More 45xx progress

The 45xx has been gradually progressing over the last week or so. The chassis now runs ok - simply tightening up the coupling rods sorted most of the issues!

The 'wheel arches' (what else do you call the spaces for the axles in a solid chassis block?!) required a bit of work with a round file to get all the wheels level and in full contact with the rails. Not sure if it was wonky out of the box or if it's something to do with the work I've done on the chassis.

(As an aside - while Bachmann clearly don't go as far as putting any form of proper compensation on their models, there is plenty of vertical 'slop' in the way the wheelsets locate into the chassis, meaning that you have a sort of poor man's compensation as I pointed out before - which I think is fine at least for relatively slow running speeds and well-laid track.)

The 're-purposed' Bachmann pickups seem to be fine. One silly thing that's puzzling me at the moment is how to reconnect the wires from the pickups to the motor so they are still easily detachable if I need to take everything apart again. Ideally I need very small terminal blocks but not sure if you can get them small enough or where from... anyone got any suggestions?

I've made a start adding the brakes (the original mouldings were removed from the Bachmann baseplate before it was cut up for use in the new baseplate - if I'd just left them on they would have stuck out too far). I cut small strips of plasticard (1mm X 1mm x 5mm) and glued these (using Loctite 'All Plastics' superglue) almost vertically onto the baseplate sides where the brakes were to be located, overhanging the bottom edge by about 2mm. These are to attach the brake mouldings to so they're positioned the correct distance from the chassis and line up with the wheels.

Glueing the brake mouldings onto these strips is quite fiddly as you need to do it with the wheels in place to get them properly lined up. I marked in pencil on the chassis sides where the tops of the brake mouldings should come up to just as a visual reference to try to get them all the same height (some sort of jig might help here). The glue goes off almost immediately the two pieces touch so you have to try and line them up a millimetre or so away and then press down - quite tricky when you're working with tweezers and trying to avoid getting the glue everywhere - especially on the wheels! Again, maybe some sort of jig would come in handy but I'm not sure exactly what.

Once these are all on I can start thinking about painting the chassis and then putting it all back together!

Pick-ups (still!)

Does anyone know where I can get hold of the right sort of material to make decent pickups?

The phosphor bronze strip I was intending to use proved to be too stiff and not springy enough, and ended up breaking after only a couple of adjustments!

The Bachmann pickups are obviously made of a decent material (copper I presume) and they're pretty springy and allow for quite a bit of adjustment without breaking. But where can I find a source copper strip of the right thickness etc? Can anyone help?

I was planning on somehow re-using the original baseplate from the Bachmann chassis, but decided it would be simpler to just make a new one out of 1.5mm styrene. Here it is temporarily fixed in place with the original spring mouldings roughly placed in position but not fixed yet (they'll be attached to the baseplate so the whole assembly can be dismantled when required).


The next job is to make some new pick-ups for which purpose I've bought some phosphor bronze strip from Mainly Trains. These will be attached to the back of the baseplate (there's a gap between it and the bottom of the chassis thanks to the screw holes in the chassis block being raised, and extend through the existing gaps in the spring mouldings either side to make contact with the backs of the wheel rims.

45xx conversion progress

Here a few photos of the Bachmann 45xx chassis with the new Ultrascale P4 wheels temporarily in place with the Bachmann coupling rods and motion. I've added plasticard overlays to bring the 'frames' out to something a little closer to prototypical dimensions as I just couldn't live with the scale 18" gap behind the wheels that there would be otherwise!



When I originally mentioned it I thought there was a problem with the crank pins on the front wheels fouling the motion brackets. What I hadn't realised at the time, which is pretty obvious now, is that the protruding ends of the crank pins require trimming once the rods and motion are in place. So there isn't a problem after all!

More photos when I've made a bit more progress.