Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

Ah, yes, the BCR M630....  turning into quite a project.  Here's a look at the shell I received.  Schnazzy!

   

What I thought would be easy and turnkey?  Nah.

I previously showed my breadboard platform for holding up the "new" Executive Line version 1 circuit board.  Before tightening the circuit board down to the breadboard I decided to test fit the board.  Guess what?  It's not narrow enough to slide up into the shell of the M630...   There was some extra room on the edge of the board on each long side, so I took the board over to my sanding belt and removed what I could...   still functional and now fits into the shell.  Hurdle #1 hurdled.

Then there were the "prefab" trucks I'd purchased.  Thinking they would be plug and play, I added a micro JST connector to the tails going to the track wipers, plugged them into the circuit board, and put the clips onto the top of the gear towers to secure them.  Put another micro connector on the motor leads and plugged them in, plugged in the decoder and placed the chassis on the rails for the first time....  Noticed that one of the trucks refused to sit flat on the rails - 2 out of 3 axle contact and that truck would not track through a curve.  Hurdle #2...

Contacted Bowser, who suggested that maybe the bottom plate of the truck wasn't seated well.  Pulled the sideframes off of the trucks and examined the fit and function of the truck without the sideframes - road the track well and I was able to move all of the wheels by turning the worm gear with no resistance.  Then I examined the sideframes after taking off the wipers.  Turns out one of the wipers was warped (you can probably tell in the photo below that the axle hole on the left is substantially higher than the other two:

   

Fortunately, brass is quite malleable, and I was able to unwarp the wiper.  Stuck it back on the sideframe and rebuilt the truck.  Wah... lah...  runs on the track without derailing.

Before I dug into the lighting options, I thought I'd just try sliding the shell onto the chassis....  and discovered some what we call at work.....  FEATURES!  (Hurdle #3....)

The old Stewart air tank arrangement was accomplished by sliding the air tanks into slots above the fuel tank and that could be done after the shell was on.  Not so much with the new design - those tanks are part of the shell and the old Stewart chassis has cast metal right where those tanks are.  

   

I'm going to have to remove some of the metal chassis to allow the shell to close tight to the chassis.  I'm going to have to get the Dremel out...

Put that aside for the time being and figured I'd attach the new sideframes to the fuel tank...  That should be simple!  All of the old C628 and C630 sideframes slipped right in the housing...  No glue needed, takes 10 seconds.  Not so much with these newly designed ones - although they slide in, they are probably 1/16" longer than the old ones.  Hurdle #4!  I ended up cutting through an end slot on the back end of the housing and gluing the sideframes on the housing.  They are currently drying before I screw the tank back on the chassis. 

In summary, nothing easy! Challenges a-plenty!