12-21-2017, 12:33 AM
gna Wrote:....it seems to have broken axles. Apparently the best fix is to buy a mechanism from Bowser, but they don't make them any more. Any advice?...
It's been a long time since I had one of those Bachmann Northerns, but if I recall correctly, those locomotives have split axles which press onto an inner metal axle. The portion of the plastic which slips over the metal tends to split, which then allows that, and the driver attached to it, to slip out of quarter, stopping the locomotive. I used ca to cement mine in place - it's not a permanent fix, though, as it doesn't adhere well to that type of plastic.
As I said, it's been a long time, but a possible solution might be to encase the mid-portion of those plastic axles in brass tubing. You'd need to ensure, though, that the tubing doesn't touch the frame of the locomotive, which I think is metal. The reason for the split axle set-up is because current pick-up is via the drivers only, so if the tubing touches the frame, it'll likely short things out.
For this repair to be effective, the tubing needs to be a tight fit around the plastic portion of the axle.
I repaired a split axle gear in a Proto USRA 0-8-0 using this method, and had to ream-out (using consecutively-larger drill bits) the tubing until it was a press fit onto the hub of the gear. I used numbered drill bits, which have smaller increments of change between consecutive sizes than do fractional-sized bits.
Wayne