Debugging #10

It seems to be two steps forward, one step back on #10. No sooner had I fixed the quartering issue that had popped up, than I discovered that the engine truck weight was dragging and catching on guard rails. After I resolved that, I triumphantly placed the engine on the track. Where it sat. Silently. […]

In situ quartering tool

I mentioned earlier that #10 was operating with a bit of a limp due to an out of quarter driver. As it takes about 30-45 minutes to disassemble or reassemble the locomotive, and every time I risk breaking something or knocking paint off, I thought I’d have a go at quartering the driver without disassembling […]

Feedwater power connection resolved

It took three tries, and there is still room for improvement, but I did manage to reconnect the tender electrically to the engine. Essentially, I made a very small connector, and soldered it to the end of the wire, then replaced the old wire completely. The small connector is a piece of brass rod about […]

Problems with feedwater connections for power

#10 has split-frame power collection. This means I had a choice of locations to connect the decoder and pick up power. To keep non-prototypical connections between engine and tender to a minimum, I decided to connect the tender electrically with the feedwater hoses. On the engine, the pipes are solid wire, with tiny collars soldered […]

Andrew C Stadden Figures

While searching for a heavy crew to add to #10, I recalled that Andrew C Stadden had introduced HO scale figures into his line of pewter figures a couple of years ago. A search through my email turned up his website. Although they are not inexpensive, and the Loonie is in the dumps right now, […]

Weighty matters for #10

It’s been a couple of quiet weeks here from a railroading perspective. We have had a ton of meetings with the community association that have kept me very busy. Still, I have managed to scrape out a few minutes here and there to tackle the weights for #10. I think I’m pretty much there, although […]

Testing the new decoder

It’s been a busy week for the Gourley household. Between community association events, work and helping my friend Scott with his layout, I have been out every evening. That left scant energy for my own trains. So this morning, while the kids were having their screen time, I carved out a little time to start […]

Rewiring #10

This evening, I finally found time to test out the super-thin motor leads for #10. It looks like they should work. First I installed the motor, and verified that there were no shorts between the frames and either lead. The most likely failure here would have been at the gearbox flange, where the tissue paper […]

Thin motor leads for #10

Having removed the original decoder, I am now well and truly past the point of no return for rewiring #10. I put the boiler back on temporarily to confirm that there is indeed space for my .0055″ leads to squeeze through. I made up some test leads and threaded them through, and found that they do indeed […]

Thinner insulation for #10

As I mentioned, clearance inside #10’s boiler is very tight. To route power to the far end of the boiler, I am going to try copper foil tape. The stuff I found is .0025″ thick, but uninsulated. As it’s going to stick to the sides of the motor/flywheel assembly, I need a thin layer of […]