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The Mechanical department completed a major maintenance project on the locomotives over the past weekend. Here's a brief list: - PRR Pacific 838 AKA "Speedy" has been performing intermittantly for the first time since mechanical acceptance, Dec 25, 2013. No major work has been done to her, so we brought her in and checked her out. First thing we noticed was a disctint bind when the loco was jacked up and the drivers allowed to run free. Removal of the side rod on the engineer's side revealed a minor slip of the driver resulting in slight out of quarter binding. This was remedied by carefully pushing down on the wheel and rotating it back in to position. I did not attempt to loosen the screw. With the wheel back in position, I also took a moment to make the side rod holes slotted using a dremel tool. When I reinstalled the side rod, I noted a slight bind still. So I checked the fireman's side and sure enough, that driver was also out of quarter. I expect this was a result of Luke and I pushing Speedy maybe a little to hard and got that rear driver set out of quarter. I also slotted the side rod on the engineer side. Finally, I cleaned the wheels using alcohol and a q tip. Bench testing showed the loco motor would spin starting at about 5-6 / 100% on the REVO. Ran nice and smooth, no discernable bind. Will keep an eye out for futher wheel slips. - ATSF 1966 aka Strasburg 90: This connie has been a workhorse for us, and I needed to clean her wheels. Man, she runs good. - USATC 610 aka Army 610: This connie used to run great, but somehow, it doesn't run as well anymore. I cleaned the wheels really good, but they weren't dirty. Placed on the test track, poor performance. Back on the bench (aligator clips to tender wheels for power pick up), no problem. Light bulb! Checked the motor board where the ribbon cable from the tender connects. Sure enough, the farthest two wires were disconnected. Also noted a crack in the fireman's side step on the tender. I suspect a major wreck caused both the wire to come off and the step to crack. Repaired the wires by soldering them, check it out on Sunday, worked like a champ again. It is worth noting that both connies run silky smooth. Great locomotives! - Millersvillanova mallet 3177: I have been unsuccessful in securing a new crankpin for the mallet #2 driver, fireman side, so I borrowed a crankpin out of the out of service New Haven mikado. I have been thinking about how to address the loss of supply of these pins, not that you ever really need them until they fall out. I wonder if it would be better to get a threaded hex head screw to match the screws and the machine a nut down to fit in the siderod? Or to have hex head screws cut to length. Either way, it does not strike me as a cheap solution. Stay tuned. 3177's 2k2 sound board died, and I need to send that to Phoenix for a new P8. - Luke #5: This Kalamazoo engine I repainted for Luke was running great one day, then it picked a switch when no one was looking. It must have sat for a little while before Luke got her shut down. By then, I feared we'd stripped the gears (since the engine couldn't pull anything other than the tender after that). I called up Phil Jenson at Hartland, and he sent me a couple of new axles with gears on them. I also bought a new Hartland headlight assembly and bracket. Now, this is an old school G scale motor block. It's split lengthwise, and the motor gets power direct from two brass strips. I have isolated these so that the motor is controlled by the REVO in the tender. But, there's no room for wires for the headlight coming from the output (in the tender). SO, I just wired the headlight direct to the power pick ups. (Darn it. I just checked with Phil, and he said it is a 12v light bulb. Darn it!) So, now I have to figure out if I want to try and find a 24 v light bulb that will fit or can I put in a 12V resistor in parallel with the light? I wonder if a LGB 18v smoke unit in series would work? Anyone have any experience? Next up is FA-1 0401, New Haven DER-1, which has some sort of weird short when it runs forward. Once I fix that engine, all locomotives will be mechanically acceptable.

Hi all. Two updates here. Over the weekend, I installed the aristocraft Revolution in an old Kalamazoo 4-4-0 and installed one of their new recievers with sound in an old FA. FA: I had already wired this locomotive for Revolution, and had recently removed a Phoenix 2k2 board. One of the original Revo recievers was still in place, and I simply removed it, along with the 6-capacitor board. I inserted the new reciever, and hooked up the speaker wire. Now, on this specific FA, I am driving both the A and B units with a single reciever, along with two speakers. I fired up the engine without the B unit first, and the sound was simple and worked as expected. Longer running on the mainlines with both units hooked up and full volume resulted in some choppiness to the sound. WHen I reduced the volume, this seemed to go away, or maybe I couldn't hear it anymore. EIther way, I'm satisfied with the new unit and I like that I no longer need to add an external 6 cap board. There are two caps on the new revo. This is for getting over the minor disruptions between the track and the reciever. The only thing I really would like them to change is the horn. It blows a set number of toots, 5, and I'd rather be able to control how long the horn blows. But, that's a minor thing. I kind of like that my son can't hold the button down for lap after lap after lap!! 4-4-0: This was more tricky. I had to disassemble the entire locomotive and motor block. There is a brass contactor bus bar that is used to power the motor directly from the rails. I cut the pieces of the brass that connect to the motor. THen, I drilled holes through the step in the cab for a 4 wire connector to go through. The motor got two wires and the power pick up got two wires. I haven't wired up the headlight yet, but eventually I suppose that I will. It might have been better if I had used some sort of slip on connectors, but I simply soldered the wires to the motor. The power pick ups each were soldered as well. The sound and control went in the tender. I used the non-plug and play board (with screw terminals) that came with the new REVO installed in the FA. I also had to use a PWC to Linear board to make the Sierra sound system work. Because there's not much room in the tender, I used Duct tape to hold everthing in position until I could get the cover back on. I'm using a reed switch for the chuff, and that's located on the lead tender truck. The 4-4-0's motor (made in USA!) is rated for 12v. Since I run track power (24v), I've limited the maximum on the Revo transmitter to 50. At this setting, the maximum voltage output is 12v, so we should be OK. Might be a little too slow for Luke, but I'll tell him the real 4-4-0s didn't go that fast, anyway. Modifications to the 4-4-0: - New lead truck from Hartland. - Replaced original small plastic tender wheels with bachmann metal wheels. - Modify the drawbar slightly. It was too high and the rear drivers were barely making contact with the track. - Because of the reed switch, I ended up putting washers under the bolsters so that the truck can swing freely. - New spoked drive wheels from HLW. - New straight stack (coal fired locomotive) - All new blue and silver paint scheme. My son turns 5 on Friday and he wanted a blue steam engine. I got it working late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and am now just finalizing the paint details. I will have photos and perhaps videos to post after this weekend. I'm hopeful that he likes it.