Against all good advice - bought a junker Jamco

[draskouasshat]

I'm watching it but that's all.  That's typical of the indecision I've had for years, do I chase after one of those, change out the domes and the tender, strip it.....???  Or rebuild something else?   I'm in way too deep now to look back.  Anyway, it's running really well so far, even with the old motor.  If I put the new 12x12 pickup 12K tender on it to get around the electrical issues I'm hoping it's a solid performer.

I'm probably going to be disposing of the old Jamco tender, if anybody is interested PM me.  I haven't messed with it at all.

just order one of dirks www.atsfnscalemodels.com tenders with all wheel pickup!

[randgust]

One of those is already on the way.   After I did one of his ATSF tank cars, I was convinced these are some of the best N kits ever made.   After I get it on and tested, I'm presuming the Jamco tender goes.   I 'could' modify it, and I looked at replacing the trucks, but nothing I could find hit the dimensions properly. 

[randgust]

OK, so here's some update shots of the project, it's beginning to turn into the Woodsman's Axe, without apology:

1)  Shot of the lowered boiler on the chassis, after the chassis has been painted.   This really helped the appearance, looks much chunkier.



2)  I got in the Shapeways ATSF cab and Hodges trailing truck.  The cab is about a foot shorter, and you can see that getting the windows properly proportioned make a huge difference.   It's like the eyes in a painting.   The old cab will come off a lot easier than I ever imagined, just haven't done it yet.



3)   Now, here's the next major change.   I just got in the ATSFmodels tender today, it's RP printed, and it's a honey.   As you can see, unlike the stock tender, it will fit under the cab roof even after it has been lowered, so I can snuggle the tender up as close as practical.

[randgust]

More on that tender, here's the comparison between the stock brass tender and the kit one.   You can see how the oil bunker should look, tucked in the 12K tender.





And finally, what really got me here, was solving the well-known pickup issues on this model, I really wanted a 12x12, end-axle pickup tender, and everything else I researched had wheels and trucks that were way off.  Man, he's got this one beat, glad I did it.



So now I think I'll mess with changing the cab over, getting the tender attached and wired in, and doing some more serious performance testing. 
Stay tuned.....

[mmagliaro]

Moving along nicely, Randy.  I totally agree on the big improvement from the tender and those live trucks.
Lowering made a big improvement.  Nice!

I think you will need to blacken those driver treads and flanges so that the middle (blind) driver doesn't look so much smaller than the two on the outside.  I am enjoying following your project.  Nice work.

[randgust]

I'd be curious what you recommend for blackening, Max.   I'm not against it, but I sure don't want to do anything that either turns slippery or compromises electrical pickup.

Decades ago I had some of the 'Blacken-it', I think Cary Locomotive Works sold that (remember them?) and I've also done gun repairs with bluing kits, that's my only experience with that stuff.   In this case it's still entirely possible to remove those drivers safely to work on them without messing much with either quartering or the rods.

I'm still debating whether or not I'm going to white-line the drivers, 3415 has that now but most in-service locomotives didn't do that including 3415.   The "Steam Locomotive Series" 3400-3500 4-6-2 and 4-6-4 book (which is mostly photos) has great B&W shots of each individual locomotive in it.   Interesting combinations of drivers, domes, and tenders, it was not an homogenous class of 4-6-2's.

I got the trailing truck modifications done and working last night, photos to follow.  It appears to have been successful.

[Cajonpassfan]

Neolube? It is conductive, no idea whether it would affect traction...
Otto

[DKS]

Neolube?

This.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

This.

Yep.

Does @mmagliaro still have any left overs from the group buy?

[mmagliaro]

Neolube is great for rods and the faces of drivers, but on driver treads and flanges it will wear off, so if you plan on running the engine you need to use something else.

Two options: chemical blackeners or electroplating.

For blackening, I use Jax Chemicals.
Something like this: https://jaxchemical.com/shop/jax-flemish-gray-black/
To be honest, I've got the brown-black formula and it works fine, but I always thought that the Flemish Gray might give a nicer color for drivers. 

The other option would be to get the brass really really clean and electroplate it with a brush plating kit from Caswell.  You need to really clean the brass with very fine sandpaper (like 1500 grit) EVERYWHERE.  Any oil, dirt or tarnish on the brass and it won't plate.

https://www.caswellplating.com/plug-n-plate-nickel-kit.html

These kits are about $45.  They are intended to be used by clipping the negative lead to the item to be plated and then swabbing the positive lead (wrapped in some cloth or paper toweling), dipped in solution, over and over on the item to be plated.  But you can also just clip the negative lead the driver, dunk it in a little dish of the plating solution, and then plunk the positive lead into the solution a couple of inches away from the driver.  They supply the probes and a little wall wart to supply the power.  You can also just use your own power supply and keep the voltage down to about 4 to 4.5v.  You don't want to go higher or the plating surface can "burn", and if you go lower than about 3.5v, not much happens (I experimented).

The kit I linked you to is the nickel plating, so it will be pretty bright silver.  You will need to buy a pint of the black nickel solution as well, and mix a little in with the stright nickel solution, so you get a gray color.  The more Black Nickel you mix in, the more black is will get.  Why not just use straight Black Nickel?  Well, I tried that on my 0-6-0 and the finish was too black and also the conductivity was lousy.  I found that using Nickel and Black Nickel solutions, anywhere from 1/4 to 1/10th of it being black nickel (mostly plain nickel solution) gave me the nicest finish with good conductivity.    You just need to be patient and dunk the driver into the plating solution for a couple of hours to build up a decent thickness of plating.

[randgust]

Well, Neolube is essentially graphite in alcohol, and I love it for rods (that's what's on the rods) but it wipes off easily just from finger touches and it's still a graphite lubricant, i.e. you're putting a lubricant on the driver treads.   It will likely immediately wear off in contact areas and 'might' make the flanges less obvious.   I've got enough leftover scrap drivers and wheels I may test it, but I'm pretty skeptical.   But I've never tried it either on wheel treads and flanges to see just what it would do.

The other blackening ideas sound worthwhile to research, but I'm still not sure those flanges bother me enough. For sure I'm not tinkering with that until I get to run it and see how it actually does for pickup and traction.   With 12x12 on the tender the loco drive wheels may or may not be so critical to pickup that I even care, most times I would.   I've seen blackening that has no apparent impact on either and some that is awful and I've had to take it off as best I could.   Out of the box this thing had pretty ratty pickup - see Mark's review, and part of that was due to the fact that you really only had two contact points on two drivers on one side as the middle driver may or may not be in contact with the railhead surface.

[DKS]

For blackening, I use Jax Chemicals.

Yes, for permanent or high-wear metal, I also use Jax. Very good stuff, and much more economical than Blacken-It.

[randgust]

Well, here's the rebuild of the trailing truck to a Hodges with the Shapeways sideframes.

The stock Jamco wheels are plastic, and the Delta trailing truck casting was kind of 'meh' and wrong for the 3415.  The Shapeways one is an HO concept reprinted to N, and it has no particular ability to connect to anything, and it was end-bearing design.  I looked at a bunch of wheels to replace the Jamco axle with (as it had no axle ends), and I thought I'd be able to use a 42" Kato wheelset.  But...holy crap, that trailing truck wheel was big.  I checked the clearance diagram, and there it was - 51".  Wow.  A 51" trailing truck wheel.  I really had to dig in the junk drawer and found an old Bachmann 4-8-4 trailing truck wheel that was that size, and the axle length was OK with a little more drilling in the sideframes.   It took some doing to adapt the trailing truck drawbar to the printed sideframes, but it worked and rolls easily.





A smaller wheel resulted in the truck running 'low'.  I'm undecided about how the wheel looks, but if it as buried inside the sideframe as I think, I'm not turning those flanges unless they create a problem.   I'd rather have that nice heavy metal wheelset there that's free-running.  We'll paint that up and see what that looks like.

[peteski]

Are you saying that the prototype loco uses 51" diameter wheels in the trailing truck?
What diameter do the wheels you used scale to?

Maybe you could use standard low-profile Kato 41" diesel loco wheels? Or if those are too small, Kato GG1 wheels are even larger, but not available separately - you have to buy the entire truck assembly. Or maybe ACS-64 wheelsets?  Those could be larger than 41".



But all those have plastic axles, so they would need axle-end bearings.

[randgust]

Yep, 51" wheels.  No kidding, right on the loco drawing, and those 79" Boxpox drivers.  I have Kato wheels, tried them, too small though that was my first choice.   The Jamco set probably looked better, but with plastic wheels in the lightweight frame, the whole trailing truck assembly was so light it derailed with little provocation after I unsoldered the brass sideframes. 

When I'm doing a project, if there's a conflict between what works well and what looks perfect in enlarged photos, works well usually wins.

But as you can see, I kept the screw assembly intact to still work with a different wheelset, just in case.   I've turned wheels before, some easier than others though, and it's risk v. reward.

Update:  Painted and installed, it's flat, it fits, and you really can't see the flanges, so unless it gives me grief, it's good.   That's a nice print.



I think the wheel is the least of my problems, as what's glaringly apparent is the open void under the truck where the rear of the frame should be.  I need some kind of visual barrier in there or something, either under the cab or mounted on the truck itself.  I'm planning on redoing the entire drawbar assembly anyway, so we'll see what works.  To me that looks pretty awful as it's a solid mass of metal above the truck in the photos, you can see the frame right between the wheels of the trailing truck.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalregister/7142732215

On to the cab... that will determine how close I can couple the tender and the drawbar dimensions.