Early vs. Late Production AF Diesel Motors - PA and GP

Interesting video.

I have a 1952 American Flyer 365 AB Santa Fe. The powered "A" unit is marked 360.
Should this have the small motor or the large motor.
If its the small motor, would it be bushed or unbushed?

How about my 370 Geep?

Great information..thank you! Could you go into some detail about the two different motor yokes and fields? 

CW  -- your 360 and 370 both use the same earlier production armature (XA11445) with smaller winding segments and matching truck.  I am not certain if they came with factory bushings because I'm not exactly sure when they stopped putting them in.  The 360 that came in the 362 AB combination had truck XA11463-RP.  The 360 in the 365 combination and the 370 used truck XA12B065-RP, but I don't know for certain if that one always had bushings or not.  Chances are it does.  Most pre-pullmor small motor diesels that I work on have them.  But if there's one thing I've learned about Gilbert production - refrain from saying always or never.  There were transition periods when all sorts of combinations and the resourceful use of whatever was around at the factory got used, shipped, and sold.  You can check by dropping the side frames and looking at the inner wall where the axles pass through the truck.  You'll see a bushing of different metal than the rest of the truck if they're in there.   Sorry I can't be more definite than that.  I'm a much better S-gauge technician than I am historian.

Stew - early diesel yokes (your photo on the left) were one piece and required you to remove the body/shell, unsolder the connection at the top of the the yoke, and remove either a tiny cotter pin (early production) or lock-ring in order to lower the motor assembly from the frame.  The later production yokes are two pieces.  The inner yoke is screwed to the truck like the early one piece yoke and has recessed field centering screws.  The outer yoke (your photo on the right) is basically a sleeve that slips over the inner yoke with holes near the bottom that slip over the screws that hold the inner yoke to the truck.  That's so you can drop the motor out without taking off the shell, un-soldering the connection at the top, or removing a pin or lock ring.  

Hope that helps.  Thanks.  

Thank you!

Very early 360s had small flange wheels, practically scale wheels. Some of these had red paint on their backsides, which I THINK indicated Zamak wheels.

I don't recall ever reading anything about American Flyer trains having different sized flanges. This was also mentioned in a thread about AF Northerns.

Can anybody explain what American Flyer did with flanges?

I added some more photos of key differences to my web site. 

Diesel and steamer wheels come with low or high or short vs. tall flanges.  The earlier were low for more of true-life look, and later taller for toy value and operation.  Both work well with reasonably good track work.  Then there were Lionel/AF flanges which during one period of production were even taller.  So much so that you can hear them rumble across certain sections of modular track because their edges hit the plastic ties beneath them.  Those are especially prevalent with early production Flyonel GP's.

PS  Good topic for some comparison photos in the future.   Thanks.   

I added some more photos of key differences to my web site. 

When I look at your photos, the captions are overlaid on the pictures, making them very difficult to view. This is on Windows 10 with either IE or the latest Firefox browser.

Click on a photo to bring it fullscreen.

Click on a photo to bring it fullscreen.

Thanks! That clears up the issue for me.

And a big thank you to David horn for posting the pictures.
What a great resource.

Thanks FlyerRich for the assist.  

Glad you like the info CW.  I just added a photo of an original 360 rear side frame.  They didn't have a coupler because they were tow bar connected to a 361 or 364 b-unit depending on whether they were the head end of a 362 or 365 SF PA/PB combination.   

Also for future reference - subtitles on my How-To or Photo Gallery pages usually provide photo enlargement info and/or a link to any related video(s).  For example, "click on photo to enlarge, click here for a video". 

Dave

ACG diesels started out with a nearly-scale wheel flange; I believe these were only used on the first-year production Alcos. These were found to not be reliable on "on the floor" running, and the flange was made "taller." This size flange was used up to about 1956 production. When the seperate "rubber band" traction tires were adopted, an even taller flange was introduced; this is the flange that is currently used on Lionel production. I believe this change was made due to the sharper curves of the new Pikemaster track. The GP engines were developed after the Alcos; I don't believe any of them had the "scale" flanges, but I can't confirm that! The Steamers too, had flange changes, and driver diameter changes. When the new Pull-more wheels were adopted, the wheel diameter was slightly larger. If you mix & match non-pullmore drivers with pull-more drivers, you engine will sit sloped or even rock on the track (if you have one non & one later on the same axle). The motor mount on the chassis was modified to clear the larger wheels. Again, about 1956 the flange was made taller: I have seen these on metal drivers as well as the later "rubber band" pull-more drivers. The plastic drivers all have the taller flanges.

The diesel armatures made by LTI, are they compatible with the armatures made by Flyer? I need an armature. I came across one of the LTI armatures and aside from the plastic gears they apppear to be similar. Hard to tell from a picture. 

The armatures are, the fields are not. Fields are double wound, which is how the early electronic reverse units worked.

Sgaugian posted:

 I just added a photo of an original 360 rear side frame.  They didn't have a coupler because they were tow bar connected to a 361 or 364 b-unit depending on whether they were the head end of a 362 or 365 SF PA/PB combination.   

Dave

Dave,

I have a 360/364 set in excellent condition, little wear, but has link couplers connecting the 2 units instead of a tow bar. Could this be original or do you think someone added the couplered sideframes possibly as a repair for a broken tow bar?

David H. I'm on dial-up so I don't get to other sites easily, but today I did look at your pictures, your examples of link coupler vs knuckle coupler side frames is incorrect; the coupler-equipped link sideframe is actually a KC sideframe set missing it's slider shoe & box. Also your "early vs late" wheel picture is actually just mid-wheels, from the same axle sets, I believe. Just some corrections I thought you might want to make. Rich, yes, quite likely that was done "back in the day" when parts were readily available, all one would need is the coupler adapter to screw onto the sideframe units. The drawbar, while prototypical was a bit cumbersome for play use.

David D.  Thanks for using up precious bandwidth to visit my web site.  I'm not sure, however, which photos you're referring to.  If it was those on this page about Early vs. late AF diesels open-frame motors then I apologize for any confusion they created for you because I don't mention or have any examples of link coupler vs knuckle coupler side frames.  The first photo of 360 vs 470 side frames includes a note that the KC shown on the left for the 360 is not original (i.e. not a rear 360 side frame).  The photo after that one is of a rear 360 side frame.  It is annotated accordingly in terms of the tow bar, etc.  I'm not sure where you picked up on link couplers.  Perhaps you are referring to a different page or set of photos?  If so, please let me know.  I'm always open to corrections, learning, and better information from those who have it.  Thanks.  In terms of the early vs. late wheels photo on that page, I'm not sure what you mean by mid-wheels, from the same axle sets, but I'm open to understanding that as well.  In the meantime, the solid metal (brass) wheels on the left are from an early black-truck 360 and the two pullmor wheels shown are from a 372 -- good examples as far as I know of early (pre-pullmor) vs late (pullmor) AF diesel wheels.  Of course metal wheels are also present on later production diesels -- not every wheel was or can be pullmor -- metal wheels are needed to pick-up power from the tracks.  Thanks.  

To avoid potentially similar confusion by other readers or web site visitors in the future I will replace the photo of the 360 vs 470 with one that doesn't show a KC at all on the left (360) side.  Thanks for the notion to do so.  

Dave

FlyerRich,

Your 360/364 combination or 365 would have originally come tow-bar connected, but as was pointed out, the tow bar soon frustrated many users (and still does today), so plenty of such PA/PB combinations were outfitted with a link or knuckle coupler connection between them instead.   

Dave

HI Dave, Well, I know it's my fault for living "in the boonies" where we have no cell phone coverage, nor cable, so I'm stuck with 33K dial-up; it took me about 20 minutes to view your site--at least I could view it, many I cannot--like Facebook. I may have misunderstood your description of the 360/470 comparison pics, I thought your description was saying that just the KC coupler on the frame was wrong. I'm surprised at the high flange on the wheels you show, as usually the black-chassis wheels are the early nearly scale flanged wheels. I wish my stuff wasn't buried in boxes in storage so I could give you pics to post. I consider the wheels between the scale flange and the tall flange of late production as "mid-flange" wheels--I haven't seen this documented much elsewhere, so I developed my own "name" for them; I suppose they could be called "Type I, Type II and Type III." I would even suspect that "back in the day" repair stations may have replaced the very low flanged wheels with the "mid-flanged" wheels when customers complained of derailments, though I've never heard of this being documented, like the pinned drivers of the '46/'47 production steamers. It's fun to try to figure out the changes in production as ACG tweaked the designs. I have one diesel brush holder that is molded plastic instead of the stacked fiber pieces. I would imagine these failed when the motors got hot. The Pull-More wheels are the primary reason ACG added the sliders to the diesel sideframes; they needed at least two pickup points to be able to run through switches and crossovers. Two pickup points also provided more reliability and fewer reverse unit accidental activations.