I have just been gifted a full kit for the Garden Texture 35" 'Town Lattice Truss' Covered Bridge.  This kit is full size at 1:24 scale.  Most of my locomotives are Bachmann Spectrum in 1:20.3 scale, although I do have some Big Haulers, some Kalamazoo's and a LGB Mogul and a couple other odds and ends.  My question is whether my Spectrums might be too high to run through the bridge?  My engines are one Ely-Thomas Shay, one Pardee & Curtin Shay, one Pardee & Curtin Climax, two 1876 Baldwin Narrow Gauge Americans, one 1876 Baldwin Narrow Gauge Mogul, one Baldwin 1920 era Consolidation, and one Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes #12 Forney.  Which of these engines is the tallest, from rail head to top of stack or top of cab roof?  Will I need to make the columns of the bridge taller?  Or will these engines all run through the bridge without interference?  I do have quite a bit of salvaged Redwood and some very nice pieces of cedar from which I could cut new (longer) pieces to make the interior height of the bridge larger, but if there is enough clearance using the pieces in the kit, I would prefer using them instead of cutting new ones.  I was planning on using the stock I have on hand to build the trestle I need.  Anyway, I was hoping I could find out what the dimension is for the tallest locomotive I have without unboxing them all to measure them myself. 

I wish to convert my large scale Bachmann 4-4-0 to battery powered RC.  What is the order of disassembly to get to the engine wheel pickups in order to isolate the power leads from the rail.  And where is the best place to connect the battery leads so that the headlamp, firebox light, and smoke generator still work, and how do I get to that location.  If anyone has done this, or can provide some information, I woud appreciate receiving it.

I have one of the first run Ely Thomas Shays which I converted to RC.  The project was fairly simple the set-up works very well.  Since then I have purchased a Climax and another later model Shay.  The electronics are different on these two engines.  On the first Shay I ran the battery power back through the power feeds in the circuitry after removing the power pickups from the wheels.  The accessory power taps on the new engines are not as heavy as on the early Shay and I do not want to take a chance of overloading and burning out the wiring.  Question is, is the wiring and circuitry heavy enough to handle the current back to the motors, or do I need to figure out the wiring to beef up the wiring.  I am using a trailing car with batteries and RC unit that plugs into the engines using a computer patch cable plugging into a computer jack mounted discreetly at the back on the engine, which is wired to the engine's electronics to provide power and control to the motors and an auxilliary feed to trigger the whistle circuit of the sound system.  The patch cable is standard twisted pairs which are 24 gauge stranded wire, so they are not that heavy themselves and I have had no problem, although I use two wires each for the positive and negative battery leads.  Just looking to see if anyone has had some experience in converting the newer engines to RC without having to replace all the wiring.

srrailroader