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I've made a previous attempt at this and was unsuccessful. I am looking to re-power an HO Scale mid 90's OMI 9-44CWL. The older dogbone components have failed/cracked, and would like to know who can help me with refreshing the drive mechanism. Lil' Help?
NWSL also sells new universals for the drivetrain as well. You'll need to measure the diameter of the drive shafts as these come in various sizes. I would also measure the size of the old motor, as well as the inside of the body, and replace it with one of the same size or bigger, provided the bigger motor fits inside the body. NWSL also sells motors as well.
That became a problem only in the 1980's when some guys started collecting brass as "investment pieces". Many of these locos were not designed with the robust motors and gears that had been a hallmark of brass for years. Instead they came with gears that weren't very good, and motors that could barely move the locos. That, coupled with prices that in some cases doubled in less than a year, actually drove the majority of brass buyers out of the market. That pretty much killed the brass market as we once knew it. I would have to say that the brass market isn't a tenth of what it once was.
Carey. The junk came even in the early 70s. Before that I suspect it wasn't much better - especially by today's standards.
There was not one brass diesel, steam or traction model I ever bought in the 1970s that didn't need a total revision of all the mechanical parts and the method of electrical pickup. They were nice looking pieces of disappointing mechanical trash. Cosmetic appeal was all the average bloke went by back then. Eight out of ten guys I knew never ran their brass. Most brass I saw never got painted and just hung out in closets. I recently bought a Sunset brass SP 2-6-0 and I'm happy with it the way it runs. Somebody finally gets it!!!
Carey. The junk came even in the early 70s. Before that I suspect it wasn't much better - especially by today's standards.
There was not one brass diesel, steam or traction model I ever bought in the 1970s that didn't need a total revision of all the mechanical parts and the method of electrical pickup. They were nice looking pieces of disappointing mechanical trash. Cosmetic appeal was all the average bloke went by back then. Eight out of ten guys I knew never ran their brass. Most brass I saw never got painted and just hung out in closets. I recently bought a Sunset brass SP 2-6-0 and I'm happy with it the way it runs. Somebody finally gets it!!!
Ah, the infamous KMT (NOT to be confused with KTM) diesels. I knew a couple of guys who rebuilt every one of theirs. NWSL still carries replacement gears for those. I even have a few rebuild kits in my stash of parts that I came into over the years.
Brass diesels are easier than steam to re-motor. Micro mark also carries the old Hobbytown universal joint kit which i prefer to the NWSL ones, but they only fit one shaft size. There is a pretty good website that covers this and a presentation that shows examples here. This is not difficult, Take a look: http://www.markschutzer.com/Brass_Clinics/RebuildingBrass2006std.pdf
Charles you must have gotten into a real streak of bad luck. Every "brass guy" I knew then ran their brass, and ran operating sessions as well with the brass as the center piece of power. But not a single one ran diesels. They were the ones who taught me never to buy a brass diesel until I checked it out throughly. The one time I didn't I got a dog. Westside's E-8. Sounded worse than a Hobbytown, but didn't have Hobbytown's smoothness and power. Every single brass steamer I have owned since 1973 were good runners from the start. At the least, I lapped the gears, and at the most, I changed out the gear boxes and motors to get a more prototypical speed, and pulling power out of them. The steamers requiring major rebuilds were all from the 1980's. In every one of them, mostly by Sunset, required larger motors and completely new gear boxes. I did one repair on a Sunset that had completely stripped its gears on a test run, straight out of the box.The worst "dog" I ever came across were some of the Empire Midlands SRR 4501's. The hobby shop that I worked in at the time, had received in 10 brand new ones, and every frame was "bowed up" so it couldn't roll on all drivers at once. Those I did a complete rebuild on before they were sold. But those 10 were absolutely bulletproof when they were sold.
Around 1974-ish I bought a PFM WP 2-8-2. Nice looking, but had a hard time running itself up a 2-percent grade. Weak motor and half the wheels added nothing to the electrical pickup. I was under the mistaken idea that PFM was a solid brand at the time. It took a major rebuild to get it to run smooth and not stall on switch frogs (the half-wheel pickup issue). That was a typical example of the steam I picked up back then.
Athearn Blue Box stuff wasn't much better. My solution was to run A-B F7 sets with a pair of power sharing wires passed through the end doors and hidden with diaphragms. That increased the chances of electrical pickup and solved a big problem. It basically tied the motors together on a common "bus". Earnst gears helped solve the poor throttle issue and running away downhill with Athearns ridiculous gear ratios. The Earnst gears were a little too extreme in the other direction but better than what Athearn provided. BB Switchers needed a lot more work to run well at very slow speeds and not need a "table-thump" every time to get started. Electrical pickup wipers helped a lot plus earnst gears.
I had lots of brass interurban electric power from MEW and Suydam that had to be mechanically rebuilt for the same issues. These were from 1968 to 1975 purchases. To me, any stalling, jerkiness or odd noises breaks the illusion. The traction models all had to be rebuilt with Bull-Ant power trucks and now they are better than anything you can buy today. The diesels have Proto 2000 or Atlas power chassis machined down to fit the brass shells. That was the best solution after screwing around for years trying to improve things incrementally. If modern power chassis from Atlas, Proto, BLI etc, hadn't showed up, I might have switched to shipbuilding or stamp collecting.
I never felt inclined to pick through NWSL catalog and buy a bunch of parts and not being sure if I picked the correct ones. I finally bought a big bunch of wheelsets for BB F7s to replace the sintered iron wheels -- but they were made with the wrong axle offset and that was a real put-off for my going back to NWSL. OK Rambling off for now...
