Obsessed with Heavy Metal

[pipefitter]

to pipefitter - if you change the motor on your Tyco Pacific you'll get a nice running engine. Those Mantua PM 1 motors just aren't up to the task.

My original Mantua Motor is in great shape--it's just too weak to pull a large engine and a consist.  I'm saving the motor to use in a smaller, switcher loco.  It would be perfect in some sort of tank engine ...

Thanks Guys,

I look forward to getting some new life in this loco and painting some Athearn 72' clerestory roof coaches to match. Should make a handsome train

Robert

[jonathan]

That's a great paint scheme.  I saw something very similar on the Yardbird website.  The modeler had made an auxillary water tender and painted it up the same way.

That engine deserves a new motor and some little touches.  Ooh, what I would do to that baby...

Regards,

Jonathan

[Woody Elmore]

Jon - There are lots of Tyco pacifics out there and one of them is awaiting your magic! Since you like "Beano" prototypes that engine would fit right into your growing roster of kit built engines..

A previous post mentioned a boiler swap with the Mike. You also have to swap cylinders; still not a big deal. Then you'd have nice looking mike. This is another project for you.

So what's with the PRR decals- are they being shipped from Kazakstan?

[jonathan]

Murphy has been haunting me every step of the way  .

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

Murphy has been haunting me every step of the way  .

Murphy was an optimist. ...  

[RAM]

I think the Mantua is better than the Tyco.  Same on the outside, but I don't think they are on the inside.

[jonathan]

Here's a little update:

I switched out tenders this morning.  The Mantua now has a Penn Line cast tender.




My Bowser project had the Penn Line, but it couldn't pull more than nine cars, due to the weight of the tender.  The Bowser will get the Varney tender, as soon as I can put some Pennsy decals on it.




I detailed this tender some time ago, and it lights up, too.  I like tender lights:


Just another little shot of clear coat, and I should be able to make the decal line disappear.


The Mike can still pull 20 cars, and the heavy tender, without wheel slippage so far (fingers crossed).

Regards,

Jonathan

p.s.

The Bowser is still a work in progress, but it's close to being done.

[jonathan]

To those of you who offered words on engine noises, I believe it was J3a-614, Doneldon, Woody and Daylight4449:

While I was switching tenders, I placed a little electrical tape on the cradle where the boiler rests.  Additionally, I put a fiber washer between the two spots in the rear, where the boiler screws to the frame.  That took care of the extra noise the engine was making in reverse.  Sounds the same in both directions now.  Thanks for that.

Now you've made me curious... can I get this engine "Spectrum" quiet?  I ran the engine for about 30 minutes, pulling a 20-car consist, listening for noises.  I can detect the weight of the wheels on the rails.  That sound will never go away. The Mike is just heavy.

Also, I detect a slight "growl" that seems to be the noise of the two gears meshing (guess);  and a very faint, high-pitched ringing... faint, but detectable.  The worm is brass, and the drive gear is plastic.  Perhaps melding two materials causes a noise all its own.

The next time I have cause to lift the boiler, I will try the caulk and/or tape trick inside the shell.

Has anyone ever made a cover plate, for the drive gear, that would fit under the frame?  I see them on brass models.  Also, has anyone ever made a housing that would fit around the gear meshing area?  I wonder if heat becomes an issue if one tries to insulate the motor/gear sounds too much...

Regards,

Jonathan

[pdlethbridge]

Nice work! Have you remotored either unit, like with a motor from yardbird?

[jonathan]

Thanks, PD.

Yes, the Mantua has a Yardbird, can motor installed.  Nice motor, indeed.

I actually bought the last DC-71  skew wound motor that Bowser had in stock.  That went into the Bowser, in an attempt to keep it as much a Bowser as possibble.  That motor is strong, but wheel traction is an issue.  I'm hoping the lighter, plastic tender will help get the G5 up to about a dozen car train.

R,

J

[pdlethbridge]

I'm going to replace my dc71 with a yardbird motor as the current draw on my mike is higher than I'd like for being controlled by a decoder

[jonathan]

I've isolated the motors on all my little build projects, but I use the force.  The dark side has not taken over my layout.  With a garage layout, I doubt I could keep the tracks clean enough for reliable DCC operations.

Regards,

Jonathan

[pdlethbridge]

I understand, my basement is dry and comfortable.

[J3a-614]

Jonathan;

Glad the sound-deadening tips started out so well.  Here are some ideas that may help you and other obsessed with modeling locomotives the old-fashioned way.  As this is intended as something of a reference, it will cover some tuning tips you undoubtedly already are using.

We'll start with a bit of philosophy, for lack of a better term.  The most important thing is to give yourself the invaluable and essential gifts of patience and time.  Atlas Tool Company's older plastic structure kits, such as for the station and the lumber yard, admonish the builder "to take your time and get your money's worth."  The actual time taken to build these and other kits and projects is recreation time; why not take a little longer to get it right?  In this respect, I must strongly agree with the Atlas commentary.  This is a liesure activity; why rush it?

The second one is to try to have a good working space.  The late Bill Schopp of RMC loco conversion and construction fame, once advocated that the best sort of workbench was one that was kind of high, like a watchmaker's bench (which Schopp was).  This enabled him to look at the work at eye level much of the time with a minimum of bending, and enabled him to hold up models (and watches) by resting his ams on the bench, and not relying entirely on his muscles, which did wonders for reducing fatigue, which in turn helped reduce the chances of dropping things.

You undoubtedly already know that locomotive mechanism construction essentially is adding parts, one at a time, making sure each new part turns freely, and than adding the nest part or pair of parts, and repeating the procdess.  A good way to do this is to test roll a mechanism during this process on a piece of track, without motor or gears, relying on feel as much as sight to look for binds.  A refinement of this is to use a piese of glass, which is slipperier than track.  If such a mechanism will roll without binds, with just the weight of its frame, it will roll nicely with the motor and gears pushing it.

Gear mesh is important.  The gears should mesh tightly enough to minimize play, but not so tightly as to be a source of uneeded friction.  Mantua Metal Products used to advise in their instruction sheets that the recommended clearance was about the thickness of a of a sheet of paper between worm and worm gear, or between gear teeth.  This practice would also maximuze gear life by reducing grinding (which you get if setting too deep) and minimizing the chances of gear stripping (if set too shallow).  There were also tricks for motor tuning (this was with open-frame motors), which revolved about keeping brushes in good condition, the commutator clean, and minimizing end play in the motor itself.  I confess, I didn't quite figure out how to reduce motor play properly, and some had quite a bit of it.

Lubrication was important (and still is).  The basic principle of oiling sparingly was and is important, the main differnce being the modern lubricants that are now available.  It used to be we used petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline) for gear grease, and sewing machine oil for rotating bearings, both of which are much thicker and heavier that the special oils and greases we now have available.

This post is looking a bit long, so I'll continue it in a second section.

[J3a-614]

Jonathan,

I hope I haven't sounded too pompous about this, as you already know a great deal about these older models.  It's just that I hope this sort of thing can be sort of a reference for others who also like to work on these beasties.

You were also asking about how you might reduce the sound levels even further.  I can't guarentee these ideas will work, but they may be of some help.

Locomotive noise, as I would describe it, has two major components.  One is the primary noise itself, such as wheels running on rail, gears grinding or just meshing, bearing noise (if it squeaks, get out the oil), and secondary or amplifying effects, as you have observed in the case of your boiler shell.

Primary noise basically comes from parts moving or scraping against each other.  The best way to reduce this is to make sure the parts mesh or otherwise interact smoothly.  Proper fit is important, as are smooth working surfaces and proper lubrication.  A prototype steamer illustrates this this with the noises its rods make.  A newly shopped engine, or one with roller bearing rods, has almost no rod noise because everything is fitted with minimal play or slop.  This is in strong contrast to an engine with worn rod bearings, as it moves along with a very audible clunka-clunk-clunka-clunk-clunka-clunk that can often be heard in all running conditions, but is most pronounced when drifting or coasting.

The amplifying effects come from parts that resonate and otherwise amplify the sounds from primariy sources.  This is what can happen with boiler shells of relatively hard metal, such as Zamac.  As noted, such a shell can actually "ring" like a bell.  Any primary vibration in the engine is thus amplified, sometimes with amazing results.  Cures for this can include isolating the ringing amplifyer from the vibration source (fiber washers and rubber tape in the smokebox saddle for your Mike), deadening the ringing component by mating it with other materals to dampen the vibrations (rubber or even additional weight, such as a bismuth alloy called Cerro-Bend, which can be had in alloys that melt at the temperature of hot water), or making things like the superstructure from materials that are accoustically "dead," which is to say they absorb vibrations themselves, and don't "ring" (lead vs. Zamac in the case of some older Carey superstructures).

In the case of your Mike, you seem to have parts that mate well, and I assume you've used proper lubrication.  You also have apparently used  an enclosed replacement motor, and these are usually quieter than an open-frame job.  What remains is likely gear noise (although this should be minimal with one of the gears in brass and the other in what is likely nylon), with whatever noise is in the motor itself, combined with whatever amplifyng effects the shell itself may still be contributing (some vibrations may still be getting through your isolating rubber).  My suggestions would be to first add a little tape or rubber inside the shell to dampen whatever vibrations may still be getting through (this is the easiest job, by the way), of course making sure the motor still has adquate air space.  As an experiment, I would also try a good heavy lubricant on the gears, like the Vaseline mentioned above (although this is in some ways like the practice shady car mechanics used to use of adding sawdust into badly worn transmissions and differentals to disguise the grinding they would make).  A little cover over the gears, as you suggested, could also help by not letting sound get out.  Finally, some more running time may help, as gears and other parts wear into each other as they "break in."

Good luck on what you're trying to do; let us know how things work out.

Finally, I have to reply to Woody about Bowser NYC K-11s.

The engine I got to work on was a later version, with the DC-71 motor mounted on its side.  Buzzing like a bee--oh, yes!  Funny thing, this passenger engine had the best low-speed characteristics of anything I had seen, including any switchers we had, and would be as good as anything out today except that it had no flywheel.  I think this came from the very fat worm that Bowser used, which would have had an great deal of gear reduction.  This worm was mounted on its own shaft which ran in a pair of die-cast pillow blocks; this system, which Bowser also used in its 4-6-6-4s, was claimed to practically guarentee correct gear mesh.

Your comments about a Hobbytown FT set also reminded me of a story about another of the firm's products, a replacement drive for Athearn's GP7.  This drive was said to have a large flywheel that took up much of the space in the cab of the Geep, and that some wise guy painted a candy-stripe pattern on the outer edge.  This was visible through the cab windows, and the effect as the wheel turned was said to be "psychadelic!"

I have a Hobbytown Alco PA to put together someday, and all that metal in it, including all the gears and shafts (and didn't those gears come from Boston Gear Works?), make me think that, like their prototypes, Hobbytown's diesels should be considered "honorary" (model) steam olcomotives. . .