small USRA tenders

[tweetsieengineer]

Ive been looking at ways to improve my 2-6-2 power pick-up and was curious if the newer tenders offered by bachmann have power pick up on all 4 axles or just the front like the previous verson. Also will these tenders couple to the engines without and modifications to the engine?

TS

[the Bach-man]

Dear TS,
I don't have a 2-6-2 here to check. I'll see what I can find out.
Thanks!
the Bach-man

[termite]

TS, The slopeback tender gets power from both trucks, not sure about the others. The trucks are connected by a metal (copper?) strip on the tender floor, so you get power pickup from both rails by both trucks. Power is transfered by wipers from the front truck thru the drawbar. I assume that as long as the drawbar connection on the 2-6-2 is at or near the same height as their other engines you should have no trouble switching tenders.

[tweetsieengineer]

thanks termite that was the answer i was looking for.  I have bought one of the medium tenders for one of my 2-8-0's and i kinda thought the others were now being made similar to the medium ones. Now here is another more complicated question has anyone attempted to DCC a 2-6-2.  The one's im refering to is the current release that comes in the plastic box. It has the split frame and the traction tire on the middle set of drive wheels.

[TCWORLD]

Yes, i attempted it, and it didn't go well. I found there was no room in the cab, and little room in the tender. Even when i tried the tender, it didnt work so well as i had problems isolating the motor, and passing wires through to the tender.

[skipgear]

You have to make a drawbar to add one of the spectrum tenders to the 2-6-2. I just completed one for an article I am writing for the next Ntrak Steam handbook. There are two options, the easiest being add some whiskers to the existing PC Board drawbar from the 2-6-2*. The other way requires fabrication of a drawbar out of styrene. Either way, plan on picking up some phosphor bronze wire to make the pickup wires.

If you want to go DCC you can skip the pickup wipers on the drawbar because you will need at least 4 wires between the loco and tender and can use them to transmit power between the loco pickups and the tender pickups. The decoder must be mounted in the tender. Issolating the motor is easy. Adding a headlight might be an issue.

Below is the one I am working on right now. It has a clearview tender shell from an old Atlas/RR 0-8-0 on a short USRA chassis.

*(I prefer them as a 0-6-0, removing the front and rear trucks gives you a pretty good USRA 0-6-0 switcher with the small std. tender).



It will hopefully look like this when done:
http://eriksenphoto.smugmug.com/photos/137305180_5hbZ7-L.jpg