I've had this 3424 for years. Got it with a collection of stuff I purchased... want to say it was maybe 4-5 years ago at this point? Relatively short timespan for some folks here, but for a young'n like me, that's still a pretty good chunk.The car had a few issues that have prevented anything from really progressing for a long time. I damaged the grounding shoe, trying to remove the old rivet (years ago), one of the telltale brackets was missing along with the "O Gauge" sized blades, and the part of the flipping bracket which the brakeman figure attatches to was quite broken, seems like the brakeman was long since snapped off and gone. A few months ago I did manage to fix the grounding shoe, after finding replacements were near impossible to get, but it seems like the rotating plastic bracket for the brakeman was never even offered as a replacement part in the postwar years. I kinda left the project alone after that, but recently a friend of mine sent me a picture of something he found while going through his stuff- and what do you know, it was another telltale bracket, complete with O gauge blades! He's more than happy to give it to me.Spurred on by this news, I revisited my 3424, and set about trying to ressurect it once more. I finally got to doing the re-wiring, and I increased tension on the pickup roller (felt it was a little weak). And after a bit of thinking, I made a few strategic cuts, and glued some new material onto the plastic bracket, to become the new piece the brakeman will attatch to. I found a discarded circuit board that was the right thickness, and cut out a chunk, for use as material. All I have to do now is cut it down to size.I'm feeling quite excited at the possibility of having a working Brakeman car... hopefully the new support/bracket for the brakeman is sturdy enough. Not sure what else I could do if it doesn't work!-Ellie
Glad you were able to put it back into service,hopefully the new repair will hold up !
Unfortuntaely not back in service yet, but believe me, she's close... very close! The whole car could use some hydrogen-peroxide treatment, it's pretty badly yellowed. I'd like to be able to do that before everything gets reassembled. I didn't get to doing the trimming of the new part for the brakeman figure to go on, but in theory, once I have a brakeman figure on the car, she'll be ready for her first track test! I reckin as long as I don't break my repair in the process of triming excess or attatching the figure, we'll be in good shape. I can barely wait!-Ellie
Anybody out there got a 3d printer? This sounds like a good piece to program and print.
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