3rd Rail T1, 3RSed, TMCC upgraded, weathered

Love it !!!   Thanks

Fantastic. 

Outstanding! Norm you work fast! Last time I looked you were changing layout plans..

Norm, I like the color of your ballast. Looks allot like areas here in the coal region of PA. What did you use to get that shade? 

Awesome work Norm 

Looks and sounds great, Norm.  In case the antenna in the coal pile doesn't work well enough for you, a new drawbar can be made out of plastic (I used a piece of Plastruct I-beam on mine) and then you can use the tender shell for the antenna as usual.  The head-end equipment looks great, too!

Very nice. Just a suggestion; you might try and stagger the rods from the front engine to the rear engine, in order to make it look a bit more prototypical. I've to take the drive shaft assembly apart on the various articulated models I have in order to "stagger" the front engine's rods  from the rear engine.

Sounds great Norm

Alex

Thanks guys!

Dave, my ballast is Woodland Scenics fine cinders over play sand fill.

Bob, I hope the antenna works as well under coal. I thought about relocating the drawbar post to the tender frame but sort of had a eureka moment with the coal pile antenna idea. It sure saved a bit of extra work.

Jack, I may do just that since I am going to open the engine up again to pull the marker lights. I also want to dim the headlights a bit too before weathering it.

One of my favorite locomotives of all - You've done a beautiful job here Norm

Fantastic looking background and layout. 

Norm, as usual it looks great and it runs very well.  Keep up the good work!!!!!!!!!

Norm Charbonneau posted:

Thanks guys!

Dave, my ballast is Woodland Scenics fine cinders over play sand fill.

Bob, I hope the antenna works as well under coal. I thought about relocating the drawbar post to the tender frame but sort of had a eureka moment with the coal pile antenna idea. It sure saved a bit of extra work.

Jack, I may do just that since I am going to open the engine up again to pull the marker lights. I also want to dim the headlights a bit too before weathering it.

Norm,

That would then be the time to stagger those two engines. I have the Sunset/3rd Rail version of the un-skirted T1, and had it up-graded to TMCC quite some years ago, however I've never been totally happy with the exhaust sounds, ever since the original "conventional QSI sound" board went away. That was the most accurate sound duplication of a poppet-valve T1 exhaust I've ever heard from a model. 

I also unplugged the wires to those green front classification lamps, which makes it look a lot nicer. I can't recall if the tender had red marker lamps, but if it did, I would have unplugged them also. 

Norm,

Very nice.  Of course the Pennsy T1 is my favorite engine.  It looks and sounds great!

Norm Rish

Very nice looking locomotive. T1 is most definitely one of my top 10 locos.

scenery looked top notch too. Great videos.

Thanks again guys. I have been wanting to set this engine up for a long time as it had been languishing under the layout for a while. I was hoping to convert my fleet of Weaver B60s to Kadees to run with this engine but have decided to tackle that project another time. 

While I waited for the tender coal pile to dry, I pulled the markers lamp plugs and wired in some 27 ohm resistors with the headlamps to dim them a bit. 

I finally got to use some of my eBay resistors. I knew they'd come in handy sometime. Also found 14mm reed switches and 3x1.5mm magnets because of this project.

Would anyone know how poppet valves were actuated on the T1? I found a nice sound-only runby on YouTube but couldn't discern anything about it that made it terribly unique. The T1 doesn't reveal any mechanical linkage, even in its unskirted mode. Pilot pressure maybe? There are some large manifolds above the valves that live under the running board skirts, but no other clues on this model.

Norm Charbonneau posted:

 

 

Would anyone know how poppet valves were actuated on the T1? I found a nice sound-only runby on YouTube but couldn't discern anything about it that made it terribly unique. The T1 doesn't reveal any mechanical linkage, even in its unskirted mode. Pilot pressure maybe? There are some large manifolds above the valves that live under the running board skirts, but no other clues on this model.

Norm,

The poppet valves were actuated/controlled/times by the Franklin Railway Supply chain drives "box" mounted on top of each cylinder/valve chest assembly. Thus, there is no eccentric crank nor "traditional" valve gear linkage. Another reason why the T1 class locomotives could operate quite efficiently and safely at track speed well above 100+ MPH.

Wow great work!  You should be very proud!!

Chain drive, so these were rotary cams atop each poppet? What was the chain drive coming from?

Chain drive !!  That is wild.  Chains have a habit of stretching and breaking. I often wondered about that, too.

Beautiful Norm!

jim pastorius posted:

Chain drive !!  That is wild.  Chains have a habit of stretching and breaking. I often wondered about that, too.

Roller chains properly lubricated are very reliable. Might even have had a chain tensioner. The poppet valves were driven by a cam just like in one's car valve  train.The chain turned the cam.

Stunning work Norm...excellent. 

Here's my TMCC setup in the tender. When I have the room it's nice to have everything spread out. I don't run smoke, markers, or electrocouplers anymore so my upgrades are pretty easy. I stick with the 4 wire tether if it's there and don't bother to control the headlight. Having the reverse light is more important really. I keep the constant voltage circuit in the engine but I'll still dim the lighting even more with dropping resistors. 

I am using Lionel parts for the sounds since I wanted to use the T1 sounds. I had a spare ERRCo speaker so I set that up today. I think it's better than the original one. I use two magnets on one of the tender wheels and a reed switch to get me close enough to 4 pops per rev. 

I also included a shot of my Kadee conversion. I had to fabricate a new drawbar out of brass I had on hand.

Here's a quick shot of the tender shell. I made a plug for the reverse light to make life easier. I taped up the markers since I didn't want to use them. You might also see my original tender shell antenna connection rolled up and tucked away along with the one coming from the coal pile. 

I used the train phone antenna on the tender for the TMCC antenna.  Bowser sells the supports.

Rolland

That's a good idea if you could isolate the antenna from the tender shell. I suppose you could probably get some plastic MTH Trainphone antenna stands like they use on their cabooses. 

Anyway, almost done with this beast...

One of my favorite Polly colors was Oily Black. I shot a bit of it on the drivers after a coat of Grimy. I always liked that color, which might be a bit of black, brown, and silver I think...

...and that's it, she's on the layout now. Now I can clean up the shop and go back to some scenery work...

Here it is blowing by NB tower...

Amazing. Nice job. You seemed to get so much work done. I just spend 2 weeks wiring up switch machines and installing block control on two 5 track yards and the layout looks the same ole, same ole. 

Keep up the great work. 

Cool stuff Norm! I like the look it gives the loco's that realistic coal/grime/rust weathered look, Outstanding!  I forgotten what track plan did you settle on for this new layout?

The staggered drivers look great Norm. When was this locomotive made please?

What a nice project!

Amazing job, it looks awesome 

Vert nice indeed.  I have a MTH PS-1 T-1 that I'd love to convert to ERR TMCC.  Could you email me the parts list of what to get from ERR and Lionel to do what you did for sounds?  Thank you.

J, then why do I feel like I'm way behind on this layout?

George, I went back to my dual track loops like my old layout after its 2011/12 rebuild. I don't have a final trackplan as I am still tweaking in the yard trackage at this point.

Sam, I think this was built back in 2000 or 2001, back when Lionel, MTH, and 3rd Rail would all put out the same model within months of each other. I had two Lionels at one time and liked them other than the incorrect tender features (cutouts for use with S2 Turbine I think) and the oversize lubricator linkages.

Sinclair, I don't have any Lionel p/ns handy. You'll just have to search their parts site. I do know that some of the sounds I have used in the past (M1a, K4 1361, etc.) are now sold out. The ERRCo stuff, well, it's just their standard Cruise Commander.

Sinclair,

I number of years ago I converted my MTH  version of the T1 to TMCC along with EOB.  It works very well and sounds great.   You will be pleased once you do your conversion,no doubt.  Good luck.

Norm Rish

Awesome layout.

I really like the Pennsy Theme.

Hi guys, here's another video of my layout being assaulted by the T1, hope this doesn't give anyone a headache...

That's a great video!  To me, it really shows how well you do all of your projects! Locomotives, freight cars and scenery.

Super

Norm

      I love the video of the T1 running fast, looks like at least 100 mph just like the prototype. I am hoping Lionel puts out a Legacy T1 soon. I am currently pulling my passenger train with double headed Legacy K4s love the whistle steam.

     Great job weathering and a great layout too.

JohnB