Double-heading Lionel 4-4-2s

While I have not done this, I saw on here a few years ago, where someone wanted to double head postwar steamers. They achieved this by attaching a piece of metal to the front truck, which ran under the pilot and cow catcher. Once it got far enough away to clear, it went up to coupler height, where it had a coupler attached. This way, if he ever wanted to run that engine in front, he just had to switch out the truck.

Did it to a MTH RK 2-8-0 so I could doublehead two locos and a string of hoppers.....

 

Started with a non-op coupler, made a tongue from heavy brass stock, cut and threaded a place for the coupler to fit. Works great! The 4-4-2 may need another solution....but similar. 

The thought never really crossed my mind.  The one reason why the absence of a front coupler hasn't bothered me is that O gauge curves are tight enough for relatively small return loops to take care of "wrong way" coupler scenarios.  With the way the pilots stick out on our sharp curves, I don't think any modification, short of cutting it completely off, would yield any benefit.  The attachment going underneath the pilot is a good idea, though.

Aaron

I was doing a little measuring, and the pilot swings WAY off to the side on O-27 curves.

 

Looks like the way to go will be the "underneath the pilot" route.

No I have not. Good Luck.

 

Something like this-

http://i205.photobucket.com/al...mithnet/100_0064.jpg

       
       


Now that actually looks legitimate!

GRRR, I just got the Chessie Flyer set in the mail yesterday. Turned it over, and saw a CAN MOTOR. It's DC!

 

No double heading for a while anyway, at least not until I can find an AC drive or a different 4-4-2.

There are ways to get around that, with a little modification.

What vintage is the Chessie Flyer set you have?  Just because it has a can motor doesn't automatically mean it's configured to run only with a DC power pack.

 

Virtually all modern O gauge locomotives built within the last 20 + years have can motors; the reason they work with AC transformers are because they are equipped with integrated DCRU boards (explained below) from the factory that rectify the AC power from the track to DC for the motor.

 

A very small handful of late MPC- early LTI era entry-level train sets ran on straight DC, but they were exceptions to the overall rule.  You can buy & install a cheap bridge rectifier from an electronics store like Radio Shack so it will run okay on AC, and even buy a SPDT switch so you can reverse polarity manually to make it change direction.  Or, you can buy an integrated DCRU kit from Dalee or a couple of other similar vendors; the DCRU rectifies the AC to DC,  but also provides direction control via old-school traditional power cycles from the transformer.