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Ok, got the coreless mount completed. It fits great with double sided tape between the base and the motor mount.
Free air test shows very low draw and no noise.
Mounted everything and wired it up. Everything is just double sided tape for now.
It looks like all of my motor testing proved useful. This setup runs very quiet with the only noise being the weight of the loco on the rails. No gears grinding and no vibration noise.
With the motor being so small, I have room for a flywheel in the rear of the motor and I think I might have room in the cab for a backhead for more realism.
Final fitting will be when the 1.5 to 2.4mm adapter shows up. Right now, the gear is stuck on to a 1mm to 2mm adapter and tape to make up the rest. Surprised that it worked anyway.
Stuck a flywheel on. This came out of an ancient Kato F7.
Tested the flywheel effect. I cut power when the rear of the cab hit the rail joint. And this is at 3.8v (didn't change the power supply from earlier.)
If I do go with the NWSL motor, I have a flywheel for it as well. This is for a Kato as well.
Approximate location for the larger motor. The coreless is 20mm while the NWSL is 30.
If the NWSL motor is smooth, then the momentum of this should take it pretty far. Going to have to experiment...
Tender is now complete. Have the wiring installed and a connector to mate it to the loco. The red line is providing positive voltage to the tender to light the tail lamp. The black wire is providing the left rail power to the loco. Awe cr@p, just realized I wired the tail lamp wrong. It will light up going forward and not reverse. 100% chance of getting a 50% chance wrong? Or whatever the saying is.
Anyway:
Tender wiring with 2K resistor for the led.
Tender chassis lug installed.
I marked the tender chassis direction so that I know which side the conducting wheels need to be on.
Tender wired.
So, I screwed up and drilled the hole in the front of the tender for the wire to pass too low. I didn't think about the weight being in the way, so I notched the chassis.
I was lucky with the electrical pickups with this one as it runs great after the motor issue is sorted out. I was going to replace the tender trucks with Athearn units that have power pick ups, but am going to hold off on that for now.
Adapters came in. I got a 2 to 2.4 and 1.5 to 2.4 adapters. Since I had already cut a 1 to 2mm sleeve, I used the 2 to 2.4. I had to file down the edges of the sleeve to get rid of the rough edges so that it would slide on without too much resistance. Did that first and then inserted both into the worm gear as I didn't want the adapter to distort and then make it impossible to put the sleeve in.
Everything went in nicely. Now waiting for some loctite 603 to arrive to secure it onto the motor.
In the meantime, working on a boiler backhead. Hope it fits with a fly wheel.
Printed out the backhead. Had to stretch it a bit and needed a hole at the top for the cab retaining screw in the body. Clearanced it enough for the flywheel to fit so I think it will work.
Now, I need to wire it all up. I need to figure out where I'm going to tap the positive wires to the chassis for the right rail pickup. The first choice is where the screw goes through the cylinder block to hold the body on. Will have to make sure that the paint is cleaned off.
Finally got it all together. May have to play with the wiring a bit as it is a bit tight inside.
I put a slotted spade on the positive wires: motor, front light, harness to the tender for the rear light. The space between the boiler and the cylinder block ended up being perfect.
One thing about using a coreless motor is that it starts moving before the led gets enough voltage to light. The small flywheel allows the loco to have about a 1/2 wheel rotation before stopping when power is cut.
Will let the goop cure over night before running it more and with a load.
Still hemming and hawing about repainting this to GN colors. Would need to source decals for it.
I've been researching the colors and it looks like glacier green, oxide red, and smokebox silver from tru-color should be it. One website stated that the GN shops used their own shade of green, which may be why my Athearn looks turquoise. Some sites also said that the smoke box was graphite, but I like the silver on green contrast.
Thanks! Will take a look at microscale. Hopefully a shop sells both decals and paint so I can combine the shipping cost.
Yup, sure did. That's a very dark green and some of Tamiya paints come very close. I have a list of their colors that I can purchase locally from a grandma shop down the street if I decide to go that route. I had your picture up as I was going through their catalog!
Not many people would have put so much effort into a loco like this.
Looks like it has paid off.
I have always wanted to remove the cast on details on a Bachmann 0-6-0, detail it out, add DCC and repaint.
Your project has added some lacking inspiration on my project.
Thanks for posting the photos. Looking forward to the GN paint job.
Yes sir! I like doing stuff like this. I'm more mechanically inclined than artistic/layout/paint so the repaint will be a challenge. I'll make sure to add some vaseline around the edge of my camera lense so that it looks like the old Barbara Stanwyck intro pictures on those old shows! haha
What I need to figure out is how to remove the old numbers from the cab as I'd like to avoid having to paint that. I'd like to keep the red window frames and since Patrick's has them, I'm within the realm of reality.
