Against all good advice - bought a junker Jamco

[Cajonpassfan]

Wow Randy, that's turning out great!
To be frank with you, I didn't think this project was worth all that trouble when you first started it, but it seems I was wrong. Very nice work, she'll be a looker!
Otto

[central.vermont]

Looking great Randy but is it just the photo or is the sand dome crooked?

Jon

[randgust]

No, that sand dome is cast on and is actually straight, but I'll admit the photo makes it look a little funky.   If you look back on page 1 or 2 you can see the same cast dome before I started tinkering with this thing.

There's probably 20 things on this project that aren't 100% straight, but that's not one of them!

[randgust]

Front deck details went on last night, power reverse linkage and rods are in, and best of all the first tender decals went on.  My "3415" officially lives.   I've considered the ATSF 3400 class of heavy Pacific my 'ideal' steam locomotive since I was a little kid and finally have one of my own, and surprisingly enough, runs.    I can see the end in sight now on the project, and considering what I started with, I figured at best this was a 50/50 bet between a running locomotive and a pile of parts in the junkbox.

Just for laughs I pulled the specs on this class of rebuilt ATSF Pacific vs. everybody (here)'s favorite, the PRR K4s.   I'm not sure this will settle any arguments, but I don't think any apologies are in order either.   She holds her own, a little less on tractive effort, but looks to shade the K4 on horsepower, despite the 'wrong' 20K tender in this analysis.    This is from steamlocomotives.com

[nickelplate759]

I love that your spreadsheet formatted the Whyte classification as May 6, 2002

[mmagliaro]

Randy, I have no "PRR centric" dog in this hunt (not anymore anyway,  ), but my only quibble with your numbers is to point out that you are looking at the 3400 "rebuilt" from 1936, which was 20 years after the PRR K4 numbers in your chart (from 1914).

The original 3400 class, from 1920, had a tractive effort of 40,203,  instead of 41,424.

On the other hand, the factor of adhesion, at 4.95 vs the K4s 4.49 is a point in the ATSF engine's favor.  After all, it does no good to have tons of pulling power if you are just going to slip on the rails.

That's what killed the experimental K5, built in 1929, which had a whopping TE of 58,092.   Based TE, it should have massively outperformed the K4s and the ATSF 3400 class, but in practice, not so much because the factor of adhesion was so low (3.80) that it couldn't put all that power to good use.

 

[randgust]

Ah, Max, but mine is a rebuilt with the modernized 79" drivers, not the original spoked ones.   It still has the original trailing truck and a 12K tender.   So I'm calling mine a modernized.    After looking through the book on each locomotive, it was an irregular rebuild program, to be kind.

And it's a lot heavier, not just the tender either, look at the axle loadings.  I'm not sure that transfers to anything useful except maybe the adhesion.   I know my model (with that cast brass boiler) certainly feels like a brick on wheels.

ATSF had a certain arrogance about steam design and dictated to Baldwin what to do; that showed up more on the 4-8-4's and drifted backwards into this class at least, there's a lot of similar parts, designs, appliances.   There's a great book about it. (Santa Fe's Big Three by Farrington, 1972)   PRR pretty much behaved the same way, we'll do it our way, thank you.   This is really the only class of 4-6-2's on ATSF that looks like they made a real attempt to update it to be equivalent to the 4-8-4's as much as they could.  And rods were interchangeable.

The 1300's were even worse, one I've researched started out as a compound 4-6-2 with a Jacobs-Shupert firebox and got rebuilt as a simple 4-6-2 with a superheater and two different firebox rebuilds.  And still ran into the 1950's.   The 3400's are mild upgrade by comparison.

[Cajonpassfan]

That "brick" of a locomotive is looking good! Keep the pics coming please.

As as sidebar, I tend to look at real steam locomotive comparisons with a grain of salt, because many factors (some of which are of necessity theoretical) play into the performance equation. Ultimately, it was the performance in real world environment and given service assignment that truly mattered. No doubt though that Santa Fe squeezed as much as possible out of the 3400 class rebuilding program, and they were truly successful, with many  lasting till the end of steam.

(In response to Max's comment, one could argue that the high Factor of Adhesion is not necessarily optimal; while it indicates a sure-footed loco at starting, a good thing, it also shows that the rebuilt engines were capable of greater tractive effort, or speed if only the boiler was capable of somewhat higher pressure, something they must have considered and declined as imprudent or impractical).

For those interested in these things (like I am), there's a great interactive tool at Steamlocomotive.com that illustrates relationships among the many factors affecting steam locomotive performance, see below.
Otto

[strummer]

... but my only quibble with your numbers is to point out that you are looking at the 3400 "rebuilt" from 1936, which was 20 years after the PRR K4 numbers in your chart (from 1914).

That was my first thought, too...

Mark (also) in Oregon

[randgust]

OK, all the piping is on, and although I admire Max's work on putting in stuff like whistle cords and bell clappers, not going to happen here....  You still have it.  The last detail to go on was the delicate handrail wire.

But at least to document that it is possible to grind off all the original piping and replace it with real wire, here you go.  And thanks for that front high shot, that let me do the front detail to this level.







The boiler is now painted and I was relieved that none of the grinding off of the boiler shows.  I wasn't sure it would or wouldn't, despite polishing it after the grinding.  It was worth it.

[peteski]

Nice detailing!

But whenever I see it in your photos, I still can't get over that the stock motor (with its "rare earth" magnets and open frame  ) is good enough to make this model run well enough.

I remember similar motors in my Model Power F40PHs with plastic frames (back in the '80s) and those motors had almost no torque, and the armature winding would  overheat.  I gutted the entire chassis, replacing it with the brand new (at the time) Bachmann GP40 chassis. It ran better and since it was new, there were no split white gears (yet).   

[Doug G.]

The motor actually looks more like the one in the original PA-1's.

Doug

[peteski]

The motor actually looks more like the one in the original PA-1's.

Doug

Still, very similar to the old Mechano motors Model Power had in their locos.  Actually some really early Kato models (Japanese prototype) used similar motors too.

[randgust]

Yeah, that really looks like it.    I'll admit that when I started - particularly when the mechanism wouldn't even move, I had already picked a Kato five-pole, bearing set, and worm and laid it out ready to do a major transplant.   But there was essentially no use on this motor that I could see, and it was a five-pole, so I thought I'd at least test it before I did it.

After my run-in it's still quiet, doesn't overheat in sustained running under load, and can take it to full slip.   I'd love to see a better gear reduction if it would fit, but I'm not sure I'd do much better by just changing the motor.  I'm as shocked as anybody.   Maybe someday I'll change it, but I'm not convinced that just swapping it for another five-pole is much of an improvement.    It's certainly a better motor than about anything I've seen of the same era by Trix, Rapido, Roco/Atlas, etc., it's more Kato quality (aka Con-Cor in that era).

I've even got leftover Faulhabers and one of Max's gearhead motors (Mashima?) so I've got quite a collection of motors and gearheads here and I keep looking at it, but for now, I think I'm good.   It's so heavy that the overall sound is more the wheel-on-rail racket of all those wheels plus the metal tender wheels, the motor and all-metal drive train is surprisingly quiet.    I've also had a lot of Hallmark diesels apart over the years, and it's better made on the mechanism than those.

I just took this late last night as a test shot; I haven't done the dome and number board decals, that's a difficult step, but the basic finish of grimy black with a coat of semi-gloss for decal surfacing is on and its starting to look like a finished locomotive.    At this point you can see that the major changes- tender, cab, trailing truck, lowering the boiler, added detail, finally gets this thing to an unmistakable ATSF profile here, it's not just a USRA heavy Pacific with Santa Fe numbers stuck on it.



Mark had one thing dead-on, the original pickup in this thing was a POS.  Adding Dirk's tender gave me 12x12 with end-axles, hotwired both sides into the locomotive, and that solved that problem.   It doesn't stall.   Ever.

I'm not sure how many of you remember Bob Kjellander and his incredible photos of brass HO ATSF steam (mostly Pacific Fast Mail), but I do.   I knew what it was supposed to look like by his models and articles before all the treasure trove of ATSF books and photos ever came out.   That's my inspiration.

[strummer]

It looks great... 

Mark in Oregon