brian usa

Powered Tender Design I decided to take that small heavy tender that came with my Roco steamer apart today, and have a look at how they designed theirs. I hope that some of the readers here realize that this small size tender was likely a bigger challenge than ones that might be designed for larger tenders on larger steam engines. Here are 2 of those small tenders (3 inches long) supplied with the Roco steamers Before I removed the shell off the chassis, I wanted to do a little pushing test on a piece of 18”radius track to insure myself that it would go thru this tight curve, just as its boiler portion has done. Basically it has sideways shifting axles that shift enough to allow the short wheel-base tender to negotiate the tight curve. Notice that the 2 trucks DO NOT swivel. The shifting axles are enough to allow the tender to negotiate the tight curves,.... (simplicity and a savings of interior space). Lets see whats inside,.. That's a cast metal portion of the tenders body that adds a lot of weight very efficiently right over those driving wheels. BTW, in this case we have both traction tire drivers and plain metal drive wheels,..that's because this tender is designed to run on DC and DCC. If it were a dcc engine only it could be equipped with all traction wheels, as there would be no need to have power pick up in the tender that is getting its motor power from the decoder in the boiler portion. Here are the electrical pick-up strips for DC power to the tenders motor This is a very neat way to cut down on more elaborate gear towers !!,.. And this same concept (non-rotating trucks) could be adapted to slightly longer such tenders, (similar to our current in-line/non-rotating rigid frame mounted driver wheels). Couple of other items; 1) truck frames are just decorative push-ons that could be different for different engines 2) the top portion of the tender shell is detailed plastic glued onto the cast metal portion Creative, intelligent design from Roco. Brian New contributor would like to hear of positives and negatives of this design??