She Runs!
As I wrote in my previous blog entry, I am in need of a few days of recovery after yesterday's bout with poor health. It is Day 1 of recovery and I am already bored. My boredom and need to accomplish something overruled my need to rest and recover (I may pay for this tomorrow).
I pulled the new large scale steam locomotive and its tender down to the floor... grabbed some tools... plugged in a DC transformer from my O scale narrow gauge trains... and started to unscrew hidden screws...
No task is simple, especially when trying to recover from anaphylaxis the day before, but I quickly realized that the first four screws I needed to remove were a bit stripped and none of my screwdrivers could hold well enough to be effective. Quickest solution... grind down one of my screwdrivers to make it fit well enough...
After some grinding, one of my screwdrivers fit well and I managed to disassemble the tender which houses the sound card. The battery contacts powering the sound card were clearly bent, worn and corroded. I cleaned them up and straightened them before realizing that I have no batteries here in the house. Testing the sound card will have to wait for another day.
I did, however, touch the wire leads from my transformer to the driver wheels of the locomotive... She runs! The headlight works! The large locomotive sprang to life, wheels spinning! She needs to be cleaned up but she runs.
Eventually, preferably after I have some room dedicated to working on trains, I'd like to tear this steam locomotive apart, clean her up, repaint her, and add a bunch of detail parts. I don't like this paint scheme at all and would prefer a black and gunmetal gray color scheme... adding a lot of detail parts. This current paint scheme looks too 'toy-ish' with molded, overly bright colors. I want to make this big locomotive look like the big iron horse she is meant to be.
I've also decided to hand-lay track for this locomotive, tender, gondola and caboose. I want to have an eight foot section of track with scenery for this large scale train in a beautiful display in the middle of a full-wall bookcase. I've already researched what size to cut the ties and found a source for large scale rail in six foot sections, tie plates and spikes.
Through my research, I found that this is a narrow gauge locomotive in 1:20.3 scale which is really F scale... but it runs on G scale track so it is usually referred to as G scale or large scale. To be more accurate, however, this train set is actually an F scale, three foot narrow gauge... commonly referred to as Fn3. So this model is actually larger than G scale and what I had originally thought!
I don't really need this steam locomotive to run but it would be nice if it does! When I disassemble the entire locomotive to overhaul her, I just might install battery power, a new motor, new gears, new drivers and wireless control. Wireless battery control allows running trains with no power in the tracks... that would be really nice!
One step at a time... I do have some ideas though...
No task is simple, especially when trying to recover from anaphylaxis the day before, but I quickly realized that the first four screws I needed to remove were a bit stripped and none of my screwdrivers could hold well enough to be effective. Quickest solution... grind down one of my screwdrivers to make it fit well enough...
After some grinding, one of my screwdrivers fit well and I managed to disassemble the tender which houses the sound card. The battery contacts powering the sound card were clearly bent, worn and corroded. I cleaned them up and straightened them before realizing that I have no batteries here in the house. Testing the sound card will have to wait for another day.
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| The tender, disassembled, exposing the sound card and speaker. |
Eventually, preferably after I have some room dedicated to working on trains, I'd like to tear this steam locomotive apart, clean her up, repaint her, and add a bunch of detail parts. I don't like this paint scheme at all and would prefer a black and gunmetal gray color scheme... adding a lot of detail parts. This current paint scheme looks too 'toy-ish' with molded, overly bright colors. I want to make this big locomotive look like the big iron horse she is meant to be.
I've also decided to hand-lay track for this locomotive, tender, gondola and caboose. I want to have an eight foot section of track with scenery for this large scale train in a beautiful display in the middle of a full-wall bookcase. I've already researched what size to cut the ties and found a source for large scale rail in six foot sections, tie plates and spikes.
Through my research, I found that this is a narrow gauge locomotive in 1:20.3 scale which is really F scale... but it runs on G scale track so it is usually referred to as G scale or large scale. To be more accurate, however, this train set is actually an F scale, three foot narrow gauge... commonly referred to as Fn3. So this model is actually larger than G scale and what I had originally thought!
I don't really need this steam locomotive to run but it would be nice if it does! When I disassemble the entire locomotive to overhaul her, I just might install battery power, a new motor, new gears, new drivers and wireless control. Wireless battery control allows running trains with no power in the tracks... that would be really nice!
One step at a time... I do have some ideas though...
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