Atlas O 0-6-0 Steam Switcher Questions - and Learning

I spent a little time this evening tinkering and starting to dig into this engine.  The tender actually ended up coming apart more easily than I was initially afraid of.  And I discovered that what I thought was adhesive was just a little "goo" that had bled into the joint between the shell of the tender and the frame from foam strips attached to the inner lower edge of the shell.  So the tender is apart and I'm able to take stock of what's inside.

The engine is being a little more challenging.  I removed two screws beneath the cab and one under the cylinder saddle and the lower part of the engine seemed to come loose.  The cylinder end is totally free but something is hanging up getting the motor end out of the firebox.  It only seems to pull out about 1/4" before hanging up.  After trying various ways of tilting and wiggling it I decided to set it down and come back to it later.

If anyone has any hints for whatever is binding up the motor end from coming out of the firebox I'd be interested to know!

So I've done some more tinkering and reached a breakthrough...  The secret to getting the engines apart and the motor out of the firebox area is the two ashpan pieces on the bottom edge of both sides of the firebox.  I eventually figured out that these are not cast solid with the sides of the firebox, and are actually just a firm press fit.  Each of the ashpan sides has two pins, and there are two matching holes on the inside of the firebox sides they press in to.  They can be gently, but firmly pulled off, and afterwards the lower chassis and motor separate easily.  Below is a picture showing one of the ashpan sides in place, and the press fit holes on the other side where the ashpan is removed.

I've found that when I run into one like this, setting it aside for a spell and coming back to it usually results in progress.  There are also many times where just the trim where railings or piping come through the shell block the chassis from separating.  You just have to look for them and deal with them once you figure out what is holding up the works.  On larger articulated models, many times the front articulated power truck has to come off first.

I too have one of these steamers. She runs very well at low speeds as a switcher should. I would like to dead rail it in the future. This loco has been dormant in its box since moving to new home and in-progress layout. There is not much info on this loco. Please keep us posted. Jim at Atlas’ parts dept. may have info if you can get to him. He has always helped me in the past.

Keep us posted. John’s advice (above) is dead on.

Larry

I've picked this engine up and set it down a number of times so far, and I definitely believe in the idea of stepping away from something like this when I seem to reach a dead end or frustration starts to set in...  I'd much rather take my time and come back with a fresh mind than end up breaking something.  At the same time I enjoy a good challenge sometimes, and this seemed like a good one to tinker with and see if I could improve some of the functional weaknesses these have...

When I ran it a few times after receiving it I was definitely impressed with how smooth and nice it ran including slowly.  But it's weaknesses were readily apparent too...  The tether / drawbar arrangement, less than impressive sounds, and it also seemed like the tender trucks were really stiff to swivel and turn.   These are all things I'm looking at trying to improve upon.  The disassembly process has been really interesting so far, seeing exactly how these are put together.  I did a lot of searching thinking someone has surely done a writeup or video of upgrading these and fixing some of their problems, but was surprised I was able to find relatively little about these in that regard.

So one of the things I'm looking at is an electronics upgrade, most likely with current ERR parts such as the Cruise Commander and Railsounds.  One of the other things I'm looking at is using the Chuff Generator and Super Chuffer from Hennings and John.

Examining the motor closer I was impressed to see that the flywheel has the tach stripes machined right on it as shown in the picture below.  The black stripes are recessed slightly from the OD of the flywheel and painted black.  A black plastic band is clamped around the motor which held the original flywheel tach sensor.  As it turns out the Chuff Generator fits within this sensor holder like the original sensor did, though it'll have to be repositioned a bit.

So now for the question I hope John can answer...  The tach tape provided with the Chuff Generator has stripes that are about 0.100" wide, compared to the stripes on the flywheel which are about 0.050" wide.  Will the Chuff Generator work with the narrower stripes on the flywheel or does is it need the wider stripes to work?

No sweat at all, the C-G is very tolerant of different sized stripes.  As long as it can recognize the difference between the black strip and the "white" space, it's happy.  I use an optical sensor that's almost the same specification as the one that MTH and TAS use for their cruise systems.

Looks like you’re into it big time. How much room you got under the “hood”? I wish to put Kadee couplers on it. There were 2 rail versions of this loco but no detailed diagrams available. I need to see if some parts are still available.
Larry

John - Appreciate the reply and answering that question...  It's good to know that the Chuff Generator should be able to use the existing flywheel.

Larry - There are some parts available for these on the Atlas website O Master Locomotive Spare Parts, O Scale Locomotive Spare Parts | Atlas Model Railroad (atlasrr.com) .  I looked around just to see what they might have before starting to take things apart.  As for room, it's pretty tight as you might imagine...

Getting the ERR boards into the tender is going to be a pretty tight fit.  So far though it appears that a Cruise Commander will fit if located so that it's under the raised coal bunker.  I don't think there's enough vertical height to stack the Railsounds board on top though.  I'm thinking that will have to be behind the Cruise Commander but will have to be laid flat or nearly so since it appears to be just a hair too tall to clear the tender shell if stood on its side.  This then makes it a challenge to fit the included speaker from the ERR Railsounds kit in the rear of the tender...  I've been looking around at some alternative speakers such as oval / rectangular that could allow a little more room.  Vertical clearance is tight in the rear of the tender as well because of the switches in the water hatch which I'd like to retain, and also a cast in square post that served as the mount for the original volume pot.  Without the volume pot, there's only about 1/2" to maybe about 0.600" vertical space below the switches.

Everything is snug in the engine too...  Of course the front end is filled with the smoke unit.  The unit is set behind the stack with a plastic piece attached to the smoke unit outlet over to the bottom of the stack.  The smoke unit control board was located in the smokebox approximately as shown in the picture.  Just behind the smoke unit you'll notice a mounting post which is where another board was mounted that provided the power for the cab and firebox lights.  I'm continuing to study this but as of now my thinking is to re-use the existing smoke unit and put the Super Chuffer board either in the smokebox, or behind the smoke unit below the steam dome.  It's definitely nice that the Super Chuffer board is more compact than the existing board.  One interesting thing to note is that the boiler bottom trim piece is actually attached to the smoke unit itself at the two holes to the left of the fan motor - it's not attached anywhere else.

You can obviously trim off the screw holes on the sound board holder, that helps a little.

For speakers, check with Digikey, they have a decent assortment.  I narrowed down the search as to size, power, and impedance.  You will have to further narrow it down to the exact diameter and height you need as I can't do that.

8 Ohm Small Speakers at Digikey

Appreciate the suggestion John...  Digikey does indeed have a wide variety of speakers to choose from.  I did a lot of exploring there and ended up looking at some of the rectangular / oval speakers, and ordered a few to try out:

CMS-402811-28SP, SC400308-1, and SC400608-1

I rigged up a little test to get power to the Cruise Commander and the Railsounds Commander boards so I could test each speaker against the one that came with the Railsounds Commander kit and sample the various sounds - chuffs, whistle, bell, crew / tower talk, etc.  After doing so I was pretty surprised with how good all 3 of these speakers sounded, and to my ears each was at least as good as the speaker from the Railsounds Commander kit, and maybe even slightly better.  And each was an improvement over the original speaker which didn't impress me much at all when I ran it a few times.

Remember, putting the baffle on the RS Commander speaker will be like nite and day, it'll sound MUCH better with the baffle!

For small tenders, I've had really good luck with Soundtraxx 27 mm (1.06") round "High Bass" speakers with enclosures (enclosure sold separately).  The HO guys use these with DCC sound systems and the sound (with enclosure) is really good.  Here's one of mine in a small tender from a 3rd Rail H6sb 2-8-0.

I thought I'd share a little more of what I've been up to on this...  I followed the advice John and Bob gave in the previous couple posts and did a little more experimenting.  This meant buying a few more speakers to test, and baffles, putting them in the tender with the shell on top, and seeing what I thought of them compared to the RS Commander speaker and baffle (which does indeed improve the sound) even if it's a little too big for this project.  Overall the baffle didn't seem to make too much difference with the oval speaker I was leaning toward previously.  I think the one I'm going to go with is the same as Bob recommended though it isn't Sountraxx brand - but is 27mm diameter with baffle and looks like it's probably the same speaker.  The most interesting speaker I tested, and probably my second place choice was one from Scale Sound Systems.  The speaker was one from their "Full Force Range" of Steam Series Speakers.

After settling on a speaker I turned my attention to the tender frame.  I wanted to get rid of the raised lip where the original speaker attached to, the mounting lugs for the original TAS boards, and fully flatten out the area in front of the speaker.  I did this with an endmill in my drill press and also located and drilled the mounting hole for the Cruise Commander.  The result is shown in the pictures below.

In the midst of all this I kept trying to figure out how to get the light out of the headlight on the engine since I wanted to swap that out too.  I didn't care for the colored LED and for my taste would rather have a warm white LED instead.  Eventually I figured out that the headlight on these engines is simply a press fit on top of the smokebox - gently pressing up on the hood over the lens will pop it loose.  This also exposes the screw that holds the smokebox front in place which will make it easier to work in that area and verify the smoke unit is properly aligned after it goes back in.

Hey there CCT, how is your project going? Have you got her up and running? I sure appreciate you sharing the journey. I found the parts at Atlas to convert the 3-rail couplers to scale. Just have to terminate the wires going to the removed couplers. I feel I have a challenge adding a battery pack to the tender along with a DCC receiver and Controller. But after removing the TMCC hardware there’s a good chance it can work.

Larry

Larry - the project is definitely still "in the works" you could say, and I've been tinkering with it a little off and on...  I actually did a little testing on the bench on curved track sections to get an idea of how the reconfigured tether(s) look like they'll work.  It looks like I'm going to stick with the same basic concept as the original, that is the two sets of wires on either side of the drawbar from the engine up to the common plug on the bottom of the tender.  I'm going to use more flexible wire though, and also think I'll use woven mesh wrapping on them instead of heat shrink tubing.  All of this combined with the fact that I'm going to have fewer wires than the original 14 will make the tether more flexible.  I had to order different connectors and an appropriate crimper which I didn't have before to create the new tether.  With the realization that the headlights come off as easy as they do, I'm also considering changing to the CB&Q style "cuckoo clock" lights and am on the verge of placing an order with Precision Scale to get those.  Lastly I'm waiting on some new ring terminals to arrive for the electrical pickups on the tender trucks so I can rewire those with more flexible wire as well.  The original wires seemed a little stiff and the trucks didn't seem to swivel as well I'd like, so I figured why not go ahead and try to improve that while I'm at all of this.  Hopefully in the next couple weeks or so I'll have more progess and some pictures to share of how things are going together.

being a CB&Q modeler I also have the Atlas 0-6-0. I've been following your work and contemplating on doing the mods you are working on.  Looking forward to seeing more as you progress and adding the cuckoo clock head light is a great idea. 

Thanks CCT. I have a UP model. Thanks to CCT, taking things apart is straight forward.

Interestingly, my loco did not have the ash pen pieces nor any provision fo them. The motor side dropped out freely. I terminated the coupler wires to get them out of the way for installing the scale pilot/coupler.

Hello All - I finally have a little update on this project after being able to make some progress, focusing on getting the tender put together at this point.  And as far as I know, it's complete as of tonight unless testing with the locomotive attached reveals the need to open it back up and troubleshoot anything. 

I mentioned previously I thought the trucks turned really stiff and couple be improved upon.  The wires passed from the trucks through holes in the bottom of the tender in pretty close proximity which didn't give much room to flex, and the wire was pretty stiff to begin with.  I finally received the little crimp style ring terminals (2.5mm and 3mm) I wanted so along with the high flex wire I ordered was able to assemble the new leads for the trucks.  While tinkering with this I decided to re-route the way the wires went from the trucks into the holes in the bottom of the tender.  Originally the wires from both trucks were attached such that they "pointed" toward the middle of the tender.  What I especially didn't like was how the power leads from the pickup rollers were bent back flat on themselves towards the center of the trucks and then up into the holes in the bottom of the tender.  I decided to do something similar to what was done with the wires from the rear coupler, which were sandwiched between the bottom of the tender and the tender frame, through small notches in the frame.  As a note the bottom frame piece is removable with 4 screws that are visible once the trucks are detached.  I added additional notches for the power and ground leads in the frame and routed the wires accordingly.  The pictures below are the result...  The trucks do seem to swivel a little more freely, and I like that this avoids any "pinched" bends in the wires. 

Below is how the inside of the tender turned out with the new Cruise Commander all installed and wired in, along with the Railsounds board and new speaker / enclosure.  The speaker is just attached with hot glue since that was the most straightforward. 

You can't see it in the picture, but the Railsounds board is mounted on two spacers about 1/8" thick on both ends leaving an open gap beneath in the center.  This is where the leads from rear truck and coupler come up through the bottom of the tender, coming out toward the Cruise Commander board.  The two switches under the water hatch that were retained are the Run / Program switch and the smoke On / Off switch.  For the moment I've retained the original light on the tender, but did replace the original "orange" looking LED with a warm white Evans LED.  The leads from the front truck come up through the bottom of the tender about in the middle of the Cruise Commander board.  To keep them from touching contacting the board I did install a little upside down "U" channel to bring the wires out to the side of the board.

I junked the original header connector at the front of the tender with a Digikey SBH21-NBPN-D07-RA-BK (https://www.digikey.com/short/8pd0qn84) .  What I liked about this is that it had the pins bent at 90° on the inside.  The original was just a straight connector with the wires bent over sharply to clear the bottom of the tender deck.  The connector slides into a bracket that holds it in place in the tender, which you can see attached with the two little brass screws.  With a little sanding on both ends of the new connector it fit nicely into this original bracket so I was able to reuse it. Though this is a 14 pin connector patterned after the original, I'm only using the outside pins - 4 on the right side, and 5 on the left, leaving the center pins unused.  Based on a little tinkering I did before, leaving the center pins empty will reduce the interference where the drawbar attaches to the front truck.

My only regret is that I couldn't quite figure out how to squeeze in either a 9V battery or the "Your Last Battery" equivalent, so I hope that won't end up being a significant issue.  I don't suppose anyone knows if there's an ultra compact alternative to either of these out there that I'm not aware of? 

When it was all back together I put the tender on the track for just a quick test...  I was able to program it to the desired engine ID number, hear the sounds (except the chuffs of course), open the rear coupler, and turn on the rear headlight when put in reverse. 

Now the fun will begin with trying to squeeze everything into the engine itself!  Looking back I want to thank Mainliner for attaching his picture of the "as built" internal wiring of the engine...  That helps me remember how some of the wires were routed in that rats nest since this has turned into somewhat of a long term project!

Looks like you’re having fun. I have to get back to mine. I did put Kadee  ouplers on mine. I want to go battery powered on mine. Will post when the time comes. Thanks for sharing your endeavor!
Larry

Did you get a scale pilot for the engine?

So this ended up taking a little longer than I expected to give another update - there's no doubt this little engine has tried my patience and been frustrating at times No I haven't put a scale pilot on the engine, and with all of the other challenges I decided not to try to figure out how to mount one of the CB&Q Cuckoo clock headlights - at least not yet.  My focus has been on just trying to get the engine back together and fully operational again, and then I can tinker with some of the smaller details a little more leisurely. 

First, the tether...  that darn wire tether between the engine and tender...  Playing around with the chassis and tender on some curved track on the bench I really thought it looked like the tether I described previously would be enough more flexible between not having as many wires, and using more flexible wires.  As I got further into it though it I realized that wasn't going to be the case so it was back to the drawing board.  What I ended up doing was scrapping the idea of having the two sided tether go back to one common plug...  After all, the wires come out of the engine on either side of the drawbar, so why not just keep them separate?  So, the new direction is shown in the pictures below, with two connectors mounted on top of the tender frame and below the tender deck.  I had to cut two holes in the bottom of the front of the tank, but overall I think the connections ended up being pretty inconspicuous.  And, the two tethers are able to droop down and to the either side of the drawbar when connected, and doesn't pinch or bind on the drawbar like the original.

Some additional details on the tethers themselves...  You can see how I bundled the wires together with occasional rings of shrink tubing to help keep them neat and tidy.  I also applied some epoxy which I have yet to paint black to reinforce where the wires emerge from the connectors, and also give them a permanent downward angle.  One of the things I continued to struggle with was what to cover the wires with that would conceal them but yet also be nice and flexible - and hopefully have an appearance somewhat similar to hoses.  The black braided covering is actually a chunk of shoelace with the inner strands removed.  This is really nice and flexible, and really doesn't contribute any stiffness to the tethers beyond what the wires themselves do.  I shrunk on a little shrink tubing on both ends to help keep the ends tidy. 

The super chuffer is small enough that it was able to fit into the smokebox.  Below shows how I created a little "shelf" on the backside of the smokebox front, super glued in to place, which I could then attach the super chuffer with double sided mounting tape.

I soldered the wires on to the board with it just outside the smokebox, and there was enough room to bend the wires over without pinching when the front and board were inserted during final assembly.

Another thing I noticed that needed a little attention was the interface of the smoke unit with the bottom of the stack.  The picture below shows the bottom of the stack, and the extension piece on the TAS smoke unit that's supposed to mate with it.  Which of course it didn't quite...  The hole in the top of the extension piece had to be shaved to one side just slightly so that it would actually push over the bottom of the stack - and hopefully prevent smoke fluid from wanting to leak around it and making a mess in the smokebox.  One other thing to note is that I did have to replace the resistor with one of the correct value per the instructions with the super chuffer.

In case anyone is curious I thought I'd also include a couple pictures of the gearbox these engines have...  In this regard these appear to be really well made.  I was especially intrigued by the two little balls on either end of the upper shaft to keep it centered with a minimum of friction.  I was definitely careful not to lose either of those through all of this!

Needless to say, final assembly was a challenge no matter how hard I tried to keep things as neat and tidy as possible...  There just ends up being a lot of wires squeezed in above the gearbox and above the motor, while trying not to pinch anything along the way.  Even though the chuff generator board was installed in the same location as the TAS board, I ended up having to take the engine apart several times due to "something", somehow, pushing the board out of position enough when assembled to throw the tach sensor spacing off so that it would either work erratically or not at all.  I didn't think to capture a picture, but I ended up discarding the original tach sensor mount so I could offset the chuff generator location about 45 degrees to one side.  After I did this and reassembled the engine, the chuff generator finally worked.  I'm definitely not going to EVER take the boiler back off of this engine again unless I have a very compelling need to do so!

At the end of the day though, I was finally able to see the engine operate on the test stand, and have take a few loops on my carpet central layout.  I'll give it some more run time to make sure it's really going to continue to run well before I reinstall the remaining detail pieces, and look into blackening the wheels and rods to get rid of their shine.  This has been an interesting project for sure and took a lot more time than I originally thought, but it is nice to see it run again!

I have got to get one of those test stands

Lookin' good!  Just FYI, they always take longer than you think they will!

I love your clever use of shoelaces to disguise the tether wires, very creative! 

I have used the braided cable cover, but I think the shoelaces are even more flexible, I would have never thought of those.

I appreciate the compliments - so thanks everyone!  And an extra thanks to John since he entertained some questions while I was figuring out the chuff generator difficulties.  No doubt the test stand became pretty much a must have for this project.  I didn't have one when I started this, but decided to get one about halfway through...  For sure being able to have the engine running with the boiler off and laying beside it was very helpful while getting the final bugs out of it.

I tried several different styles of the braided cable covering before I ended up coming up with the shoelace idea and had high hopes one of them would be just the ticket - but all just seemed to be a little too stiff.  I was starting to wonder if I was going to be able to find anything I'd be happy with until I thought of the shoelace idea while putting on my shoes one morning.  The shoelaces are a little tricky in that once you cut them they love to unravel really quickly.  What I ended up doing to deal with that was using the soldering iron to very lightly melt a ring where I wanted to cut the shoe lace, and then cutting just to one side of it.  Being slightly melted kept the loose ends from fraying and totally coming apart.

One other thing I forgot to mention that I did was to replace the red LED firebox light.  The original used a board mounted in the top of the boiler to get the 3 volts for the original LED, which was mounted to the engine frame behind the motor on a tiny little board to locate it behind the firebox door.  To replace that complicated setup I used an Evans self regulating LED because of its compact size, which is mounted entirely on the boiler and not attached to the engine frame at all.

I just acquired one of these and love it mostly. The TMCC was already upgraded to an ERR unit.   It only has the smoke of/off and Prog/Run switches now.  It still has the original style tether and it almost takes 2 people to assemble the tether and draw bar.  I agree the tender wheels may be a little stiff from the wires. I may work on that, but they work on my 36 curves for now.

The one problem I am having is the engines front pickup.   It keeps shorting against the frame.  It runs well until a bump or jolt on the track and it stops.  Even lightly sticks/welds to the frame.   What do I do? Get smaller pickup rollers, grind the frame a little, Use liquid tape on the frame to insulate?   I have a feeling it was primarily designed for 2 rail and the 3 rail clearance is a little tight.

How about something like some Kapton tape to insulate the frame?

Very cool upgrade I may have to do something similar in the future with the one I just picked up one also in very good shape. Just a upgrade tether would make a difference 😅. One question for John I haven’t really found a definite answer yet but with the TAS EOB could the super-chuffer be installed to control the fan motor or is the EOB creating the chuff and there’s no way to tap into that?

It all depends on where the chuff is generated.  The Super-Chuffer needs  chuff signal to operate, normally that's either a chuff switch or the Chuff-Generator.  Some TAS boards generate the chuff internally and have no discrete chuff signal, so there's no easy way to tap into the chuff signal.  Other TAS installations use a traditional chuff switch and would work like any other TMCC installation.

Thanks for the clarification John. I’m pretty sure this one the EOB board crests the chuff so I may have to wait until I get the bug to completely gut it and put in ERR with a Chuff Generator a Super-Chuffer

Zachariah - assuming your Atlas O 0-6-0 is made the same as mine, it does come with a TAS tach board mounted on the motor to generate the chuff signal.  I didn't get a picture of this original mounted on the motor, but in the 7th message from the top of this thread you can see the plactic band clamped around the motor that the original TAS tach board was mounted in. 

One thing I did wonder about later on was whether or not the original TAS tach board could have been reused in conjunction with the new super chuffer? 

As for the shorting issue with the front pickup I haven't noticed that as a problem on mine yet...  The tape would be a good idea to try to address that - or maybe the alignment of the roller is just a little askew?  I'd have to flip mine over again to remember exactly what the mounting looks like...

@CCTSteam posted:

One thing I did wonder about later on was whether or not the original TAS tach board could have been reused in conjunction with the new super chuffer?

If you're talking about using this in place of the Chuff-Generator, the answer is no.  The TAS tach reader just outputs a pulse for each stripe.  The Chuff-Generator is a microprocessor based board that you program the number of chuffs per driver rev, so the flywheel will typically rotate four or five times for each output pulse, many stripes will go by.

John - that makes sense, and it's good to know the difference between the two in how they operated.  I'm far from an expert, and even less so when it comes to the finer points of how the TAS electronics were set up to work.  Thanks!

I have the 2-rail version of this loco, and I'm happy with it. The only thing I would change is changing the smoke unit so that it puffs in sync with the chuf sound. As delivered (at least the2-rail version) the smoke is just a weak continuous stream, no puffing. Any suggestions?

Who made the control board Jay?

Larry

@lionel1946 posted:

I have the 2-rail version of this loco, and I'm happy with it. The only thing I would change is changing the smoke unit so that it puffs in sync with the chuf sound. As delivered (at least the2-rail version) the smoke is just a weak continuous stream, no puffing. Any suggestions?

I'm thinking the 2-rail version has QSI electronics and the Seuthe smoke unit, it won't smoke you out of the room.  Look down the stack, if you see a little rod in the center of the smoke unit, that's the Seuthe smoker.  A weak continuous stream perfectly describes how it operates.