Santa Fe 0-6-0

[Slim Rail Mike]

Last winter I got this loco and fixed it’s crank pin.



Now I’m going to install DCC and try to represent a Santa Fe switcher.
For the project I purchased some Kato caboose trucks and an economy (cheap) DZ123ps decoder. The decoder has short leads and an eight pin plug. While thinking about how to attack this, I scrubed off the road name and number, with 99% IPA.



This is seat of the pants engineering. Let’s start with the tender. Removed the trucks. The drawbar was filed back to clear the tabs on the Kato trucks. Remove the tender shell. Mine was lightly glued along the sides. I gently freed the shell with a hobby knife and #11 Blade. Removed the weight and the pin it was mounted on.





The Kato trunks almost fit. I sanded the king pins by finding in the junk box a bit of brass tube, and putting a small strip of sand paper inside. Then put the tube over the pin and spun the tube. Testing until the trucks fit.
The tabs on the trucks were use to mark a arcs on the tender chassis. Then I drilled and filed the slots. I planning to make bronze strips to contact the trucks.


 
Some perforated project board and some headers from another junk box form the board the everything will be wired to.





The posts inside the tender shell were removed, and the parts were test fit.
Next up will be figuring out the strips to carry juice from the rails to the board.

[randgust]

You're pretty much doing what I've been doing on changing over tenders to Kato caboose trucks with end-axle pickups.   I've done six so far.

The only difference is that I'm using the original caboose frames, hacked up and adjusted to length with a brass center bar put in with epoxy and built up with styrene.   Why go through that?  I also want to keep the pickup wipers.   Those are really important because that equalizes the pickup all the way to the railhead, puts force down on the end-axle cups, and is much more reliable than just soldering pickups to the end of the ears.   

I cut the Kato caboose strips in half, and either resolder them shorter or put in a piece of brass to solder them longer.   I drill .050 for 00-90 in the center and put a screw in the pickup strip to the tender frame so you can get them out for cleaning or adjusting the tension.   I'm convinced that the material/metal choices in Kato are a secret sauce, that metal is highly corrosion resistant so I re-use all I can.
 
So Ive done that on a Rapido 0-6-0, my D16sb 4-4-0, my Lima 2-6-0, my PRR decapod DCC with sound, and another PRR trix decapod.  And I also put kato caboose trucks under a 40' rail flatcar as the 'pickup car' for my bitty powered burro crane. 

So it's worth doing for sure, 8x8 pickup wins every time.

[Slim Rail Mike]

@randgust approach of starting with the Kato caboose, I am sure would yield a more reliable product. If I had a caboose, that is the route I’d have followed.  Off and on I’ve looked for Kato or B’mann trucks to use. Kato USA has the caboose truck in stock right now. So I ordered a few, as the future availability is uncertain, due to the tariffs.
The tender is mimicking the B’mann tender design. The contact strips for power pick up will just be straight pieces of phosphor bronze.   Squared up the slots in the tender chassis.
Cut and bent the strips to fit.









Needed to  hold down the contact strip and to prove electrical connection. I cut some brass tube stand-offs. I cut a new circuit broad to fill the space inside the tender. Pressing the board down against the strip, I drilled through the board, the contact strip and the chassis. Used a #70 bit. Then tapped the board for 00-90 screws.
Separated the pieces, then the strip and the tender chassis were again drilled with a clearance bit.





The 00-90 screws were run through the board, and the stand-offs were laid over them. With the screws holding the brass tube in place, the tube was soldered to the PC board.

The screws run up from the bottom hold it all together.



Next up I think will be wiring the board.

[randgust]

That should work fine.   Only commend I'd make is to buff them up with the dremel soft buffing wheel and maybe follow with Conductalube (Atlas).

[Slim Rail Mike]

 The board is wired and checked with a meter. Made a socket/plug from pin headers. The heat shrink is necessary not only to prevent accidental shorts, but to re-enforce the joint where the wire is soldered to the pin. I’ve done a few of theses now, the tiny wire gets fragile once soldered. All the contact surfaces were smoothed with 1500 grit, polished with Flitz, and then lightly touched with No-Ox.
 Remember I test fit the parts when I start. Well I made changes to the design, and didn’t test again. The stand-offs raise the assembly and the shell wouldn’t set where it should. My choice was to cut the tender shell. The coal bunker is going to be removed the oil tank that replaces it will cover my butchery.





Locomotive meets screwdriver. After the parts get cleaned, I’ll figure out how to isolate the motor. Right now grinding away the posts that contact the motor seems to be the route. I did mark the motor so it can be re install the right way up.

[Slim Rail Mike]

The nubs inside the frame where the motor made contact were ground back and filed smooth. The frame was washed again to remove any metal filings. The surfaces around the contact have been taped to prevent shorts.

[Slim Rail Mike]

Leaving the wires long, the loco and tender were connected and put on the programming track. The engine address was programmed.



I made a plug but the plug and socket were just to big to be tucked in neatly.   A short bit of the pc pref board was used as a terminal block. If the harness needs to be separated the I’ll de-solder the wires.
The loco was run for a bit, then programmed on the main for Vstart, Vmax, and Vmid.





The loco and tender need more weight. That will be added after the “body work”. The main projects are to convert the tender to oil, and extend the cab, then add some details to make it more like a Santa Fe switcher. Not an exact model, but an impression.

The coal and stoker were removed. The oil bunker will be sheet styrene.

[Slim Rail Mike]

The tender is a compilation of details gleaned from photos where the deck could be seen. I have no idea what the forward end of the oil bunker would look like.

[peteski]

Mike, I have been following your thread, and I'm wondering why make such a drastic modification as opening a hole in the tender shell for the decoder, when eliminating the 8-pin male/female connector (simply hard-wiring the decoder) would have likely provided ample space for the decoder to fit without modifying the shell?

I'm not an ATSF modeler and I realize that you replaced the coal hopper with an oil tank, but would such retrofit extend beyond the original coal hopper area into the water tank area?

[Simon D.]

Lot of ATSF tender plans (and much else besides) here:


https://archive.org/details/page-165

[randgust]

It's a little late, you've got it working .... but TCS makes two different 6-pin micro connectors for that locomotive to tender thing, also 4 and 2 pin.  Wire is super flexible, too.

On mine for the DCC conversion I've put two wires to connect the locomotive frame pickups back to the tender, two wires for the motor, and two wires for the headlight (resistor in the tender), and other than the fact that it takes a dual pair of tweezers to separate the connection it's worked fine.   And I put a 2-pin connector so I could get the tender body with the speaker mounted in it off the tender frame without surgery.

What I really like is that on my PRR decapod I've made a 'cheater' DC tender that is wired the same that allows me to plug it in instead of the sound equipped DCC one, so that I can run it on my transistor throttle DC layout (that truly hates decoders and eats them for snacks).

People forget that everything east of Argentine on ATSF was coal burner territory, so tenders were generally designed to be dual service.  You 'might' extend a leg over the back of the tender deck but never at the expense of loosing water capacity.

Dirk, of course, is doing a whole series of RP and resin ATSF tenders if you want to go that way.  I did when I did my Jamco Pacific 3400 class rebuild, and adding the 12x12 tender pickups solved ALL the performance problems on that old girl.   
https://atsfnscalemodels.com/projects/steam%2520engine%2520tenders.html

So if you can live with four-wheel instead of six-wheel trucks that body design really isn't that far off.

[Slim Rail Mike]

Thax all for the input.

Simon, That is a great resource.

Pete, you are right, not the best design choice, but for me not the worst.

Randy, funny I have a TCS 6 pin connector in the box for the next loco on the install list.

I hadn’t been a Santa Fe modeler (SP fan boy). My layouts prototype hosted four railroads along the San Francisco waterfront. I may as well embrace them all.

By the looks of the lift points on the various tender photos, I’d suspect that these oil tanks dropped into the former coal space and that they could and did extend over the water tank.

There was a guy on shapeways (alas) that printed SF steam loco parts. I wouldn't mind finding a loco cab. Any clues as to where to look. A new cab is on the list for this project.

 I’ll do a bit more homework.  Here is the shell with a squirt of Tameya matt black.

[garethashenden]

There was a guy on shapeways (alas) that printed SF steam loco parts. I wouldn't mind finding a loco cab. Any clues as to where to look. A new cab is on the list for this project.

It wasn't this guy was it? https://www.atsfnscalemodels.com

[Slim Rail Mike]

Sorry no, but his stuff looks great. Plus he links to @randgust. So it must be good.

In the long history of model railroading, we again see "build it and a prototype will come" 




 https://archive.org/details/page-165

[garethashenden]

Sorry no, but his stuff looks great. Plus he links to @randgust. So it must be good.

In the long history of model railroading, we again see "build it and a prototype will come" 




 https://archive.org/details/page-165

He posts here too, so we know he's good.

Its far easier to not model something while looking for the perfect reference. But then you don't have a model. So we do the best we can while keeping our eyes open for something better.