New York Central Hudson Upgrades - UPDATE - Sunset 3rd Rail Dreyfuss J3a #5450

Painted Scullin disc drivers installed and painted K-Line Hudson scale pilot truck in place on the Lionel 2001 J3a. Tomorrow I will need to fabricate the link for the front of the pilot truck since no factory part is the right length. Also note the engine to tender gap has been reduced by installing the tender drawbar and tether from the 38030 Santa Fe USRA 2-8-8-2. It is actually identical to the original tender drawbar except for being a better shorter length. Special shout outs to Norton for giving me this idea and Mike Reagan for digging one up for me.

The only thing left I would do is either remove the class lights and fill in the holes or find the corrected boiler front from the second run. However I am still undecided. For now I actually like the look of the class lights even though they are mostly incorrect. It also further differentiates it from the second run, which I also have and need to find another K-Line Hudson scale pilot truck for.

Nice looking Hudson, Nick - GREAT JOB !!!

Question; with the new shortened drawbar, what is the tightest radius curve that your Hudson will negotiate now?

Best,

Dave

Nick, did you ever try treating the drivers with metal bluing/blacking, same stuff the gunsmiths use to blue/blacken a gun/gun barrel/mechanisms. I've used this stuff before on the same metals that drive/train wheels are made from, and don't have to worry about chipping/flaking off at a later to have to do a partial disassembly to re-coat.You do very good work. Keep the passion......................Brandy!

Nick, check into this site for your boiler front, if they don't have what you are looking for, don't hesitate to call them. This guy has bought off many of the old parts fabricators that existed way,way back 30's-60's, that are no longer in business, then regrouped in Iowa. Now is back in business reproducing detail parts,as well as steam locomotive kits. www.stevensonpreservationlines.com

Nick when you down load his pdf file it will give, Mr. Stevenson has a long list of company's that he's making parts from their tool and die/molds.His prices are very reasonable........................Brandy

You've certainly expanded your knowledge of these fine steamers Nick. Thanks so much for documenting much of your work as it will be useful to many others along the line.

How about a good photo or three of all of them together sometime?

Hi Nick,

   Those wheels are great, nice job on them, I'm restoring a Hudson 700e I having 

fun doing it but Still looking for a set of semi-scale wheels for I got in contact with 

one gentleman but they were to much money so my search goes on those wheel

sets on the lower right would they fit?

Tin 

Thanks for the kind words guys!

Dave - With the shorter drawbar and scale pilot truck wheels this is now O-72 minimum.

Brandy - I wanted to paint the faces of the drivers since that's how Lionel does it from the factory. However I do have another set of these American and Chinese drivers each that I sort of messed up. They were my first attempts, and without thinking about the consequences I simply bead blasted them and painted the whole driver including the flange. After a while it became apparent that as the paint wore off of the flange surfaces the exposed bare steel underneath would be susceptible to rust. I plan to bead blast them again and try out a chemical blackening of the bare steel just to see how it compares.

As for Stevenson Preservation Lines, I am actually working with Bob Stevenson right now on development of a roller bearing rod set for American-made Lionel Hudsons. They will be for my model of late-life Hudson 5344 (a heavily modified Lionel 18056 Hudson) and he is using the original rods for the drawings. I will be posting about that here when the project is completed (Bob has advised late April). The J3a boiler front will need to be an original Lionel part for various reasons, mainly in how it attaches to the boiler.

Sam - I'm working on that photo! Right now too many of the Hudsons are in various states of disassembly as I work on these projects, but it's still coming soon 

Tin - The 700E has press-on open spoke drivers so you will need to keep looking for a repro or original set. All the driver sets I am working on are screw-on designs and the Chinese-made sets are metric so they would definitely not work.

Here's a preview of another project. Lionel's Commodore Vanderbilt of the 90s was a pretty bungled affair from a prototype modeler's standpoint. The first release was way too light of a grey and the second weathered release was not an acceptable solution. Lionel did eventually make the correct dark grey model but chose to include 773 style simulated spoke drivers which detracted from the model. TM featured a solution on Toy Train Revue - adapt the 1-700E chassis with open spoke drivers and plated rods to the model:

However there is actually a far simpler and easier method. Credit goes to Bob Karas for this idea. The gold centennial Hudson from 2000 actually uses screw-on open spoke drivers nearly identical to the 1-700E press-on drivers. The axles from that model will also need to be used since for reasons unknown they are a unique design. These components, along with the 1-700E rods, can simply be swapped onto the model without requiring a whole chassis transplant. The result will be the same as TM's model, I just still need to find one.....

Okay, thank you.

Tin  

Nick...great thread!!  You are doing a fine job and the locomotive with the changes you have made really makes it beautiful...

Alan

Nick,

Great work!

Any plans to correct the headlight?  The model has the incorrect style of headlight. That style that is on the model is the Sunbeam (barrel ) headlight.  It needs to be changed to Pyle style headlight.  Please refer to the book "Thoroughbreds" by Al Staufer.  Pages 166 and 167 show this clearly, among other photos in that book.

No J-3 Hudson had that Sunbeam headlight.

Is there a source for the K-line pilot truck?

Steve

Looks excellent so far Nick. I'll probably be doing the same if I do find any of the scale J3a's by Lionel (they're only slightly more common than the dark gray Commodore Vanderbilt as far as I can see).

Depending on how my finances go and my school work piles on me, I could afford the gold Hudson wheels and finally get a step in the Vanderbilt project. The rods are apparently something else I need to save up for...

Well done!

Peter

 You guys doing kit bashing, to make what "U" want. Check out www.stevensonpreservationlines.com. If Bob don't have it already on hand in new old stock, he can make it for you, and I personally can't think of what that would be, up to and including engine kits. Nick is working with him now on fabrication of some of his parts. I don't have stock in his company just a customer, but at least he is making and reproducing parts that have very, very, long been forgotten. Us modelers doing business with him, will keep him in business, and enabling us to get the needed items we want. I guess I learned this the hard way when Walmart came into our community dropped all of the prices on food/drug/ items for the car and home, which ran all the Mom-N-Pops out of business, now we get what they want us to have, and paying a hefty price as there is no competition any longer....Brandy

Nick,

Thanks for responding.  And good luck with the move.

Steve

Another idea for improving the first release J3a. The second release model came with simulated polished cylinder caps which is correct for a newly-delivered J3a. I checked and Lionel has plenty of those enhanced steam chests in stock. Here it is installed on the first release model. Funny, this is how it appeared in the box photo to begin with, but for some reason they changed it to plain cylinder caps in the final product.

Nick, great modeling! Thanks for sharing.

Did NYC ever combine scullin and boxpok drive wheels on any of their steam fleet?

Bill

Thanks Bill! And yes, when the Hudsons went in for repairs and upgrades sometimes they emerged from the shops with mixed drivers. Even Al Staufer could only theorize about the driver swapping in his book "Thoroughbreds", saying perhaps it was a simple matter of whichever drivers were ready to go at the time of shopping were what got installed.

Here are Lionel's two J3a models together, along with some photos that show the polished cylinder caps on real newly delivered J3a's.

Also finally decided to ditch the class lights on #5444. Am looking into the best way to conceal the holes.

Finally found a brand new Lionel 18063 Dark Grey Commodore Vanderbilt at York. Just finished performing the driver and rod swap described earlier in this thread. It now sports the Gold Centennial Hudson drivers and 1-700E shiny plated rods. Also installed the scale pilot truck in the box.

You might have noticed there's a wheelset missing from the tender. Always my luck, it was a bad QC part from the factory. One of the needlepoint axles got riveted into the sideframe crooked and destroyed the axle end. Getting that fixed is the next project, and also leads to another potential part swap. Curiously this Commodore Vanderbilt variation does not come with silver trim on the tender wheels as the engine wheels do. The original light grey models did have the silver trim on the tender wheels. I am currently looking into the possibility of getting those earlier trucks to swap in.

Wow another great Hudson, but there's one thing that bothers me, the phillip head screws 

just throw it off for me on the axles. Isn't there a way to replace those with something

else.

Tin  

Nick, I was thinking of doing the same thing to my Black Lionel 18063 Commodore Vanderbilt. Where did you get the spoked wheels?

Thanks!

I'll shoot you an email Mark!

Congrats on completing the project Nick, the Commodore looks great with the scale drive wheels!

I kind of put off this same procedure due to school and other issues, but I will get to it ASAP (and when funds permit to get all those parts, including the wheels).

Thanks Thomas! The conversion really is nice, makes it look like the shroud was dropped right over an actual 1-700E. Tomorrow though I think I'll take the drivers back off and mask them off for the silver trim to be added. I had figured the nickel rims would look like the trim but when they're next to the nice fat lines around the pilot and trailing truck wheels I want the same for the drivers. The real Commodore Vanderbilt looked very classy with all that trim.

I'm sure I could find the same screw in a hex or torx head, but I don't mind them and they're very convenient for all these driver swap projects.

Here is the model after matching trim was added to the drivers. Looks even better!

Your right the trim looks much better and takes away from the phillip heads.

Tin 

Nick

Can you shoot me an email about where you got the spoked wheels too?

Thanks, Benny

Excellent info. and thanks for posting, Nick,

Ralph

Great job with your Hudson!

Your CV is real sharp.  While I don't have that one, I do have the light grey NYC and the red Lionel Lines versions.  My red CV had a busted eccentric crank.  Boy did I have a hard time finding that part.

That engine uses that same eccentric as the original 700E and all of the later Pulmore motored Hudsons. 700E-46 available from Lionel and most of the repro parts guys.

I had to get one for mine as well.

Pete

It's funny the eccentric cranks came up. BOTH of the original ones on mine crumbled to bits as soon as I began working on them. Must have been a bad batch on these models. Luckily the 1-700E rod set I got from my Hudson parts guy included the eccentric cranks. I only had to enlarge the hole at the top of the eccentric rod linkage in order for the screw to fit through and secure it to the valve hanger. Otherwise they are all perfect bolt in swaps.

Pete, the eccentric cranks are actually different! Somewhere between the 1990 1-700E and the 1997 763E the design was changed so that the eccentric rod actually has a screw into the eccentric crank as opposed to a rivet. It's a whacky part, and I'm guessing that's why Keith had a hard time finding them.

It must have changed with the 1997 engine. The silver CV was made in '96 I believe and shows the same crank as the 1990 700E And uses the 700E-46 part number.

Pete

Man it does look even better with the thick whitewalls, Nick!

Just to ask - does it now run as good as it looks?

What a nice find Nick - You're doing a great job with your modifications...

Well the Magnetraction is lost since the new axles are not magnetic and the drivers, believe it or not, appear to be a tough plastic composite. But they do have traction tires in the center drivers and it pulls the Lionel 2004 20th Century Limited with no issues. That's 7 cars with full interiors and one of them is a heavy station sounds diner. Of course there's also no cruise and only 1 chuff, but I personally like it since that was the technology when I was growing up in the 90s and it's very nostalgic. So aside from the drivers I'm leaving this one alone. I will upload a video of it soon!

I did forget to mention my method and choice of paint. We had a couple of aluminum / silver sprays in the workshop, and the best one in both color match and durability was Duplicolor Silver Caliper Paint. It's formulated to withstand the abuse and elements that vehicle brake calipers endure so it should do just fine on model steam locomotive drivers. I masked off the flange surfaces and used the cap off a gallon chemical can as a guide, then needed to roughly mask off the inside of the driver face since the cap does not completely seal and a little paint does leak through. Also set a few heavy washers on top of it so it wouldn't move during spraying. A crude system, but it still got the job done right. Here's the other side just completed.

Talking about washers, I used large size fender washers three each for a side 

epoxied together to make as you said a crude wheel cup to put the new set

of 700e wheels back on which came out great, no wobble on the rails when I push

it.

Tin  

My Sunset 3rd Rail Dreyfuss J3a #5450 was next up on the mod line. 3rd Rail Hudson models come from the factory with plated reverse linkage and driver tires. This is incorrect; the proper appearance per prototype is matching paint on these components. For 3rd Rail's De-shrouded "Super J3a", this was easy since only a matching black was needed (Pllyscale Engine Black). The finished engine with reverse linkage and driver tires correctly painted:

However the Dreyfuss Hudson is a bit trickier. Two colors needed to be matched; the dark gray under-body color and the silver on the drivers. I went to the LHS to see what I could match. The driver color was easy, simply Model Master Acryl "Silver". However the gray was a nightmare. I ended up spending $20 on a sampling of all the dark grays in stock, and not a one of them was a match. The problem is in the fact that 3rd Rail used a very unique dark gray with the slightest tint of green. I had to concoct my own matching formula which consisted of the closest gray match - Model Master Acryl "Dunkelbraun RLM 61" - tinted with a small amount of the same brand's "Dark Green 1/2 (IK)", and then a small amount of Pollyscale "Engine Black" for the correct darkness. It took an entire night of careful experimentation and application, but the model came out perfectly at last. Also fixed a number of detail parts that were crooked from the factory and reversed the lubricator linkage to the correct position.