John Le Forestier said:
Mikes, O'Malley and Toney: Seems to me that if M. O'Malley's gone over to 1:20, and as M. Toney agrees the tender is too large, then a simple solution would be to make a larger cab for the loco... Just a thought FWIW... Now a question to M. O'Malley. You said they're maybe going over to the prime mover gearbox on these 0-4-0's. I got the impression you think that's good news. I'm not sure what the prime mover is at all (?) but anyways, does that mean the wheel gauge wilkl be correctonifiedimizedificated at last?
I wasn't clear--I'm still in 1:29. I just haven't figured out how to get that tender right. It has two aristo center cab diesel blocks for trucks, and mounting them puts the tender up too high. I need to fabricate some kind of a false floor to bring the tender shell down. Also that tender is too short by a good bit, the prototype should be longer.
The prime mover gearbox…sigh
It would be better than what’s in the 0-4-0 now, which is reliable enough but pretty weak. In my experience, if you take the wheels off, and lap them to the axles using valve grinding compound, they stay on pretty well. But then the gauge is too tight. I’ve sort of fixed that (warning: really crude fix!) by grinding the backs of the wheels down so that the back to back spacing is correct. I just used a dremel cutting/grinding tool and ran that while the wheels spun. But you can disassemble the gearboxes and add shims to get the wheels closer to gauge. I’ve never tried that.
The prime mover gearbox is a great idea in some ways, but it just wasn’t executed right. The wheel attachment is problem one–they just don’t have an accurately machined taper between the axle and the wheel. But it’s cool because it’s modular–each axle has its own gearbox. So you can easily convert a 6 wheel block to a four wheel block, which I did to make a Pacific into an Atlantic. Or you can add a gearbox and wheels to make a Pacific into a MIkado, which Bruce Chandler did, or a northern. The modularity is really cool, and it would have been great if the’d managed the wheel attachment better, like a square axle or a keyed axle. When it’s set up right it will pull real strongly.
:lol:
