7mm Richards P48 US Thread

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

My track laying gauges came under the heading of "Don't Ask!".....

Visible above, on the left foreground a piece of aluminium angle with notches cut in it, and in the centre of the photo, lying on it's side, a wooden block with notches cut in it as well.
In an attempt to redeem myself the sharp eyed will notice a proper, genuine FastTracks template to the right of the wooden block, so I did try & do thing right, sometimes!!
Of course this is standard 32mm gauge O, which has a bit more tolerance than Proto:48. Good job, in my case....

 

[mickoo]

My track laying gauges came under the heading of "Don't Ask!".....
View attachment 251764
Visible above, on the left foreground a piece of aluminium angle with notches cut in it, and in the centre of the photo, lying on it's side, a wooden block with notches cut in it as well.
In an attempt to redeem myself the sharp eyed will notice a proper, genuine FastTracks template to the right of the wooden block, so I did try & do thing right, sometimes!!
Of course this is standard 32mm gauge O, which has a bit more tolerance than Proto:48. Good job, in my case....

As we used to say in engineering on the Port 'round peg solutions for round hole people with round hole problems'

 

[richard carr]

I've been messing around with well cars over the past couple of weeks. I brought some back from last weeks trip to Chicago.




I decided to convert this using some Kadee P48 trucks.

It is actually really easy to convert an Atlas freight car, you just need the 2 plastic inserts provided and the truck a minute job.




The first plastic insert goes over the atlas mounting post, then another one goes in the truck and you just screw the truck onto the original mounting post. You can also see a new coupler box that I 3D printed to fit Kadee couplers.



It's all in place with the coupler too.



I then converted a berwick box car, it took all of 5 minutes


Admittedly I didn't change the couple box on this one.




I then converted a second well car but this time I used protocraft wheels and a 3D printed bolster to narrow the original Atlas truck. This one is designed for the later version of Atlas truck that has the narrower truck sides.

Here's a 53footer with it's Atlas trucks.



The trucks rebuilt



This is the cheapest way but it does take a fair bit of time to take the old truck apart including removing all the springs to get the original bolster out and then putting them back in with the new bolster. You also really need to turn down the end of the axles by about 0.45mm (ie taking 0.9mm off the diameter) so that the Atlas roller bearing cap fits on the end.

I have been test running all three cars, the Kadees have some compensation built in and run really well , the rebuilt Atlas trucks run just as well even though they are solid but square.

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

Do you take the chemical blacking off the Kadee wheel treads Richard?
I run a brass brush in a minidrill around the treads before fitting them. No idea if it would come off naturally with some running, but would that in turn just dirty up the rails?

 

[richard carr]

Hi Jordan

I haven't done that yet, but I will give it a try on one of the cars and see if it makes any difference.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

So these trucks have been painted and then the wheels cleaned with a steel brush in a mini drill , it does polish the wheels up nicely

 

[Stephen]

They've come up nicely Richard - looks like that could be a job for me over Christmas with all those correct/incorrect Trucks Norm sent me!

SP Hoppers! Take it they are the Atlas RTR versions?

Cheers,

Stephen

 

[richard carr]

Hi Stephen

Yes those hoppers are the Atlas RTR ones, and very nice they are too, a whole bunch of them came up on Ebay at $40 a pop, some were 3 rail, but that doesn't bother me.

Norms trucks probably have cast iron wheels and unfortunately, they don't polish up as well.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

One of things I have been working on recently is my other MTH GP38-2 in EJ&E livery. I have a pair of these, both have been converted to P48.

The big problem with the locos is that the MTH sound is that of a GP40 with it's turbo charged engine instead of the GP38s roots blower engine.
They really sound very different in real life. The other annoying thing is that MTH PS3 isn't really designed to be DCC controlled, it's intended for their own DCS system. So I decided to bite the bullet on this one and rip out the PS3 and replace it with a LokSound 5L decoder.

Here's the mass of wiring for PS3




It does look a bit of a mess, but you simply unplug the board and remove it



Just two plugs to remove.






So here's the old board and the smoke unit.

 

[richard carr]

So having ripped out the PS3 it was time to install the Loksound decoder



So this is the plug in board for the decoder.

 

[richard carr]

The 3 bits of PCB are for the commons, the motors and the pickups.

There are potentially 10 common wires if you use all the lights and only two places to solder them to the board !

4 ditch lights each one needs a separate function.
Head lights
rear head lights
number boards, front and rear.
rotary beacon
cab lights

For the motor an pickups there are just two of each polarity but they tend to be thicker wires that difficult to solder to the board pads.


I was about to upload some more photos but I keep getting "Oops we ran into a problem" I don't know why as they are only 1.6Mb each.

So it turns out it doesn't like my VPN, even though it's connected to London Docklands.



At the top are the rear 2 ditch lights and then connected to the spring connectors are the rear headlight and number board.



Then more wires at the front, but with the help of a LED tester it was easy enough to work out what was what and wire it all up.

The problem was that I had forgotten that all these LEDs are low voltage without any built in resistors, so when I went to test it, there was the smoke pouring out of the headlights ! Oh dear, they did work, for about 5 seconds, now it's just smelly.

So the next job is to replace all the LEDs with built in resistors, fortunately they are all standard 3mm ones.

 

[richard carr]

I spent a bit of time this weekend building a bit more of the layout. It was time to get the high level route built.
The plan was to curve this round to the UK layout on a 6foot radius curve. This unfortunately wasn't going to work as it didn't leave enough clearance for Hi Cube box cars. So the incline needed extending about a foot, so the initial curve is going to be a 5 foot radius, but as I already use that radius I know it won't cause any issues.



Plenty of clearance now





Hopefully by Christmas day I'll have this bit completed.

 

[richard carr]

A bit more progress yesterday, the track is going down, so it all going to fit.



Then what will be the big bridge over to the UK through fiddle yard. There is going to be plenty of clearance

 

[Dog Star]

There is going to be plenty of clearance.

Not between the UK baseboard and the US baseboard in the vicinity of the stack of wood blocks... even less come Thursday lunch.

 

[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

This unfortunately wasn't going to work as it didn't leave enough clearance for Hi Cube box cars.

Not planning on running any double-stack container trains then, Richard?

 

[richard carr]

Not on the branch, Hi Cube box cars will be the tallest things, the stack cars stick to the mainline and go over the top.

Richard

 

[Stephen]

Not on the branch, Hi Cube box cars will be the tallest things, the stack cars stick to the mainline and go over the top.

Richard

Route knowledge required for operators then!

No one wants to be responsible for recreating this ‘classic incident’ in O scale…



Cheers,

Stephen

 

[richard carr]

Merry Christmas Everyone

It's got too cold to go in the shed for more than half an hour at a time, so yesterday I went back to weathering the EJ&E 703.












The white doesn't look right on the loco body, but its oil paint so that will still come off in a weeks time. The J logos do fade to almost white but they still aren't quite right either.

All the LED's have been replaced now and work just fine. I may even do the ICG GP38 that I too, to get it to match on the sound.


Richard

 

[Osgood]

Am I right in thinking your shed wall is constructed using insulated cold store panelling, Richard?
Can I ask what your experiences of this material are please?
Any issues with condensation on inside surface?
I have a pantiled vaulted roof building (2 x flint walls, 2 x timber walls) which requires insulating for use as a workshop (including welding so fireproof considerations), and thought this panelling might be an expedient way of lining it out and providing a flat insulated ceiling.

 

[richard carr]

Hi Tony

Yes I think you are correct, basically it is a an agricultural building, it gets a very damp feeling at times, I haven't noticed any condensation on the inside surfaces.

The panels are supposed to be insulated but they don't seem to make any difference, it just gets freezing cold in winter and then boiling hot in summer. It does cause a bit of movement on the layout but not as much as you might imagine. It's been up for about 17 years now with virtually no maintenance required.

Richard