Changing Castle Drivers/tender contacts

[7013]

I have one of the last of the old Castles with the rubber traction tyres, it runs pretty well but it is the age old problem of hesitating over dead frog points. It is not an option to change to electrofrog points as finances dictateI use what I have already.

I have made the points 'live' with the Hornby clips.

I have painted the tyres of the Castle with silver conductive paint.

The above has had some good results but I feel I could improve more as it still hesitates intermittently.

The next thing I thought of doing was to get rid of the centre drivers and exchange them for metal tyred ones, I am not sure how difficult this is to do and would like to hear from anyone who has done it.

Also I thought of adding pickups to the tender, I see ther is a metal and plastic coupling between the tender and body, not sure if the metal coupling is significant? But my plan was to use sprung contacts joined to a srip of PCB and then connected to the appropriate wires in the body ( the ones thatconnect to the left and right pickups in the body. This does seem to be fairly easily do-able (wires from tender through to body not withstanding), but again I would like to hear from anyone who may have done this.

Seems a lot for such a loco but I have a soft spot for this loco as in DC it runs beautifully, it performs very well in its current DCC guise and I would like to overcome the problems if possible.

 

Edit SEE POST 605

[7013]

I am not sure this is in the correct category so I will trust Andy or one of the Mods to change it if need be. Anyway, took the tender to pieces only to find pickups to one side of the loco. (left facing forward) however the pickups do not appear to feed forward to the pickup wires on the body, so my plan to add pickups to the tender seem to be half done? Anyway I am trying to establish which wire feeds which side. I am pretty sure that Red feeds Right facing forward and Black feeds Left again facing forward. Could I add a feed from the Right tender to Right (Red wire) body or would this be asking for trouble? I think it may be a case of changing the drivers. Being DCC has for me queered the pitch somewhat so I am desperate for a bit of guidance.

[7013]

Feel a bit of a fool really, at the time of the original posting I felt that the task ahead of me would be difficult and probably beyond my skills, that is why I threw the net out hoping to catch some ideas/help off the knowledgable folk on RMweb. My first surprise was finding the pickups in the tender although they did not appear to be connected to any of the pickup wires in the body.

So I took the plunge having decided to go down the extra pickups in the tender ( as half the fabrication had been done). I fashioned some pickups out of phosphor bronze and attached them to the tender chassis with superglue and a pin through the pickup, then made sure the pickups were in contact with the wheels and joined them together with wire,

Then turning my attention to the chassis I identified the feeds, it turned out to be the opposite to my second posting! I stripped the chassis to identify the pickup attachments to the body and soldered wire to them, I used Skale electrics wire as it is tiny and two strand, just right for pliability. I passed the wire through the body and attached to the pickup plates in the tender.

Having put everything back together I tested the loco....drat it shorted out, undaunted I reversed the wires in the body and tried again. This time the loco was absolutlely fantastic, no stalling or hesitency on any points and smooth quiet running. i suppose the moral is give it a go, the worst thing that can happen is having to get someone else to sort out ones mess. I am really quite proud of my effort with this loco and have now got a loco that eprforms faultlessly on DCC, Incidently the Castle was 'Bristol Castle' which came out about 2008/9, I subsequently converted it to 5071 'Spitfire'.

I am sorry if it wastes anyones time but I would say give it a go the satisfaction of completing a job like this is immense.