MTH Drawbar Change

I change all my MTH drawbars to shorten the gap.  No  big deal, if you have a service shop near by, you might be able to purchase just the one piece  you need. I purchased the pack of three, there might be two different packs available. 

They are held on by a shouldered screw to the engine just like most drawbars.

Just note the order of the insulating plastic and spring. Rather than use the insulating plastic on my replacements I cover the exposed circuit at the end with a dab of 5 minute epoxy. Eliminates the possibilty of the plastic rotating and uncovering the circuit and shorting to the trailing truck. Make sure there is enough slack in the wires coming from the engine so the drawbar can swing freely side to side. Many times its the lack of this slack that disconnects the connector on the engine side.

Pete

Its a pet peeve of mine as well. Beautiful scale models with a horrendously large gap. I've to date, shortened the gap on all my scale steamers from MTH, and if I can do it anyone can. **** if the springs and little clear washers don't end up flying across the room though when I take the stock one off...be careful.

The supplied drawbars with each engine correspond to the minimum diameter track the engine is slated to operate on. Generally, speaking, Premier engines come with a 50 mm long stock drawbar - that allows it to run on O-54 curves. I found that I can shorten them to 40 mm and the model handles O-72 curves (it would not handle O-54 however) without cab hitting front of tender. But, you have to experiment first, putting engine and tender on the apex of a curve and then seeing how short you can go. For example, the Premier Reading T1s barely make an O-72 curve with a 40 mm drawbar, but they do handle it and look a whole lot better than the 50 mm. Same with the heavy USRA Pacific model, and Milw. Road F7 Hudson. However, I was able to fit a 30 mm drawbar on the the Premier 2-8-0 PRSL Consolidation which came with a 40 mm. MTH sells the drawbars separately...for example the 40 mm drawbar is part #FB0000021. Like Pete said, order additional covers, part # FB0000028. Midge at MTH has been very helpful in the past.

As far as my MTH Premier Roster goes I have a GS4 Daylight that is an 054 and I believe my other 2 engines the UP FEF 844 and Pennsy M1B Mountain are already 072 engines.  I definitely want to close the gap on my GS4.  Thanks for the help!

Very easy for PS-3 just need to get the correct PS-3 type in the size you want.  Size is marked under cover on drawbar and come in 5mm increments.  G