Traintresta

Here is the start of what will probably be the layout I have for the remainder of my days. It's based on ideas from the Miami Downtown Spur and Eastrail concepts plus some scrutinising of Google maps. I haven't yet decided what all the industries will be but I love tank cars so will probably have Sentry Industries and something that requires corn syrup or similar products. Where the loco is disappearing around the corner will be a sector plate with some lines running back towards the aisle, perpendicular to the main run to represent the main where the train would be so that the loco can shuttle back and forth to get the cars. The section in front of the cupboard door slides out to allow access and I will be mounting a backscene and valance on the boards to help produce the right ambiance (and hopefully facilitate night time ops sessions down the line).

So having hacked away at the chassis and added a Dash-2 fuel tank I decided to halt and re-think my approach. I made a bit of a mess of the frame and the tank hangs to low so I have ordered a new frame and will probably use a spare proto GP18 tank I have to fix this up. All i not lost however I will use the bolsters from this to mount Atlas trucks on another Athearn frame for a future project.

End of day update... Fuel tank is piece together from a cut-up Kato SD40 fuel tank from my bits box. It's not completely fitted yet so it looks a bit low.

WHAT? and WHY? I hear you ask... Well, about seven years ago I modified some Stewart C628 trucks for an SDL project as I had found out that they fit under Athearn GP's without any bolster modification, so long as the fuel tank was short enough for them to fit. I had worked out that the long wheelbase needed to be shortened by a scale 2", but that the shorter wheelbase was only a scale half inch out. So I set about modifying some Stewart trucks. The Stewart trucks already had a hole in the truck towers for the first gear that linked the centre axle to the rear axle drive so it was easy enough to do. This being the case it looked as if Stewart used these trucks (or intended to) for a three axle truck with even axle spacing so the holes were pre-set for the switch that just required a different gear set and pick-up strips to keep the wheels at the new spacing. I digress.... years later I came to do the same to an Atlas RSD4/5/ chassis and over time that scale 2" become an actual 2mm in my head, so I set about hacking away before stopping to check the spacing... Long story short I messed up one truck before I realised, and now I have reversed the process. I could, if I wanted to, re-site the axle gear to have all axle drive but I am not going to bother and settle for a 5 axle drive on this model, but I will add pick-ups on all wheels. The point of this model was to use a suitable frame to make an easy modification for the SDL39. It has kind of become a monster of an idea as I built the rear platform on the body (a little too long I think), it interfered with the swing of the rear truck, so I shifted the chassis about 1mm forward. However, the trucks would have looked un-evenly spaced so I toyed with the idea of mounting the Stewart trucks on this chassis as they have slightly more clearance at each end, because the pivot centre is closer to the tower assembly. Instead I chose to modify the Atlas truck to be set-up the same and then re-sited at as far back as I could so that the two trucks are in approximately the same position relative to the pilot frames, but the rear truck is able to swing freely. Here it is in progress. If I ever do another one of these, I will check, before I build the rear platform, that it doesn't interfere with the truck swing because the RSD4/5 chassis is the perfect fit. Scale wise, it has a wheelbase of 30', which is 1' short of the prototype but requires less cutting at the pilots than a GP7/9/18/20 chassis. A proto GP7/9/18/20 chassis would work well with Stewart trucks but there would be a lot more milling involved to cut the fuel tank down and get the shell to fit. You would also loose the benefit of weight inside unless you started with a proto GP30 shell.

I haven't yet decided how I am going to paint this, I am not modelling the Milwaukee Road but I am modelling CSX in Florida, I've just always wanted one of these. I'm tempted to paint it SCL black or freelance it, haven't decided yet.

Well, I was going to buy some scale trains SDL39's, but seeing as though I had collected the parts for making one I thought I'd get on and do it instead. It's fairly well advanced right now so here are some progress photo's. This started with an Athearn RTR GP35 that has been shortened to sit on an Atlas RSD-5 chassis. I was originally modifying the trucks based on some old work I had done to shorten some Stewart Alco trimount trucks until I measured against the side frames to find the longer spaced axles didn't need shortening, so at the minute it sits over the spare Stewart trucks I had. I will actually just get another pair of trucks to use as the Stewart trucks fit under anything that has enough space and will take an Athearn/Proto GP truck so they are slated for another project. The black doors are recovered from a scrap Athearn GP38-2 shell as I made a mess of cutting up the long hood, I also had to replace the radiator grilles, roof and hood end with Cannon & Co parts. The donor shell had a dynamic brake hatch so I made a non-dynamic hatch with more Cannon parts and plasticard, and I also used a Cannon cab as the Athearn one didn't seem to seat right. As you can see there is a little porch at the rear of the long hood, I think mine is slightly longer than that on the prototype, but I like the emphasis on this one-sided feature and I haven't worked from plans,just photo's and a known length between pulling faces. I did manage to squeeze a couple of 10gram weights into the non-dynamic hatch, I'll measure this and see how it compares to my heavy Proto units once I'm in a position to work on the guts. It should run nicely having the reliable Atlas motor and mechanism.

The Chinese motor is unsuitable. It heats up to extremely high temperatures very quickly. The Bachmann motor doesn’t have enough power to move the athearn drivetrain at more than a snails pace. However, with a bit of grinding away at the chassis, the set-up in the image works very well. This is one of those 24v motors from China that resembles what Hornby and Kato use. With it sufficiently low enough in the chassis, there’s now enough room for weight, a speaker and decoder plus the improved running characteristics.

Initial test wasn’t very promising: seemed to start and stop relatively smoothly on the first few runs up and down a test track. It accelerated a bit quickly and went better in one direction but that could be for many reasons. But then it stalled… Got my crocodile clips tangled for about 10 seconds causing a short and after that it ran very poorly by all measures and I touched it immediately after the short and recoiled in horror as I burned my fingers. At least the extreme heat might account for the strange smell?? I gave up for the night after that. More tomorrow.

Quite; I'm stuck between large flywheels and no flywheels...

On the back of some of the comments here, I’ve re-read some of the conversations I’ve had in other threads and I’m left wondering if i even need a flywheel now.

I think there have been several Class 38's, the most recent being a 60 with a powerplant with two fewer cylinders, but otherwise the same in all other respects including overall dimensions. I seem to recall there was a proposed 38 before that but cannot remember the exact format it was going to follow, however, I decided to build one in OO using a class 50 body on a class 37 chassis but gave up and sold it before I painted it.

Always liked these as well, like heavier class 67's.

This works.

It is indeed. It seems to run very smoothly and quietly on test under no load or with flywheels attached but haven’t yet had chance to test it in the full drive. My original intention was to use it like the mashima 1015 sized motors but I want to do some comparisons before I make any decisions. That said, I’ve got ideas about building motor bogies with them if they are any good.

This is all getting very technical.

Is there anything that can be done to fix this or an alternative?

They just haven’t been removed from when it arrived from eBay the other da.

X2f??

Is there a recommended size of flywheel proportionate to the size of the motor it’s attached to? I’m playing about with motors that are smaller than usually provided in our models. Attached is a photo of three motor/flywheel combinations that I want to try in some athearn switchers to see how they perform. I intend to add more weight and will only be switching a few freight cars at a time so I’m not pulling large loads, but the currently uninstalled set-up has flywheels larger than the motor dimensions and I’m wondering if this will be a problem?

I like this very much, for some reason it just looks right to me.

I have pre-ordered two of these as I have always wanted a pair. These should set up my 70's era upper-midwestern branchline layout for power for the foreseeable.

Sometimes these are the best types and I have to say that I for one really like it.

I've seen them a couple of times at Leeds as I was getting the train back to Barnsley, they come through the adjacent platforms and although they are noisy you are right, they sound tremendous, and for that reason alone I like these loco's more than anything else in the modern scene. I don't pay much attention to the modern scene from a modelling point of view but these things have won me over!

I'm in need of some of these gears so now I know where to go!

Here is the GP38-3 I built, the scratch-bashed crescent cab and a freelanced GP. I got rid of everything when I dropped out of US modelling, now I'm back into it.