A bargain!

[TinyTurner]

I got a bargain. Atlas 4-6-2 Pacific.  But can you guess how much?
https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=49857

A clue. It cost less than the shipping!
Sometimes Ebay is a win.

Thinking of getting the wheels turned down to fine standards/FS:160 and making it pretty

[Albert in N]

   Nice!

[mmagliaro]

These come up on eBay for outrageous prices: $50, $100, even more.  If you paid under $20, then that's probably fair.

But beware, there are a lot of "gotchas" to these engines - and believe me I'm a fan of them, so I hope you succeed with this one. 

One, as you noted, is that unless you turn down all the flanges, you can't run them on code 55 track.  That may or may not matter to you.  But if it does, turning these down is very very delicate work.  The axle/driver attachment is not very robust and can easily be damaged.  It is also very difficult to press the drivers off those axles and get them back on so they run square with no wobble, because the
plastic driver centers are soft.  I have turned the flanges down by just running them on their back and using a diamond file held gently on one flange at a time.  With a light touch and lots of patience, you can get it done.  But that still leaves the pilot, trailing truck, and tender wheels.   People do those with a Dremel or a lathe if you have one, or by replacing the trucks or the wheelsets.

Second, the tender pickup is frustrating and unreliable.  Rough metal and axle wipers are an exercise in never-ending frustration.  Without
an upgrade, they require fastidious cleaning often or they are sputtery and stall-prone.  I found that Fox Valley wheelsets (if you can find them) in the tender improve them a lot because the wheels and axle metal stay cleaner.  Other modern metal wheelsets would probably yield the same improvement.  That also solves the flange problem for the tender.  But it's still not nearly as good as axle-point pickup.
You can upgrade them with Kato or Bachmann trucks and build a home-brew all-wheel axle point pickup scheme for the tender.
Lot of folks on here have done it.  But again, it's a craftsman job that not everybody can do.

The motor - oh that motor.  If it still runs, great.  Don't push it too hard.  Take it apart every once in a while and clean out any black carbon or oily goo build-up on the commutator.  That goes a long way toward preventing them from shorting, overheating, and self-destructing.

And finally... the frame.  The engine is now so old that it probably does not have the Zamac contamination that made frames crumble
and warp.  So that's good.

I know this sounds like I threw a "wet rag" on your find.  It's just that there are very good reasons that these engines are no longer worth a lot of money, so I'm glad you got a bargain on it, because it really is not worth anywhere near the typical eBay prices that these command.

[TinyTurner]

I don't mind that at all.
According to XE currency, the total comes to $5.93!
I have paid a lot more for stuff I really should not have, so this is quite refreshing.
There is a threshold of whats reasonable that can be difficult to stick too. Beyond that it isn't really a bargain anymore. 
But the trader (and oneself) try to convince otherwise...anything you spend is less money for something really good.  It looks a lot nicer than the early Bachmann stuff with split white gears that are so often up for silly money.

I would get the 2mm Association to have a crack at turning the wheels but that position is vacant. I put up a message on a local board asking if someone experienced could do it.
I would like to have a go as I have lathe, but it's not setup and I have had so many things stopping me from doing it.  It's ambitious, but it's a dream.
Quite keen to find a 'words and pictures' tutorial from those who have done it before.  Assume beginner.  I did use a small lathe in school (badly) but I knew better than to get mangled by it.  All fun.
I sometimes think of getting a micro lathe just for messing with N scale.
This is the best info I know of.
https://www.fs160.eu/fiNeweb/standards/wheels/plasticspokewheels.php

Tramfabriek will print a spacer for you if you send the dimensions to fit one of his coreless motor, not having a 3d printer yet.  I have other older Atlas engines to do this this with...eventually  

[thomasjmdavis]

Yes, if you paid $6 for it, you got quite a deal. So, about 4.5 British pounds?  If you paid more than $ 6 in shipping, then not as great a deal, but certainly, say $30 combined would be a realistic price and it sounds like your total was below that.  I had one of those that I sold 20 years ago (it would not run on code 55 track), and at that time, IIRC, I got just over $40.

I've had my share of deals on eBay, but they are certainly much farther between than they used to be.

Good luck with your acquisition.  And beware of the parts guys out there who are selling spare trucks for $32, and drawbars for $18. 

[fire5506]

 Those engines pick up power from one side of the locomotive and from the other side of the tender. If you can find the newer style trucks that pick up from both sides of the axle for the tender it would help the power pickup. You might find tender trucks or caboose trucks that have pickups on both sides of the truck. I've bought lighted cabooses just for the trucks, especially Kato lighted cabooses.
  Also don't run them too fast as the commutator is 3 copper bars in a plastic core and if they either over heat or turn too fast the commutator breaks and the copper bar comes out. I have some I have to try to find a motor to repair them.


Richard Webster

[wm3798]

Judging by the blue liner in the package, it's a very early Atlas release.  You might be up against the ravages of time, although I have a quite a few of these, and only one or two were bad eggs out of the gate.  The main thing to be on the look out for is the dreaded zinc pest, wherein the alloy used in the frame was often unevenly cast, resulting in parts of it oxidizing and causing the frame to crack, warp, or even crumble.  At this point in the arc of history, I've found that if you buy one that has survived this long, that's not going to be a problem. 
However, the motors were notoriously short-lived, owing to their rubber magnets and the aforementioned plastic commutator.

If you got a "good runner" the previous ownership may have run it to death, requiring a motor transplant.  There are numerous options for effecting such an improvement, ranging from a Sagami can to simply finding an engine that died of zinc pest, which might have a good motor that never had enough run time to go bad.



As for turning down the flanges, I wrote up a conversion I did many years ago http://www.wmrywesternlines.net/loc_steam.php.  I put mine in cradle upside down and carefully filed down the profile.  Fortunately, I've regressed to chunky old snap track, so I won't have to do THAT again!

Next you'll have to get a brace of Rivarossi heavyweights to pull behind it!