On Saturday, I went to a train show not far from where I am, and got good deals on 3 engines![:D] In this topic, I’ll show what I got and give a small review on each (I might do some bigger reviews later).
The first one I got was an older AHM/Rivarossi A.T. & S.F. 0-8-0 switcher in excellent condition with the original box.[:D]
After some work to get the motor’s electrical contact with the engine pickups back, and some cleaning, it got to be a very smooth runner. It hardly wobbles at all at any speeds, and everything works nice and smoothly. There’s a small gearbox on the motor with 2 metal gears inside, and they make an easily noticable whining. The rest of the gears are pretty quiet. The detail is very good for its time, with separate railings, grab irons, a coupler lift bar, a bell, a large heater on the front of the boiler, and a ladder on the tender. The molded-on detail is done very nicely, with a lot of piping, walkway treads, and countless other details. The ball-bearing motor sticks out of the cab a few scale feet, but if you’re like me, you won’t really notice it after a while. The engine doesn’t weigh much, but it has a traction tire that gives it good pulling power.[:D]
Next is a Stewart Southern Pacific S-12 switcher.[:D]
The engine comes as a kit with the mechanism already built, so you just have to install the details and couplers. The engine has an Ajin (OMI) mechanism with a Canon motor, which runs very smoothly and quietly, with only a little humming from the motor and gears. Al
Ah, the old Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0. Are you planning on replacing the pizza-cutter wheels? I have an IHC 0-4-0 my parents gave me when I was a kid that I keep for sentimental reasons- it still runs, and not badly, but it has a lot of trouble on Code 83 switch frogs. I’m giving some thought to replacing the wheels with Bowser 50" drivers, when I get the time.
Midland, I am quite sure that if you were to invert your IHC, tape over the places where metal filing might migrate to the inner works, and then gently filed the flanges, you could get the flanges down to where they ran over your Code 83 quite well,…certainly much better.
It would not be a 10 minute job, but it might take all of an hour to do all wheels once you got at it.
FWIW Years ago I tried this with an AHM GG-1 I bought. While it is possible, you be better off just replacing the drivers.
One problem is the drivers are just nickel silver coated, underneath they are brass. Another problem is the flange is sharply angled so that as you file down the flange the flange gets wider. You will end up with either a very sharply angled flange (if you try to keep a “point” on the flange) that tends to ride over rails or a flange with a flat top on it that is nearly as wide as the tred of the driver. Either way it will be bare brass. At any rate I would strongly recommend removing the drivers from the loco before attempting to do this.
Save yourself time and headaches. Spend some money and get new drivers.
I probably won’t be replacing the wheels anytime soon, since I use code 100. I like using code 100 because I can run engines like the 0-8-0 without any problems, and I have quite a few engines that have big flanges.
I think the big flanges were done because of a european standard. I wonder why Europe would want the flanges to be so big?
I’ve got two of the Athearn RDCs I inherited from my granddad. They have a great shell to them but need quite a bit of work to get them up to par with the P1K models mechanically. I replaced the wheelsets with Northwest Shore Line powered trucks, tinted the window glazing and added diaphrams to the ends (as per most of the Canadian RDCs after VIA came about.) I also repainted them using a technique I found in MR a couple years ago where one uses model car paint to simulate the gleam of stainless steel. It was a great project and I always am happy when I can keep some of my granddad’s trains running. If you want to keep the original rubber band drive, see if you can buy another RDC as well because the movement of the two, with both being powered, smooths out the jerky movement. Also try replacing the original rubber bands with orthodontic rubber bands, they fit tighter and are much stronger than the originals which have a habbit of drying out in a climate controled train room and cracking. Cheers! ~METRO
That SP switcher looks nice… hopefully you gotta a good deal on it too! Its always nice to get a good find at a train show… hopefully i get lucky this weekend in timmonium!
I’ve ground down the flanges before. Best to use a motor tool with a barrel fine grind stone, hook up some lead wires to the motor and set the engine upside down in a cradle of some sort, then grind away ( keep your depth gauge handy and cheak often, and I mean often, also do it slowly and don’t let the heat build up).It is alot harder to grind non powered wheels as you have to gerry rig up something but itcan be done.
It’s an ancient compromise, really. Old Märklin stuff had huge flanges to keep it on track (the old “toy trains” were operated at high speed and by careless kids, and thus needed some aid in that department, I guess), and the de facto industry standards still follow along that vein, although of course modern stuff tends to be a bit finer. I understand European finescale enthusiasts tend to swap wheels for RP25 if possible.
