OH HAPPY DAYS!!!!!
I have just the other day been able to figure out why my Australian built "Ferris" O gauge 3 rail tinplate steam locomotive and tender would not track well around my Buco curves for nigh on 60yrs. I have attached a link to an article describing how the building of this great Australian tinplate train occurred, for a short number of years.
https://collection.powerhouse.com.au/object/44983
Here is a recent picture of my little baby that I have owned since brand new back in 1958'ish (I was 6 or 7 years old), when my father apparently (as the story goes) saw it in a local store, and offered the shop keeper a reduced amount to move it on.
OK, to start with, here is the original box it came in, now showing quite some wear and tare, just like its original human owner.
The loco is a 4-6-0 configuration, but the interesting thing about my particular model is that the open-framed and field coil motor is located in the tender, and this "drives' or "pushes" the loco around. Basically, the loco is a "dummy", with all the tractive power being supplied by the tender.
I have replaced the original roller pick-ups with Buco "spoon" pick-ups (I have kept the original roller pick-ups), to allow it to glide seamlessly through my Buco turnouts and crossings. You can see the worm gear on the motor meshing with the brass gears on the front axles of the tender. This tender had "traction tires" on the drive wheels way back in the late 1950's!!!!
The footplate (seen below) is the structural connection between the loco and the tender, and allows the power from the tender to "push" or "pull" the "dummy" loco around, depending on its direction. The tender also has an E-unit very similar to that in the early Lionel loco's, where a rod is pulled up and dropped down to rotate the cogged contact barrel, to get forward - neutral - reverse etc.
OK, the problem that has plagued this loco for over 60 years is.......if the loco is pushed moderately fast (not at the speed of sound) into a curve, it would rear-up slightly off the inner rail of the curve, and then it would de-rail, sometimes spectacularly!!!
For whatever reason, I had it out of the box last week, to give it a run on the "new" layout and, you guessed it, it de-railed rather spectacularly, at the top curve of the layout. Unfortunately it left the bench and "hit the deck", being the concrete floor!!!! This didn't happen as a kid, as we were relegated to running it on the lounge room floor.
Broke the spindle off at the body mount (behind the steam cylinders), where it secures the four wheel truck frame to the body, but no other damage, phew!! I needed to replace this broken shaft ( easy peesy), and while doing so, I decided to see if I could find the reason for the loco's erratic behavior going through curves......something my father tried on numerous occasions over the early years, with no real success.
What I finally discovered was the configuration and position of the front bogie wheels (leading truck wheels) was slightly off, and this was causing the flanges on the front set of bogie wheels to bind on the underside of the leading edge of the cast steam cylinders, when going through a curve.
What I did was carefully grind off/chamfer the front bottom edge of both steam cylinders with my Dremel, to obtain enough clearance for the front wheels to swing freely when going through a curve.
Who would have thought that after more than 60 years I have finally been able to get this loco to run better!!! I had to tell my father (he's still with us at 96 years young) and he could not believe it either.
Now it pulls my one and only Hornby mixed freight and passenger consist (of about the same age as the loco) perfectly around the layout, navigating 031 and 048 Buco curves perfectly !!!! OH HAPPY DAYS!!!!
Peter......,.Buco Australia.
Don
