Baldwin bash - sort of. Conversion of dummy engine and tender to DCC operation

[jviss]

I thought folks might be interested in this project, and maybe even help me out of tight spots, and sourcing components, and so forth.

I purchased an Anniversary 4-6-0 dummy loco and tender; actually, two sets.  They are White Pass and Yukon, and both are number 14 (unfortunately).  They are beautiful.  I was really amazed at the beauty of detail and execution, never having had an Anniv. unit before.  Now I have these two, plus a complete Anniversary D&RGW "Bumble Bee."

The dummy units are complete outside, but empty inside, literally nothing is present that is not visible externally. 

I am going DCC.  I purchased a Tsunami TSU-1000, and I will find out if it can handle the 4-6-0 on level track.  I think it will. 

I was fortunate in that Bachmann parts is selling generation 5, Anniversary chassis on sale this month (and last) for a very reasonable price. 
I have purchased two, both with Walscherts valve gear.  The dummies have the much more simple Stephenson valve gear (or no valve gear, as far as I can tell); so I have choices.

I have separated the chassis and shell, and lost a piece of piping in the process - part number MCT31 (right side).  Oh well! 

I have removed the connecting rods, disassembled the drivers, and am preparing to swap the wheels and wheel covers to the working chassis. 

I found a speaker that will fit the tender.  I will likely fabricate clamps to secure it.

I need:

LED bulbs for head and tail lights;
a weight for the chassis;
connectors and wire, for the internal connections, and the loco to tender connection.

I also need to decide if I'll swap the leading truck wheels, or swap trucks and pickups and wiring.

Comments appreciated!

jv

[Kevin Strong]

It's a little late to be buying clearance Christmas lights, but the warm white LED christmas lights are very well-suited for lights for our locomotives. I purchased a few strands (50 lights each) on clearance a few years ago for something like $5 per strand.

Electrical connectors can be purchased from www.allelectronics.com. They offer a variety of different connectors. Scroll down the side to multi-pin connectors. I try to keep an ample supply of the 6-pin and 2-pin connectors on hand.

For weight, head to your local sporting goods store and get a big thing of lead shot. I will often mix the lead shot with Bondo, so it forms a lead putty of sorts. In the case of adding weight to the 4-6-0, I'd be tempted to build a mold and let the Bondo dry. You can then shape it to fit in the boiler.

Later,

K

[jviss]

Thanks Kevin.  Do you know the ideal diameter of a round-top LED that would fit the reflector hole?  I just ordered a bag of 100 5mm, warm-white LEDs- very cheap, on speculation that they'd fit.

I checked allelectronics, they seem to have mostly connectors with leads attached.

For weight, I have lots of lead, and I can cast, so I will probably just make a pattern and cast a couple in a sand mold. 

[Joe Zullo]

5mm LED's are the correct size. 

[jviss]

Thanks, great.  LEDs are on the way.  Don't know what I'll do with the extra 98 LEDs!

I should make a parts list, of what else I need.  It's mostly wire and connectors, and a weight.  I don't have a smoke unit, but I rarely use it on the existing loco's because the smoke is so wimpy.  

I've found that on my Anniversary D&RGW that the two wires connecting the loco to the tender are so stiff that they cause derailments!  They are also way too long.  

I wonder if there is some prototype hose feature or something that could be simulated with the wires?

[Loco Bill Canelos]

JV,

I am curious where you bought Dummy Anniversary 4-6-0's.  Bachmann never made any dummy units for retail sale.  the only dummy units I know of were part of a store display at Sams club years ago.  Were they new in a box or just something some one may have gutted out??

Thanks Bill

[jviss]

Hi Bill,

There's a seller on eBay who has them.  He says they are form store displays.  All are Baldwin 4-6-0 White Pass and Yukon Anniversary units, sold with a tender or without, and tenders sold separately.  I just checked, he as one left with tender, three loco only and three tender only.  I think the price is very good - used to be cheaper, but he raised it! 

Cheers,

jv

[Joe Zullo]

Bill,
Here's his link for one w/tender...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BACHMANN-G-Scale-Anniversary-White-Pass-Yukon-Loco-Tender-Dummy-NEW-Display-/371288126797

Here's his link for one wo/tender...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BACHMANN-G-Scale-Anniversary-White-Pass-Yukon-Loco-ONLY-Dummy-NEW-Display-/141614187296

[jviss]

I made some more progress on this.

I swapped the drivers from the dummy to the new chassis, so I'll have the proper wheel trim.  Likewise the leading truck wheels, which just pull apart easily.

I the new chassis has the nice, Walschaerts valve gear.   I don't know if this is "correct," for Baldwin 4-6-0's, or this era (1905 or so?), but it looks great.

In my specification for this is to add two trigger strips for the chuff trigger, so I'll have the correct four chuffs per revolution.  When I too the lead driver apart I found, much to my surprise and delight, that the drum, or spacer, or whatever the part is called to which the trigger strips are attached is designed for four strips!  I wonder why Bachmann doesn't attach the additional two strips, but if I can source )or make) the parts, I can easily do so.  

Question: can I buy the parts for this?  Maybe buy the drum, if not the individual strips and screws?  If not, anyone know the screw type and size?

Here's a pic:

[jviss]

5mm LED's are the correct size.  

Not quite so.  I received my 5mm LEDs today and the don't fit.  The reflector into which they insert, form the rear even has a tab to located the bent leads, but the hole is only 3.85mm.  Inside the reflector, the barrel into which the LED will slide is just a bit over 5mm, so I guess if I open up the hole they will work.  But I can't remember if I have a metric drill bit set or reamers - will have to check.  The closest fractional equivalents are 13/64, which is .006" over 5mm, and 3/16", which is .010" under.  Will have to think about this....

Update: found a 5mm bit, but it turns out the 'barrel' that the LED slides into is not 5mm, it's a bit smaller, so trying to drill it out for 5mm would likely wreck the reflector.  So, fortunately the LED vendor on eBay has 3mm LEDs and does returns with free shipping!  He also processes orders and ships very quickly, so all good.

Update 2!: I have to apologize to Joe, 5mm is the correct size, but not the kind I had with the rim around the base.  I ended up holding these in a collet on the lathe and cutting off the rim.  I turned them so they are a nice, tight press fit in the reflector.  Now I have a whole lot of 3mm LEDs, and slightly fewer 5mm. 

[Hunt]

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[jviss]

Thanks Hunt, gotcha.  That was my next move.

[Loco Bill Canelos]

Thanks JV and Joe for the link.  Al Kramer has a long time relationship with Bachmann and does buy excess from them.  He used to run a hobby shop called San-Val trains.  He is totally internet now and his prices were better when he had the store, but are still good for many items.  I would still like to know for the historical record what store Bachhmann produced the WPY Dummy displays for,  so for the historical record if anyone knows please pass it on to me.

Thanks,
Bill

[Joe Zullo]

Bill,
Why don't you contact Al Kramer? 

[jviss]

Update.

Started rewiring the chassis for DCC.  There are a pair of molded-in binding posts just forward of the motor, facing down, that the bulk of the positive and negative wires are fastened to with screws through ring terminals.  I removed the screws and pulled all the wires out.  Found a couple of things I didn't like.  First, all the wiring has been given a shot of black paint.  Not sure why, maybe so one won't see the red wires through the holes in the sides of the frames?  I don't care for the pin and socket connection of the rail power wires to the brass wipers, so I'm eliminating those in favor of stacking a ring terminal on the existing one to the leading truck pickups.

I found both the wires to the leading truck pickup sheared clean off at the truck swivel post.  It seems someone myst have twisted the truck all the way around (not me!).  This was a pain to re-do.  I don't care for the design of the wire routing through the post.  I also can't see how this arrangement makes good contact from the rails to the pickup wires, it doesn't seem there's positive contact from the wipers to the axles, and the axles don't even look like they're clean enough to make decent electrical contact.  The truck seems too light, too.  This is a generation 5 chassis, perhaps these issues have been addressed in gen. 6?  The wires had been tacked into the frame floor with hot glue, and thy had pulled out of this.  I tacked the re-done wiring with drops of extra-thick cyanoacrylate adhesive.  It required some accelerant to "go off." 

Still haven't settled on what I want to standardize on for connectors on my railroad.  I ordered some 28 ga. wire, tinned, stranded, ten colors.  I had contacted Soundtraxx support about purchasing their very nice, flexible wire, and they were kind enough to accommodate me, but the prices was just too high.  I don't think they are gouging, at all, it's just good, expensive wire.  I went the Chinese route via eBay; it's purported to be tinned and stranded 7x19, we'll see.   It was about 1/15th the price of the good Soundtraxx stuff.  I did purchase a few pairs of the connectors that are used for the loco to tender wires.  The receptacle is intended for a wire, and pin header for PCB; but, I'm sure I can use the header for wire attachment with decent soldering and good heat-shrink, which should provide some mechanical reinforcement as well as insulation.  I'll use the rear PCB as a bulkhead for the tender speaker and backup light connections, maybe use the switch just to turn the speaker on and off.  I'm going to find some very soft, round section, two conductor stuff for the loco to tender so it looks like a couple of hoses and doesn't cause derailments as the to-stiff stock cables do. 

Lacking a connector decision and connectors I'll mate the decoder to chassis wires with solder and heat shrink, except I'll use one for the two pin header and receptacle pairs to connectorize the headlight, easing maintenance, allowing separation of the shell and chassis.  (I will forgo a smoke unit, and any switches ender the smoke box door for now).  I have some perfect, tiny heat shrink tubing.  I think it might even have an adhesive inside.  The only connection that makes me think a bit is the blue, "Function Common" wire, which has to be connected to both head and tail lights, and two more functions, if used.  It would be nice to have a common bus, but it's unnecessary, I can just leave a pig tail hanging out of the splice in case I want to add F5 and F6 functions at some point. 

This brings up a point about smoke units.  I don't know how much power they require, but I'm guessing it's more than the maximum of 100mA that the rating of the function outputs.  Further, there's no good reason to drag all of this power through the decoder.  If I add one I'll probably just run it on the DCC raw, through a tiny relay that's controlled by a function output, or a switch.

I toyed with the idea of using the NMRA/LS polarity switch as a switch to go from DCC to DC, but I just don't want to think that much about it at this point.  I'm guessing I'd need more poles if I'd want lights with DC, etc.

I noticed some slop in the motor, i.e., it swivels up and down a bit when pressure is applied to the drivers forward and reverse.  Is this normal?

I'll probably strap the decoder to the top of the weight with a nylon tie-wrap, and leave the wire-lenght on the decode so the weight can be placed aside for maintenance without having to cut the tie wrap. 

So, still not done, but the end is in sight.  It's more work and time than I imagined.