Page 5 - May June 2009
P. 5
More Tales
of Old Brass
(Engines)
I suppose that the reason that so many oddball faults show up in brass locos is because they can. Many chunky RTR (plastic or diecast) models are difficult, though by no means impossible, to put together wrongly. Brass can easily be assembled other than as the designer intended! Quite often such a loco will still work, after a fashion, but I find it is always better to go back through it and restore the beast to its intended form.
So here was this U.P. FEF1, HO scale PFM loco, nicely painted in a subdued two tone grey “Overland” scheme. It ran jerkily, with many a short circuit and much audible effort.
I had already discovered that one of the things needing fixing was a loose tender brake line, so before doing anything else I removed the rear tender truck and resoldered the brake hose on the inside of the tender’s rear frame.
It was while replacing the truck that something odd became apparent. The insulated wheels were on the opposite side to normal – the fireman’s side. No, it was not that one truck was reversed both were. Yet the loco ran, after a fashion. That could only mean one thing – the drivers were also reversed? Yes, they were – not one or two sets, but all 4 sets were picking up on the fireman’s side.
Okay, in theory, although opposite to convention, the loco should work normally. Well, maybe it would have done except that on this model the trailing truck also has current collecting wheels – and they were still on the engineer’s side, where they should be. The only reason the loco ran at all is because paint and dirt were occasionally preventing the trailing truck coming into circuit. As soon as it did though a dead short occurred.
So the tender trucks were swapped round, and the loco mechanism rebuilt with the driver insulation on the fireman’s side. At the same time, everything was cleaned up and adjusted. At this time another oddity was found. The gearbox (the usual white metal, enclosed, nonidler type) had as much worm shaft sticking out forwards as rearwards. (Had it come from an articulated model, I wondered?). Normally this would not matter but here the front shaft was pressing up against a chassis cross member that would usually have been well clear of the gearbox. So ‘hullo hacksaw – goodbye excess shaft.’
And so this rather abused loco became a smooth, powerful example of a very nice prototype, and I’m pretty sure its owner will be proud of it.
The Editor
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