7mm US model dabblings

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Cheers JB I'll take a wander, though it's two bay smooth sided hoppers I need for the sand deliveries to the depot.

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Though I think these might be too modern for a mid 60's- 80's layout.
 

Big Train James

Western Thunderer
Mick,
The Gunderson hopper is too new for your quoted era. But Dave is correct that the ACF Centerflows started showing in the 60's. You'd be looking at the earlier, smaller volume 2-bays, like the 2970 cu. ft. version (solidly in the mid to late 60's) or the 2980 cu. ft. version (late 70's into early 80's). Or alternatives are the various 2-bay rib side hoppers from the likes of Pullman Standard or Greenville. Trinity also did a rib side hopper but I'm not sure on when it was introduced. I think Trinity bought up the Pullman Standard designs.

More modern cylindrical hoppers like your pictured Gunderson car (or the Trinity 3281, NSC, or ACF 3256 versions) started showing up in the late 90's as a rule of thumb. For instance, the Trinity 3281 cu. ft. hopper debuted in 1999. The move to larger cubic foot capacity hoppers at that time corresponded to an increase in the gross rail loading weight for freight cars. A similar increase in cubic capacity occurred for larger hoppers as well, with something like the Trinity 5161 replacing the likes of the ACF 4650 or Pullman Standard 4750 for 3-bay designs. Essentially the newer cars went to 110 ton lading capacity from 100 tons previously.

Regrettably, nobody at this time makes a readily accessible, high quality ACF 2-bay hopper. Lionel and MTH both offer their renditions of the car, but in my opinion both models have fidelity and execution issues that are underwhelming for my tastes. Weaver made the 4-bay variant of the early era Centerflow, and these cars could be cut down to represent the 2970, but end cage, walkway, and discharge gate detail is molded and clunky. It's on my horizon somewhere to create etch work for the walkways for some of the more common ACF cars, so that I could possibly bash the Weavers into 2 and 3 bay variants. The Weaver car represents the early era centerflows, so addtional work would be required to update it to represent later models like the 2980. All doable, it's just a matter of time and inclination of course. Lastly, NJ Custom Brass did import various ACF Centerflows, including the 2980, many moons ago. I don't see them come available that often, in fact I didn't even know they existed before seeing one at the last March show. I have some examples of the larger capacity NJCB cars, which I could pull out and photograph. And I have some photos saved from ebay auctions that I could pass along as well.

One other alternative, depending on it's build date, is the Pecos River Brass Trinity 3281. This is a rib side car, likely based on the preceding Pullman Standard design. This Trinity hopper precedes the Trinity cylindrical hoppers introduced in the late 90's and commonly seen today. I'm not sure on the build date though, without doing some digging around. The cars are sometimes available at shows, or on ebay. The pricing can run all over the place. Not surprisingly, sometimes they go for stupid money on ebay, and sometimes they are fairly reasonable. The timing is everything. If you are interested, I can dig out some examples and get you pics of the models.

I can go into more detail about the various prototype differences, and more thoroughly discuss the various models I have seen, if you are interested.

By the way, an excellent resource regarding the ACF hoppers is the book, A History of the Center Flow, by Eric A. Neubauer. The book is roughly 1050 pages of info on the whole spectrum of ACF cylindrical hoppers, from the beginning. It used to be available from his website. I imagine it still is, however the website hasn't been updated in a at least two years. If interested, an email to Eric would probably be in order.

Jim
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Ah, so if it is the wrong one it isnt because it's the only one you've got, cant argue with that reasoning :D
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
With the GTEL inbound and due within a few days I picked these up the other day on the bay of E, not that I need them just yet, but they are nice to have in storage.

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This is the rather nice and spangly Turbine set from Microscale.

Next on the shopping list is a decent paint stripper for brass, I see to have book marked cellulose thinners (high gloss) and acetone and cannot remember why. The thinners would be for painting but I suspect it'll take pant off as well, the acetone I'm not sure on. mind they're cheap as chips in 1 litre bottles so many be one of each and experiment.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Well the 'package' was delivered today and I've had a quick look to see what I've got.

Some good, some very good, some bad and happily no very bad.

First up the cab unit.

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Pretty well all here, some damage ti handrails and from the quick look, no castings missing.

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I do have an issue with the dynamic brake enclosures and grills, they're very fold up plonked on affairs, not like some of the other etchings which are much better in design and execution. I think they will have to eventually go.

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The underside is a little spartan but the fuel tank and battery box will cover a lot, a false floor under the sill rails will help as well as pipework and the usual gubbins found in under here.

Speaking of the fuel tank and battery box appendage.

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Yes well, not sure what's going on here. People spend years trying to achieve this level of patina and I have it all here for free. A quick dunk in thinners should remove most of it, then we'll be able to better assess what's underneath.

The cab is simple, the real things are remarkably spartan as well.

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Some nice castings but needs a little tweaking to make things sit flat and square and it looks like it's been primed with a load of dust and dirt trapped underneath.....more thinners!

Moving back down the locomotive we have the power house, the actual turbine unit, originally 8500 HP, later up rated to 10,000 HP.

Once again pretty much everything seems to be here.

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There are some issues with the number of gearboxes and the Ebay photo showed more in a cardboard box, which seem to have not made it into the final packaging. There is a complete motor and gearbox in another package, along with a representation of bearings (not counted them all yet) etc, so it can be powered if required.

I'm not overly concerned as there are deeper fundamental issues here that could mean most of the gearboxes and wheel sets are moved on as spares for other budding OMI enthusiasts, I'll explain more right at the end.

The only casting that jumps out as missing is the middle axle box on one of the trucks.

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That's a niggle that frustrates, I'm sure (I hope) I can find a replacement, failing that I'll draw up a 3D CAD one and get it printed and cast, I'll be needing quite a few in the future so a batch job of 13 ( 12 per loco and one spare) at a time will pay dividends in the long run.

The close up also shows the other great flaw (in my opinion) with OMI or any other brass import frankly, the springs. The models all use outside bearings and are fully and individually sprung, in this case equalized too; a very nice touch....until you look at the springs which honestly do not transcend scales at all.

In the UK we tend to run with inside bearings and spring accordingly, the outer frames being cosmetic and more scale looking, I'm not sure where to go here to be honest, develop a new internal frame work for inside bearings and springs and then replace the external ones with better scale alternatives.

Either way I don't want to tamper with the OMI originals much, if at all, they're too valuable to hack around and convert; so whatever alternative is used it will have to fit in with the minimum of distress and pain for the original structure. This all then falls back to the wheels and gearboxes noted above.

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Externally the body appears intact, again the dynamic enclosures are letting the rest down, the intake box also suffers from a generally poor assembly in the odd place. Sadly there's no internal model turbine that some of these kits come with. Actually I've yet to see one without a turbine model in which is making me think this isn't a production run, it's looking more and more like either a second or a factory test build.

The chassis is present so negating the axle box it's pretty much all there at first inspection. The sliding doors appear to have been fixed in the closed position so I'll have to look at that if I want to add the turbine model later.

Moving further back we come to the tender, a 24-C-GTE no less.

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Once again it all looks like it's there, the trucks are brand new and never assembled, there is a tender chassis, even though the original owner wasn't sure there was; that's one job less to worry about. There is a box of sundries like screws and springs etch to top it all off and one of the axle boxes has come adrift but is easily fixed.

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There's a couple of areas where the brass hasn't been joined nicely, a fault that seems to beset most brass import models in one aspect or another. Sadly the only way to fix the tank end areas is a near total strip down with blow torch, I'll strip the paint and then see how much work is required to do that.

Okay that's all the turbine bits, or so I thought, I'd done a quick check on the Ebay photos and there appeared to be another chassis in there, the photos were not overly clear and rather than tip my hand and ask I just winged it. Well lo and behold there was a second cab unit chassis, and this is the very good part.

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Other than the brass aging it looks almost brand new and virtually intact in every aspect.

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There's no motor or gear box present and I think the frame rails have a few more details on than the actual cab unit. Now this is where I'm suspecting this is a clear out of no stock models, despite looking like a GTEL can unit chassis...and it most certainly is....it does not fit the cab shell. The rear of the chassis is the end with the large notch cut into it and the front the squared off part, the front end does not fit inside the curved pilot; it's not far off but would need a few mm taken off each corner.

I think this chassis is designed to fit a shell where the coupler pocket is attached to the shell, the one that fits has the coupler pocket attached to the chassis, there are up and down sides to each version.

Either way I have a free cab unit chassis and it's the whats one to do with it that's interesting. I could transpose across the best bits to the main model, modify this chassis and simply fit it to the main model.

I could keep this one as is and clean up the main chassis and upgrade as required. On top of that I could make a new etch up for a cab unit, I do plan (the master plan) to do that one day.

However, short term I think the trucks will be pulled and added to a new model, see these trucks are identical to what followed the GTELs in real life, the trucks were traded in on the replacement engines. In this case the U50C which is another long term must model for me, even if they're just used short term to set the other engine up it's a big leg up for that project. This chassis will then probably be put into storage and may yet become my second turbine.

Right, now we get to the bad, wheels and gearboxes.

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These are the gearboxes on the spare cab unit chassis, they're shot, totally useless, just touching them makes the cracks bigger. These are by far the worst but most show some signs of deterioration and to be fair in the photo on Ebay several halves were broken in two for the turbine unit power train.

I'm sure replacements are available, but will they suffer the same in ten/twenty years?

Next up are the wheels, they are really thick and I suspect are nickle plated, so turning them down is going to show the core material which isn't much of an option.

There's basically three options:-

Replace all like for like with new factory fresh OMI units, if you can even get them.
Replace all with a new source of gearbox and wheel with outside bearings to fit in the existing sprung axle boxes.
Replace all with a new source of gearbox and wheel with inside bearings and sub chassis to support them.

The last option is the most work but will also allow the truck frames to have decent replications of the springs fitted and the new gearboxes must be enclosed, possibly like the Slaters FD01, small compact but not cheap; you could probably get away with only powering the outer axles as well.

I'd also like some sort of 3D traction motor shell down there as well, not just for the GTEL but all my US models, they're really obvious on the hind end of trucks near the fuel tanks.

Lots to ponder and lots to do before I get near the drive train issues, for now it's all packed back up as I have more pressing jobs to finish first.

MD
 

Big Train James

Western Thunderer
Mick, I guarantee that Jay Criswell can supply new gear boxes that are very similar to the original OMI boxes in size and operation, but cast in brass. And they are typically fitted with shouldered axles for live bearing in the journals, although they can be flush instead. Or course Jay would normally supply with p48 wheels at proper gauge, I can't remember if you've ever said which gauge you were modeling in, but at a minimum he could supply with p48 wheels gauged to 5'-0" and possibly with .145" tread wheels if so desired. Or supply just the gearboxes with axles. If you contact him, tell him I sent you. I don't know if that will get you anything, but it might. Of course, the price might double as well :eek::oops::rolleyes::cool:.

Jim

P.s. now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure Jay has already done a repower for one of these models, which could make things simpler. I'll take a look around and see what I find, and if I'm remembering correctly.

P.p.s. Jay's photobucket page with what I believe are turbine trucks
The gearboxes redone in brass
 
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Big Train James

Western Thunderer
Well, those links I posted went to the wrong pages. I'm guessing something to do with sorting in ascending versus descending order. When I go to the album this morning, the gearboxes which were on the last page (56) are now on page 1, and the turbine trucks which had been on page 13 are now on 44, 12 pages from the end instead of the beginning. Not very helpful.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
I did wonder what was going on :) but after looking through all the pages found the gearbox ones but not the turbine ones so will look again tonight.

What did strike me was all the different variations of gearbox there was on those pages.

I've not decided on P48 as yet, is probably prefer 'wide' gauge but with more scale sized wheels, not necessarily P48 scale either. I need to get my head around the coding convention as well, not just wheels but track too; as I'll soon be hoping to get on with a layout this year......goodness knows when mind.
 

Big Train James

Western Thunderer
I think the majority of the variety of gearboxes are legacy parts from original manufacturers, like All Nation or CLW. And the steam drives introduce a a broad mix as well. But for new, or retrofit work, Jay has been using the same box design for years now. All that has changed recently is the transition to brass housings from the original plastic version. And some of the drive hardware has evolved, like using flexible couplings instead of ball and socket U-joints.

The gearbox design has been around for a while, it started either as a NWSL mod .7 design, or NWSL made the boxes based on a Jerry Snow design, I can never remember which. Eventually, Protocraft was offering them, although I think the drive work was actually being done by Jay. Eventually, Jay took the drive work under his wing and Norm at Protocraft focused on rolling stock. I believe the quality of the plastic housings had started to slip in recent years, either due to mold wear or material issues. So we translated the original specs to a new 3d cad drawing for molds for brass castings, which is what I tried to link to.

The turbine pictures feature the plastic version of the gear box, but the brass boxes would look the same excepting color.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Makes sense, whilst brass maybe more expensive it's exponentially more durable.

To be fair I have all the gear train and if retaining the original axles would only need new housings, which would reduce the cost significantly. The remaining issue then would be to source new wheels to press onto the axles. Whilst doing that I could add inside bearings and move away from the outer ones currently used.

I've not measured axles up yet so a ready stock if bearings might not be available, if not then your looking at new axles but sleeving the core at the gear wheel and gearbox bearings.

Too many variables at the moment so need to focus it all to a single solution in due course.
 

JasonD

Western Thunderer
Just come back from the Chicago Meet, good to meet Jim and many other American O-scalers, eat peanut butter flavor(!) M&Ms, Denny's for breakfast (good waiter: "Bye guys, have a nice day ... OK??"), fun layout visits ("crawl under there to get to the next level and the next, take that string to work out how to get back" - Ted Schnepf's - and "top level for British Western Region diesels and a Russian 4-14-4" - Steve Karlson's - and another guest, a retired railroad engineer, just switching to O-scale, from the D&H :thumbs:.

Mick, Peartree wheels (UK finescale ~ code 130?) have 3/16" axles like much US O-scale and the 3'1" (7mm) wheel is only a tad off the US diesel 40". One wheel screws off, wheels can come with no protruding axle ends and inside bearings as requested. Good for a quick conversion of Lionel/MTH scale-ish diesels to non-pow'd then add gears for pow'd. Special diameters/profiles to order min qty. MTH make Ow5 42" replacement wheels for replacing 3-rail drive wheels, code looks like 150, I should measure them, I have a spare set.
P48 is a good idea ... like S7 .... I have some in the garage from a downsizing source, with that UP 4-4-2 I mentioned that now I'm back can have its picture taken.

I'll have to go back to the US, or Canada, not the right weather for train-spotting, too cold, and couldn't find any Mexican with Mole sauce (chocolate but without the milk and sugar added). Oh, if you follow Ow5 you can run your creations on Guild group test tracks, etc. Thought I should squeeze that in.
Jason
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Jason, much obliged, I've had some of those wheels before but didn't know from whence they came.

Ow5 has an appeal as it will, as you say, allow it to run on a larger majority of layouts. Plus, if you make one engine P48 then the rest have to follow; being as my collection is growing faster than the (any) conversions, I'm now rapidly facing a growing cost for the conversions.

Anyway, the tank and trucks spent the night in the bag with the oven cleaner, the only down side being I had to clean the oven at the same time :rolleyes: A fair trade I thought :D

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They certainly don't look pretty, but are in the majority, paint free. It'd take forever with a fibre brush to clean them further....if it were even necessary....so maybe a mini grit blaster might be a better option. There were a few bits that broke off, mostly down to dry solder joints so I'm going to have to go over one or two and repair them and scrape out some solder blobs here and there.
 

JasonD

Western Thunderer
Random thoughts. AKA growing old. I took a GE 44-tonner bodyshell, with a stalled paint-strip on and in it, to my local car body restoration shop expecting a snort of derision. Instead, the boss said he'd give it a go in the steam cleaner and it's instantly ready for an undercoat. One handrail stanchion came off, but that was wobbly anyway. Hardest part was asking him how much ... "Er, a tenner?" :D

I hate fibre pens, yeh, yeh, you can carry them round with you, but in several ways it turns out, some painful. Pat Mucci at P&D had his usual selection of ex-Weaver drive parts. Apparently when Weaver closed, none of the 3-rail makers wanted the useful drive bits ... I wonder why? :rolleyes:

He also had g'box/w'sets for a 4-axle drive $40. Unbranded but in good condition from glances so far, they were in a big box of O-scale bits he acquired. Looked like the ones in your pics less the cracks. I've always wondered if these are surface cracks from the casting procedure, but I'll take your comments as an update on that! After disassembly if the shells are still in one piece would a hard setting Loctite number delay the disintegration? I can't remember the possible Loctite number, but there was a good discussion on the GOG forum a while back.

Enough for the moment. The Chicago Meet gets the brain going, the Eatery in the neighbouring shopping mall gets the stomach going. Question for smiling Panda Express lady "which are the spicy choices?" "Oh, this one ... and this one ... and thi...." Or a Bento box from the Sushi counter, or a ... damn feeling hungry, I'll stop and get some toast on. By the way many of the retailers bring stuff they think'll sell and leave the rest at the store. Norm from Norm's O-scale had trays of parts "fill your carrier, Jason, and we'll put a price on it". He had some nice Atlas Dash8-40CWs, I gave up being an Atlas dealer before they were available ... $212 ... OK, CSX. P&D, Norms O-Scale, Des Plaines Hobbies, etc, all worth a call for those nowhere-else bits. Oh, OK, last thing, promise, Norwegian Gatwick to Chicago £267 return (yes, +£50 for big suit-case :eek: but ...).
Jason
Next activity: toast replaced by "hang the washing out...". I suppose we need a virtual pub for all this chat.
 

Pugsley

Western Thunderer
In the UK we tend to run with inside bearings and spring accordingly, the outer frames being cosmetic and more scale looking, I'm not sure where to go here to be honest, develop a new internal frame work for inside bearings and springs and then replace the external ones with better scale alternatives.
Have you considered winding your own from thicker copper (or maybe brass depending on weight) wire? That what I did for my 37 and I think I created the right visual impression. It takes a bit of trial and error, but they're easy enough to make with a lathe.
 
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