Hi, I have some questions about the old Life-Like blue box switchers, of the era when the body and chassis were separate and you assembled them yourself. My basic aim is to service the models and optimise their slow running whilst keeping them DC.
Life-Like branded these as SW8/900/600, and as SW9/1200, but whilst there were differences in the bodies, i.e. 2-stacks or 1 stack, the chassis appear to be identical. They also have an identical circuit board, lettered 434-X001.
As you may know these models appear frequently on ebay, and when you get one they seem to be unused. They also run very smoothly and never seem to have the cracked gear problem of the Life-Like Geeps.
But there are a couple of issues I am puzzling over. I noticed that some run very slowly when my DC controller (H&M Duette) is set to “low resistance”, and even slower on “high resistance”, and slower still on “half-wave”, though “half-wave” is not needed for these models. But some run much quicker on “low resistance”, and I need to switch to “high resistance” to get slow enough speeds for switching.
I am not sure why, but some of these chassis come with a headlight bulb fitted for the hood end – it lies in a groove in the top of the chassis weight and is soldered to the PCB. Others come with no bulb, though the groove is there, and it is clear from the PCB that there never was a bulb fitted – there is no solder residue on the PCB where the bulb wires attach on those with bulbs. Finally, the “Exploded Parts Drawing” in the Operating Instructions shows two bulbs, one for the hood-end headlamp and one for the cab-end headlamp, though I have never found one of these blue-box models with a cab bulb fitted.
So to my questions:
I was wondering why some chassis run faster than others and realised that the slower running chassis are those with a bulb fitted and the faster ones have no bulb. But I can’t see how the bulb can make the speed difference as it applies in both travel directions whereas the bulb only lights and therefore draws current when the model is moving “hood first”. I can’t see any differences in the pitch of the worms, And whilst I have not dismantled the gearboxes, I don’t see and differences in the number of teeth on the gear wheels. So does anyone know why some chassis run much slower than others?
Does anyone know why Life-Like fitted bulbs to some models and not to others? And why they don’t seem to have fitted cab-end bulbs in any despite showing them on the parts drawing? They all have lamp glazing and number boards at both ends.
Am I right that in real life switcher headlamp and number board illumination was not “directional”, but they were illuminated at both ends irrespective of direction of travel, and also when the loco was stationary but operating? I am thinking that to be prototypical my locos should have lamps lit at both ends all the time, though that would be difficult when stationary in DC.
If in DC I wanted to fit a bulb in the cab end do I just wire it the opposite way round to the nose-end bulb, or will that create a short-circuit? The bulbs in these Life- Like models have two black leads, not one black and one red. And the instructions are inconsistent with the model, e.g. they say on BULB REPLACEMENT “Pry copper contacts from inside of hood by pulling straight up. Remove entire assembly of contacts, wires and bulb.” But there are no wires attached to the hood. Where a bulb is fitted the two black wires are soldered to a pad on either side of the PCB and run in a channel along the top of the chassis to the bulb which sits in that channel in the chassis weight. Even the parts diagram doesn’t show the bulbs attached to the body shell.
These questions may be for someone who, like me, can remember hearing of the assassination of JFK on the radio. I don’t expect young shavers will know anything about any of this stuff.
BTW these are lovely little switchers, even if “vintage”!
Grateful for any comments / info / tips,
Thanks,
Bill.
Mine has snap in wire retainers on the board for everything, proubly a later model.
Hi, thanks for your reply. On my two, the one with a bulb has knuckle couplers, and the one with no bulb has horn-hook couplers, so is presumably older. The horn-hook chassis is the fast one. In fact I was a bit surprised that the instructions with the horn-hook model talks about DCC "Due to the small size... To allow room for your DCC decoder, remove the weight as shown in the illustration below." But the parts drawing on that same instruction sheet shows horn-hook couplers, with no reference to the P2K "ProtoMax" knuckle couplers, so the instruction sheet must be old too.
And if I may add a question, how do you safely dismantle the cab to paint the interior and crew? The parts drawing shows the cab shell is a separate piece, but not what secures it in place. There seem to be a number of problems, e.g. the handrails either side of the rear cab door. Elsewhere on the model handrails appear to be pushed thru locating holes in the shell and melted on the inside, and I think I see signs of glue on some of the tabs.
The ones with the lights have a diode constant lighting circuit, which reduces the voltage to the motor slightly, so that the headlight can be on, and stay at a constant brightness throughout the throttle range.
I've only worked with one of them, and it had both lights. The light for the cab is fed from a light pipe, the light is not up in the cab area (incandescent bulbs, even thoose little ones, get hot enough to distort if not melt plastic, especially if confined by a cab interior). To convert to DCC, NCE had a specific decoder that replaced the circuit board - it reused the bulb for the headlight, but had an LED for the rear light so that it was brighter - the original bulb going through all the light pipe was pretty dim so it could be you just don't see that there's a light on - try running the loco in the dark.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hi Randy, thanks very much. From comments it seems there were several variations to these models over the years. I have an SW8 coming from ebay this week, so I'll see what that is like. The one I'm working on right now (the horn-hook one) is an SW9, and I'm not sure what the spare chassis was from, as I took it out of its box a long time ago - I'd have to find which box has a body shell but no chassis to know for sure.
I just found a description for cab removal on the TCS website. For anyone interested it is here: https://tcsdcc.com/installation/ho-scale/1431
As I'm switching on a 6-ft plank hopefully in DC there won't be the prolonged illumination of either bulb that would start melting the shell.