Large Scale Central

C.V.S.Ry. Shops to restore Jackson & Burke #4

Modeling
#1

At TrainOps 2024, the Candlewood Valley Scenic Railway graciously accepted the donation of Jackson & Burke steam locomotive #4 from C.E.O Bruce Chandler.

Number 4 has been out of service for quite some time and is in need of electrical work as well as some paint and TLC. The running gear (a classic BBT drive) seems to be in great shape. The boiler and tender will only need minor repairs, some clean up and touch up.

Here is #4 in ‘as arrived’ condition waiting for attention…

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#4 began life as a Bachmann Annie. There isn’t much of the original Annie left after Bruce up-scaled it to Fn3. If I recall the build correctly, although not a model of an EBT engine, a lot of the look and detail was based on EBT engines.

It actually looks quite large compared to the Bachman C-19’s in the background. I was going to relegate it to passenger service pulling my J&B passenger set & caboose, but those cars are 1:22ish and might be dwarfed by the locomotive. We’ll see.

First up is operational testing with Railpro. I’m only doing motor control just to test functionality before clean-up and repair. Final installation of RP will come later.

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#2

It’s Alive… .

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This thing is WIDE!!! The fireman’s elbow gets clipped going through Box Tunnel :open_mouth:

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#3

Be glad that’s all that don’t fit :sunglasses:

#4

Do it ! If concerned about scale use a freight car in the front of the consist like a flat or shorty to break up the size/depth between the passenger cars and loco/tender.

As you know my thoughts which scale matters not it’s all about the eye and how it travels. Worry about presentation/looks and forget the scale. You could slap some white flags on the front and call it “Special”.

Amtrak Yoda

#5

Nice work, Jon! I’m glad you got it figured out.

#6

Battery and motor I got, and guessed the motor polarity. Turned out to be correct!

Lights I’ll work on next. Polarity will be a guess again, but with LEDs that’s usually not an issue - they just won’t light. Or, if they are bulbs, they don’t care.

Those terminal strips you used will make it quick and easy to hook up the wire leads.

#7

I obviously gave it to the right person! Enjoy!

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#8

Great job, Jon.

I’m agreeing with Rooster: Ya gotta have the J&B coaches behind the #4, at least for a nice photo run-by!!

I have Bruce’s unnamed EBT coach, and Jerry B. has Camelia. Those are big girls as well! At some future meet-up, we need to reunite the three. If models have emotions, they’ll be very happy for that!

#9

I’ve got the wiring figured out. Having some trouble with the chuff trigger, but it’s not the loco or wiring.

She cleaned up really well. There are lots of things to re-glue and then a little touch up paint will have it looking like it did after the wreck repair in the J&B shops many moons ago.

Today…

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1 Like
#10

That could be fun. Those two are after Bruce got the Fn3 bug. The coaches that went to Ken, then me, and the caboose that traveled most of the northeast to get from VA to CT via Ottowa and Maine with several railroad transfers on the way, were moved out because they were small.

#11

Thanks Jon, all that helps me understand what Bruce has done. His work is amazing, and I’m only slowly grasping it.

Today, I’m seeing the J&B labels and decals everywhere… Bruce, my gosh… you’re amazing. And you make me realize that I’m wanting custom labels and decals, and that it’s possible.

#12

Electrical work continues. Everything was going well, but I was having trouble with the chuff input on the RailPro LM. After extensive testing, I determined that the Input on the module is bad. It may have an internal fuse that got blown. I emailed Ring to ask if that is possible.

I have more modules, so this one will get relegated to a diesel or a steam loco that has no trigger. It’s just frustrating since it takes so long to delete unwanted sounds then load all the sounds and effects to the new module.

In the process I found that one of my older MTO batteries has gone south. It puts out about 4V, but then randomly flashes over 12V. My smart chargers don’t like it. Maybe an hour or two on the dumb charger might revive it. I probably left it on the shelf too long with a full charge. They don’t like that.

#13

Yeah I did have some issues with the batteries. They would not charge so I had to open up the controller and found that they used some rechargeable AA batteries. I got a set of the same type and it seemed to fix the problem.

#14

I’m talking about a locomotive battery. One of my first LiIon packs from MTO.

Did you think you gave me a controller too? You did not, but I don’t need one.

#15

So as of late last evening I finally got all the electronics working, including the chuff. I ended up having to swap out the locomotive module to get the chuff to work.

It runs really nicely. I exercised it back and forth on the indoor a few times. I’ll need to post a video so I can show off some of the self-produced whistle sounds I grabbed from a recording made at the Edaville RR by the late Matthew Brown.

I have plenty of button spaces left on the controller since I only have two lamps and the chuff to hook up, so maybe a few more custom sounds are in the future!

Next up is to move it off the track and down to my workbench for minor repairs, touch up and drive lube. Did Barry have a specific lube procedure for his BBT drives? If not, I’ll just follow a logical lube plan.

I put the kaput battery on the dumb charger last night. I haven’t looked yet to see if it came back. If it did, I’ll discharge and re-charge on a smart charger. It was only in storage fully charged for 3 months :frowning: If it doesn’t come back, I’ll split it open and test individual cells. Probably just one bad one.

#16

Barry recomended “Super Lube multi-Purpose Synthetic Lubricant”

#17

Thanks Mick. I find a bunch of different packages of that brand on Amazon, so I’ll assume some oil and some grease would be good to have on hand.

#18

I’ve finally got all of the electronics sorted out and the tender closed up. It turned out I was reading the hardware version and thinking it was the software version. Of course I didn’t figure that out until I’d spent many hours uploading the sounds again to a different module.

The tender was missing a couple of boards. Luckily I had a length of an almost perfect size from some older project. I’m on the fence about staining them to match, or leaving them as new repair. Leaning toward the easy path!

There is a lot of stuff to glue on the tender, then some touch up paint and move on to the boiler.

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#19

I ordered the Super Lube grease from Amazon. It was supposed to be overnight delivery. When Amazon said it was 4 days late I assumed it was lost and ordered a second. They both arrived today. They won’t take it back, but did give me a full refund. I’ll never use two 3 Oz. tubes, so if anyone wants one for cost of postage, just holler!

#20

Cliffs thread on his J&B acquisitions got me motivated to get back on this. The tender was finished a few days ago and the engine has been repaired, lubed and touched up.

Eventually I want to take the bottom cover off the BBT drive unit and do a proper lube job, but for now I just popped open the plug and forced some grease in.

It needs new brake hoses (in stock) and the front coupler height adjusted if possible. It’s a lot too high to mate with my other locos. The tender coupler is perfect.

We are supposed to have 3 days of awesome weather biginning Friday, so road trials and photo ops are in order. MU testing with two C-19’s was perfect except #4 needs to lead until I fix that coupler height.