Started to PM stuff from the summer.
With warm weather about 'over' I started some 'work' in the basement.
Virginian EL-2A electrics:
The gear box bearings grease was hard so all the gear boxes needed PM.
I did one of the engines when I purchased them last summer.
video test run of all 3 engines in the yard:
Makes enough noise so 'non sound' decoders will being installed plus they will be run 'slower' so noise will reside!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irSUN4bp7V0
Easy disassembly: 6 screws secures the super structure to the frame.
The round bearings on each side of the worm gear were binding with old grease.
Some oil and 'finger nail' cleaning was sufficient.
One gear box had the one corner filed at an angle and it destroyed the head of one of the screws holding the 2 halves of the gear box together. Fortunately, I was able to remove it. I left it 'off' and only secured the gear box with 3 screws: should be 'good enough'.
A new draw bar needed to be made as one of them was broken.
Ready for painting, LED and decoder install.
The throttle linkage had to be re-soldered on this old Tenshodo Big Boy.
It's a model that was hand crafted by one craftsman.
This GN W-1 electric needed to be test run and the screws reattached from the super structure to the frame.
One of the wires got tangled in the gears and destroyed the original universal so a new one was added.
NYC 4-8-4 Niagara from BLI.
The sound would only last about 5 seconds and then the engine would run but no sound.
I figured it was the decoder so sent it to BLI and they sent me a new one.
WELL: the same thing happened. The speaker was defective.
older video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uxcm9uJKc0
I made a schematic of all the connectors for future reference.
A 'sugar cube' speaker was added in this fuzzy picture.
Down loaded all the original data into the new decoder.
Test run:
Had to reverse some passenger cars from last Tuesday's group so I used the Niagara to reverse them while testing the engine.
NYC Hudson's that can pull the NYC passenger cars:
Commodore Vanderbilt, Dreyfuss and Empire Express.
This ACL car has derailed at the same spot the last few times so I checked the gauge and cleaned all the gunk off the wheels (step 1).
Just had railroaders 'over' and, already, a wire break in the rails. That time of year where the humidity is changing and affecting the wood plus the layout is 44 years old. At least it was easy access in the return loop in the laundry room!
The PC was very slow so I IPL'ed it. The PC is isolated and only used for the railroad.
we'll get more space when we hit the lottery haha
