Bashing A Brass USRA 0-8-0

[Schraddel]

Hello Folks!

Sometimes you can made a draught out of the electronic bay:





Initally i was searching for an P2K USRA 0-8-0. Only a very limited number of choices was on offer at that time. None of the offered P2K engines was right. All og them were used and had seen life of were battered in some aspects.
Untill i discovered this brass loco. It was unrun in an as near as new condition and the price was o.k. So why not?

There will be some work to do untill this switcher will be added to my ET&N stock.
On first test run i found this is a very smooth runner. No binds, a silent move on clean even track.


A first overlook reveals this. A Canon can motor, the ordinary rubber tube and a surprise. A kind of an nose-suspended traction motor.
A brass angle is mounted direct to the gearbox and for this reason there is no movement between worm shaft and motor shaft.
And for this the old stiff rubber tube still runs "round". A second bar also mounted on the gearbox bears with an spring to the main frame.

The wheel profile is according RP25 Code93 hock: :!:

That is "as bought".
To do (at a first glance):
- replacing the rubber tube with universal joints
- 8-pin NMRA socket for converting to DCC
- current pick up from all wheel of loco and tender; this is a switcher and will be used as switcher.
- completing some details
- bridge loco to tender
- lighting by LEDs
- colour
- lettering
- and some more as needed


Lutz

[Steamtrains]

Lutz....

I was tracking this baby (or one very much like it) on the Bay...What a beauty....

I believe the 0-8-0 is my favorite loco...
Her's a pic of my newly lettered 0-8-0....I'm still working up the courage to weather it....



Don't forget to show us your "upgrade" thread when you get around to it...!!

[Schraddel]

O.K. here we go.


During demounting the engine the dome came loose because the soldering pints of the mounting plate inside were broken.
Never mind i thought this piece is small enough to resolder with an electric iron.
Done.
And then:


hock: The gold laquer was browned and started to peel off.
Fortunately with the aid of an rotating brass brush in the Dremel the burned laquer could be removed complete.


I made a bridge out of brass sheet with safety thread pattern on one side. The hinge is simply a length of 0.5mm brass wire soldered to th edge.


Next in unsoldered the injector beneath the cab on the egineer's side. This injector was mounted zu much backwards and not in conclusion with prtotype photos.


The injector resoldered. I added the two valve rods.


On the firemens's side too.
You can also see the bridge mounted.

Lutz

to be continued

[Russ Bellinis]

Looks really fantastic, Schraddel! A friend of mine used to do custom painting before he went to work for Athearn. Now he no longer does any modeling on his won time because he gets all of the modeling he wants to do working on prototypes for new products from Athearn.

One of his chief complaints with imported brass (the most common models he painted for people) was that so many of the solder joints were cold soldered and the parts fell off when he took the model out of the box. Whenever he did a custom paint job on a brass model, he started by soldering all of the details back on the model!

[Schraddel]

The next chapter.

I removed the four tiny screws which holds the tender shrell:

O.k. there is much space inside to mount an NMRA 8-pin socket and much of space for the decoder also.
But i have to remove the front bracket partially to make room for the wires leading to the loco. The best solution seems to cut off the middle section of the bracket thus only leaving two angles left and right.

Done, but oops!

Due to a weak cold soldering the rest broke away.
What to do? Oh no, no soldering again see the last post with the steam dome. And because of the seize of the parts i have had to use a torch and burning as unwanted effect the laquer.

I decided to leave the "pure brass doctrine" and do the repair job by glueing:

Some pieces of styrene sheet will do the job. I this case the glueing area is large enough so that mechanical strenght is possible bigger than a soldering point.
You can also seen the opening i made in the front wall of the tender shell for the wires.

The next step was of mechanical nature:

The aged rubber tube you very often found on brass locomotives was replaced by universal joints.
After running test with the motor running alone, i decided to use this quiet and soft running Canon motor again.

Lutz

To be continued

[e-paw]

nice job so far ... I do have a suggestion for you, if you have access to a resistance soldering tool you should be able to solder to the loco with a lot less of that burning effect. You will still get some but it can easily be cleaned off with a wire brush. keep the pics coming.

[Schraddel]

nice job so far ... I do have a suggestion for you, if you have access to a resistance soldering tool you should be able to solder to the loco with a lot less of that burning effect. You will still get some but it can easily be cleaned off with a wire brush. keep the pics coming.

Thank you e-paw.
Sadly i have no acess to a resistance soldering set. Only to a torch an some analogue electric soldering irons.
12W for those tiny LEDs
30W for all purposes
180W pre-war (very coarse, 2 hrs to heat up and then app. 3.5 hrs to cool down)

[Schraddel]

Time to make some progress.
I made completely new pick up devices. At least loco and tender will have the same polarity to avoid any short circuits. The current will be picked up from the right rail by the means of the uninsulated wheels of loco and tender. And for the other side, with now all wheels insulated, there i have to made new current pick ups.


The new electrical pick up shoes for the tender. At first i glued styrene sheet to the underside of the truck cross members for insulation reasons. Then pieces of an triangular plastic profile. And to this the strange formed shoes. The shoes are made out of 0.15mm hardened bronze sheet. They are bend in this manner to elongate them and made the sprung softer. You have to bend them to make this possible in this rel. small available space. They wipe on the tips of the flanges and are soft enough not to block the wheels.


A closer view.


The bottom plate of the loco. For the non insulated side i soldered 0.5mm hardened brass wire direct to the plate.
For the other side i glued an insulation of 0.3mm styrene sheet to the plate. Then i soldered the brass wire to 0.15mm copper sheet. At least i glued this device to the styrene sheet. The copper sheets provide enough glueing area to make the fixature strong enough.
The black connecting wire has still to be shortened. The other wire will be leading to the tender.


The bottom plate with pick ups mounted. The brass wire is bend and shortened to wipe on the edge of the wheel rims. The side of the gear box cover has got also an insulation.

So all wheels of loco and tender are in duty for electrical pick up.

Lutz

To be continued

[modelsof1900]

Hi Lutz,
good idea to change the electric pick up system.
However I would like to say that you should not use 0.5 mm hard brass wire. I think that spring bronze wire or phpsphor-bronce wire will be more elastic material for a softer pick up. Try to get Tichy Corp. wire that you can get from Walthers - search for phosphor-bronze and it is available in very different diameters.
I have good success using this wire also for model building, detailing and replacment of plastic material!

[Russ Bellinis]

Lutz, if you have a problem with the glue letting go where you fastened the plastic to the brass, Kadee makes plastic 2-56 screws for some of their coupler boxes and sells them in packs as well. You could drill and tap your brass plate as well as the truck frame and the plastic, and then fasten everything together with the plastic screws, and cut the screws flush with the top surface with rail nippers. You would get a secure mounting with insulation as well. Part number 256 on the link.

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[Schraddel]

Hello,

i have a problem.
When looking to prototype photos of USRA 0-8-0's i was missing on the model the "seam" between both cylinder blocks.
I try to model this seam between the two cylinder blocks and i am not quite happy with my first attempt to do it:

:?
Has anybody an idea?

Lutz

[modelsof1900]

Lutz,
try to use a brass strip 1 by 1 mm, drill holes in right distance in the brass strip and insert small NBW.
You should solder the NBWs in full length in holes of strip. So you will have washers and nuts at one side of this rib and on other side you will have the long bolt ends. Because NBWs have fairly thick shafts so you can file down the overlong material to the high of screw heads and than you should press a hexagonal head using a flat plier. After this you can glue or solder this "srewed" rib to the smoke box support.
I think that I would solve this problem on this way.

[Schraddel]

Bernd,

you see my problem:
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There are staggered double rows of NBWs.

Lutz

[modelsof1900]

Take square brass rods 1 by 1.5 mm.
Or try to get small brass NBW by PSC #585-48226 as first and use a well fitting square brass rod.
A few very small NBWs are in my stock yet.

[Schraddel]

The next attempt:







I drilled a lot of holes in a brass rod.
At first the bores were set too narrow. So i did it again. Then i inserted a couple of 0.5mm brass wires and made photos to see how it looks like.
In the prototype there are hex nuts and bolts. And the wire is round. Remember this 0-8-0 will be made for running on my layout. And will be painted black. I am questioning me, if one can see the tiny hex nuts when tho loco is on the layout.
And look to the middle photo. There the bolts on the upper part of the cylinder blocks were the smokebox is mounted are simply round devices.

Still thinking and :?: :?: :?:
Lutz