Plymouth MDT

[GlennW]

The 6 wheel drive will give it all wheel drive. AFAIK there s/b a set of truck gears to get power out. Due to the short wheelbase, you may want to run & wire 2 units together to get better 12 wheel contact.

[Franz T]

I may just run it in tandem with my Model Power Plymouth. My main concern is stalling on frogs, so one should shove the other past the dead spots. I took a look at the MP one (although MP identifies it as a WDT) and it appears to be a Mehano product as most of Model Powers diesels of that era. It runs surprisingly well, though (unusual for something made by Mehano. ) Does anybody know if Mehano is still in business, or did they get bombed into oblivion during the Balkan wars? I recall seing a bombed out Yugo assembly line on TV during the 90's; a friend of mine had one of those abominations, so I called her to let her know that we got "some" revenge in for her...

Franz T

[ben_not_benny]

Thanks for the reply Franz, I may get one later on...

[brokemoto]

If your Mehano runs that well; you may get away with hardwiring the two together.  These things have street prices that are so low that it does not hurt to buy a pair and hardwire them together.  If anyone has an old one with a fried motor; if you remove the motor; the contact wipers will remain.  You can run jumpers from the Bachmann to the wipers on the depowered locomotive.

There is also the choice of a 'live' car.

While some may consider the Kato North American caboose a bit pricey for this; you can find many of the 'live' Kato and Micro-Ace JNR brakemen's vans at shows for twelve or ten dollars (or even less).  One of those bashed into an industrial hack looks more convincing with the MDT; anyhow.  Some of them have tool compartments and other such things that you might expect to find on an industrial hack.

[GlennW]

I'm not sure if Mehano is still in business or not. They uses to be a supplier for most MP diesels. With the demise of Minitrix & Mehano, MP may have been forced to find a new factory to do their models.

Another 6 wheeler to look for is the LifeLike Little Joe 0-6-0T switcher. I don't know if it uses the ame motor or not? LL sells a lot of Little Joe's in $50 sets with a few freight cars. It seems like that loco has been around forever.

[ben_not_benny]

I always thought that set came with Power-Loc track, but I guess I was wrong.

[brokemoto]

The LL 0-6-0T is a much better locomotive than most people think.  It requires EXTENSIVE break-in; more than any other power that I have owned.  Once it is well broken in; it is a good creeper.  It does suffer from that plague of all short-wheelbase N scale power:  stalling at slow speeds on plastic frog switches.

I had hardwired a couple to live cars; but found that a better solution was to use a cheater boxcar.  I make my cheaters out of LL split metal frame FA-2s and older Atlas fifty foot boxcars.  The Atlas shell will go onto a LL frame with a minimum of sanding and knife work.  Some strip styrene and the good glue of your choice will make a mounting platform for MT couplers (you could also use MT coupler mounting screws in place of the glue; as many people tend to accumulate these over the years.  You would have to find a way to camouflage the screwheads; possibly).

The LL FA chassis has enough OOMPH to it to push the LL 0-6-0T along when it hits a stall point (such as a plastic frog) so that it is hardly noticeable that the locomotive stalled.  You can also run the locomotive around the cheater when it is time for the return trip.  Of course; you must kick it up; for a moment; to an unprototypical speed to jump the plastic frog; but that is livable.

There is also the option to hardwire the cheater to the locomotive; if you really must.  A VERY well broken in LL 0-6-0T has about the same throttle response as the FA-2.

[Lt Jim]

I had no problem installing MT couplers in my MDT. I also got a decoder in it. I agree it will stall on plastic frogs, but I use all-metal frogs and my NTRAK club uses metal frogs as well. Otherwise, it just creeps along and pulls a respectable number of cars for its size!

I haven't had much luck with the LL 0-6-0. It is a great runner, but there's NO getting a decoder into the shell. I have seen articles where folks have used the LL mechanism to make small articulateds, &c. I am going to try and make a camelback out of mine. Maybe then there will be some room for a decoder!

[brokemoto]

Hardwiring the small locomotives to an electrically live car may be one solution for using them on DCC pikes.  You can put the decoder into the live car.  If you only use the locomotive for shunting, that is not that big a deal.  I do not use DCC, so I do not have that worry.

The small power does perform fine on pikes with metal frog switches.

[nscaler711]

Ben Wang-
Bmann turnouts have metal frogs, at least on their E-Z track turnouts their E-Z track is very reliable i really like it....on bad thing is the connections are a little weak

[ben_not_benny]

Thanks for the reply!

[mcr314]

Has anyone gotten a DCC controller into an MDT?
I would like to get the MDT as a switcher, but I want it DCC.

[TCWORLD]

One more question: does the MDT have all wheel drive orr 4 wheel drive?

Yup 6 wheel drive. I am also planning to use the #1133 coupler for mine.
As has bees said, electrofrogs are a must for this one if you plan to run it slowly otherwise it stalls alot. Finally if anyone is trying to convert this deisel to DCC i have done so and would be happy to take a couple of pictures of the adaptions ive made to the split frame chassis to accomadate a decoder.

[hobo1]

these locos are great runners. I take them apart ,clean them and regrease and oil them and they run smooth and quiet on ntop of that they pull a ton.These locos are a great value -highly recommend them