Having grown up on the New York to Boston main line, my parents had me watching trains back in the days of steam. Parked in the Readville train station parking lot we always waited for what we called the bullet engine. Knowing what I know today (not much) that engine would be the I-5 Hudson. I still sit in that same parking lot today and watch the Acela fly by.
I have a Weaver I-5 New Haven Hudson. It was the last run from Weaver with TAS electronics, TAS fan driven smoke, sprung drivers, huge Pittman motor, and pick up rollers also on the tender. The electronics were not strong and I told myself I will make it a PS-2 engine someday. Now we have PS-3 upgrade kits available it was off to the races with the project. While setting the electronics in the tender, I used the two tender center rail pick ups to add to my 7 pin input to the board. This engine will never loose contact with the center rail with the engine and tender rollers connected at the PS-3 board. The speaker and everything else went along well. The engine was another story. I was able to re do the existing smoke unit making the trace cuts and wiring it MTH style. The unit uses a 10 ohm single resistor. This all worked out and the locomotive smokes very well. I had to fabricate a tach bracket and the issue was the harness with the 10 pin receiver. It would not mount below the cab like MTH does. I had to fabricate a mount to work with the motor. . To get the wiring from the cab to the inside of the locomotive, a panel had to be cut out from under the fireman's position. This worked out well. The marker lights had a small reg that had seen better days. I made up my own LED circuit for the markers and it all works well.
After loading the PS 32 chain files and a sound file I liked, it was test run time. This engine does not run good, it runs great. The engine will move out smoothly at 1 MPH. Yes, 1 MPH. While testing, my friend Chris Lonero stopped by and he was amazed this locomotive runs smooth at 1 MPH. I have many New Haven cars and now I finally have a DCS I-5 to help pull some of them. This is the only brass locomotive I own. I am a die cast guy. I keep haunting Mike W to build one. He showed one years ago and never built it.
Here is a photo and two short video clips of the engine.
