went to test, one of the guide rods for the valve gear was broken off (I found it in the box). In this case I sent it back to Walthers to repair, since the dealer did not have one to exchange. I could have fixed it with the parts, but I felt that since it was new the manufacturer should stand by their product. Unfortunately I have had to send several new locos back to the manufacturer (2 BLI, 2 Bachman Spectrum, 1 Proto 2000). Usually with the new stuff, they don’t fix it anyway, just give you a new one.
OTOH I have fixed in house a Proto 2000 2-8-8-2 that I got off of eBay which needed the valve gear repaired. I also fixed a Rivarossi Challenger from a later run which had all kinds of problems. The previous owner must have dropped it at some point. I also decided to tackle a PSC 4-8-0 M2C that needed remotoring due to a serious lack of power. The remotoring went well, but there is a clicking in the valve gear that I still need to resolve. So for me it really depends on the circumstances.
As for the electrical, I do all of that myself. Sometimes I get in over my head, as with the PSC (I blew the bulbs in the marker lamps when testing). But I don’t want to pay someone else to just add a decoder for me, or fix electrical pickup.
