I did some other stuff this weekend besides take pictures of my truck collection. 
I had to do some repair work for a friend.
The dark side of the second hand brass experience is having to fix issues, mistakes, and sometimes butchery done by a previous owner. These photos show a Westside GS-6 that belongs to a young friend of mine whose life I’m ruining by giving him the brass bug. He bought it from a popular dealer who will go unnamed, as none of this is their fault. No issues were visible until you got inside the thing, and it ran well enough, so they would have had no reason to do anything to it.
He wanted sound. The previous owner had re-motored, so half the usual work was done. Not very well, but he was on a budget, so the plan was to do a “good enough” job that was cost friendly. I installed a Lok Sound decoder and a sugar cube speaker. The Westside GS-4 through 6 have a ton of room inside the boiler and cab, so this was a clean install with no connectors between the loco and tender. The big problem was the motor. Someone didn’t understand the concept of clearance. It took a considerable amount of fiddling to get it inside the firebox. Sort of an interference fit. That all went OK. A few weeks later the rubber coupling between the motor and gearbox failed. Since I’m training him I told him to remove the chassis, and that’s where he got in trouble. The interference fit of the motor caused enough flexing to cause failure of the solder joints holding the rear chassis mount, and one of the booster engine steam pipes. The fix was to replace the motor with one that would fit without any problems, and do the repairs. It took resistance gear, and without the factory jigs, getting that rear mount back in plumb was an interesting experience. There was no way to clamp it in place so I ended up screwing it to the chassis, dropping the chassis into place and mounting the front truck. That gave me proper positioning and a way to hold it in place without slow roasting my fingers. The steam pipe was also a bit of a challenge because there wasn’t much room to work with the soldering tweezers.
The other problem was Walthers Goo. For some years now I’ve thought you should need a permit for buying Goo. It’s probably the most misused material that ever found its way into the hobby, and has NO place anywhere in a brass model. Some idiot had Gooed the motor in place, and there was so much Goo in the boiler for no apparent reason that it boggled the mind. The mission seemed to be to use up an entire tube of the stuff. If this were my model, I’d have soaked it in lacquer thinner which I’ve found is the only way to remove cured Goo, then done a complete re-paint, but, its not mine and he’s on a budget. The photos speak for themselves. Yuck! But it will run properly and make noise. I hate shoddy workmanship!
Next up I have to do some file work to clean up excess solder, touch up the paint, and close her up.
I had to do some repair work for a friend.The dark side of the second hand brass experience is having to fix issues, mistakes, and sometimes butchery done by a previous owner. These photos show a Westside GS-6 that belongs to a young friend of mine whose life I’m ruining by giving him the brass bug. He bought it from a popular dealer who will go unnamed, as none of this is their fault. No issues were visible until you got inside the thing, and it ran well enough, so they would have had no reason to do anything to it.
He wanted sound. The previous owner had re-motored, so half the usual work was done. Not very well, but he was on a budget, so the plan was to do a “good enough” job that was cost friendly. I installed a Lok Sound decoder and a sugar cube speaker. The Westside GS-4 through 6 have a ton of room inside the boiler and cab, so this was a clean install with no connectors between the loco and tender. The big problem was the motor. Someone didn’t understand the concept of clearance. It took a considerable amount of fiddling to get it inside the firebox. Sort of an interference fit. That all went OK. A few weeks later the rubber coupling between the motor and gearbox failed. Since I’m training him I told him to remove the chassis, and that’s where he got in trouble. The interference fit of the motor caused enough flexing to cause failure of the solder joints holding the rear chassis mount, and one of the booster engine steam pipes. The fix was to replace the motor with one that would fit without any problems, and do the repairs. It took resistance gear, and without the factory jigs, getting that rear mount back in plumb was an interesting experience. There was no way to clamp it in place so I ended up screwing it to the chassis, dropping the chassis into place and mounting the front truck. That gave me proper positioning and a way to hold it in place without slow roasting my fingers. The steam pipe was also a bit of a challenge because there wasn’t much room to work with the soldering tweezers.
The other problem was Walthers Goo. For some years now I’ve thought you should need a permit for buying Goo. It’s probably the most misused material that ever found its way into the hobby, and has NO place anywhere in a brass model. Some idiot had Gooed the motor in place, and there was so much Goo in the boiler for no apparent reason that it boggled the mind. The mission seemed to be to use up an entire tube of the stuff. If this were my model, I’d have soaked it in lacquer thinner which I’ve found is the only way to remove cured Goo, then done a complete re-paint, but, its not mine and he’s on a budget. The photos speak for themselves. Yuck! But it will run properly and make noise. I hate shoddy workmanship!
(just joking)
