Jim, the photos look great, the locomotive looks great, the backdrop looks great... I think there is a theme developing here. I am just an enabler, you did all the work.
I finally added the backup light. I know it still needs to be painted and I need to add the rear coupler and rerailers. I'm guessing about the backup light because I haven't seen an actual photo of it. My story is: when she received her new front headlight during her rebuild, they moved the original headlight to the rear to give her a backup light. Hey, it's rule#1 right? If somebody knows for sure that this is absolutely wrong and ridiculous please say so and I'll change it. I hate to embarrass myself.
Jim, I'm right there with you on adding a rear backup light, but I dunno about that particular one. I would have added a simple light on a perch to the rear deck of the tender, off center, to the engineer's side. A simple Sunbeam type with no visor or extended number plates. But it is your railroad and Rule #1 does apply. If you are happy, that is all that matters. Keep up the good work!
Jim - I think a back-up light of this size is appropriate, especially in situations where the locomotive may have to back up over a considerable distance. There is a great photo in Frisco Power of the Enid, OK roundhouse in the heyday of steam. Nearly every stall is occupied, and on the back of nearly every tender is full-sized headlight serving as back-up light. While I'm not very familiar with the operations on those western reaches, the caption in the book notes that many of the locomotives working the branch lines out of Enid would run in reverse, thus warranting a bonafide headlamp. Therefore, by a degree or two of separation, I think the backup light is perfectly acceptable and desirable. Best Regards,
That's kinda along the lines I was thinking. I'll leave it like it is for now. It's a difficult era to model to say the least. By the way Chris,(off topic) when I was little I remember my baby sitter had an old copy of a Chaffee high school year book. Inside was a photo of students crowded around a Frisco diesel. Ever see that by chance?
Jim - I recall seeing a photo like that when I'd go through the old yearbooks at the H.S. library and public library. I always just wanted to see what type of railroad photos were in the yearbook. Here's a link to a thread with a photo of a caboose, with our very own Tim Cannon on the back. As an aside, I have a couple of the original prints of the 1979 Mogul cover photo from when I was on the yearbook staff c. 1988-1990. Old files, photos, etc. were being purged, and I felt a strong obligation to preserve the Frisco photos. http://www.frisco.org/vb/showthread.php?262-Chaffee-High-School-yearbook- Best Regards,
I decided that after all this work, ol #151 deserves a new top of the line motor and today it arrived! It is smaller than the 20 year old motor that it replaces and I'll have more room in the tender for all the DCC stuff. As a matter of fact I've ordered a flywheel for it. I will mount it with clear silicone bathroom caulk. The shafts will be shortened as much as possible. I will also use Rounhouse arch bar tender trucks which are much better than my homemade wipers on AHM trucks.
Hey Jim, Great choices. A flywheel will completely change the operation of the locomotive. I'm interested to see how you do the "chalk" thing. Keep us in the loop.
Progress report. Today I received my items in the mail: flywheel, shaft bushing and shrink tubing. After measuring and shortening the motor shafts I added the flywheel to the rear and added the bushing (increasing the shaft from 1.5 to 2mm for my driveshaft coupler) to the front shaft followed by adding the driveshaft coupler. I decided to mount the motor with two sided foam tape instead of messy silicone caulk. Here's a photo of how cleanly the install is going. I have much more room inside the tender as a result of upgrading to a higher quality, lower profile motor and the addition of the flywheel adds some more welcome weight and smoother operation. I'll post another photo later showing the decoder and speaker packed into place.
Wow! What a huge performance gain with this new motor and flywheel. Using shrink tubing made the wiring look much better and two sided foam tape helped keep things tucked away in a nice little package. The slow speed control is silky smooth and those Roundhouse all wheel pick up tender trucks turned this locomotive into a stall free machine even through the turnouts. The flywheel does cause the speaker to sit up a tad higher and pushes the tender deck up a bit in the rear but I'll live with it for now. I recommend these Roundhouse trucks to anyone who needs better pick up, especially for DCC use.
Sweet Sound From a Sugar Cube Big night for ol' #151. Today I received two Sugar Cube speakers from Keith ( thank you so much!) and I just had to try one out tonight. Here's a comparison photo. The fist step in replacing my old oval mini speaker with this new cube was to drop the entire model 4' down to a concrete floor. You may wish to skip this step. Next I simply removed the old oval speaker and replaced it with the sugar cube and it fit down into the tender much better and sits lower. You can compare this photo with the one in the previous post to see how much more room the cube allows. It's hard to explain but the fit is better and the cube doesn't have to ride on top of the flywheel. This allows it to sit lower than the oval and now the tender deck sits down where it should. Previously it rode up too high and looked hideous. I think you can see the difference between this photo and the one on the previous post. The sound improvement is very noticeable with much deeper richer tones and crisp effects. Even the bell sounds like a real one pealing. I highly recommend these surprisingly high quality speakers. And by the way, the fall to the floor only knocked off the sand dome, whistle and some piping. It's mechanically sound. Yay for me!
I thought you would like the sound difference. I replaced the exact same oval QSI speakers in two Westside brass locomotives for a gentleman in Arkansas. In the Westside models, the smoke stack is open into the smoke box and the sugar cube speakers fit perfectly beneath the stack in the smoke box. I can't wait to see the look on his face when he hears the difference.
