Someone sold me an Athearn RTR Kodachrome SD45T-2 that he didn't like the way it ran, so he disconnected the drive train at the worm gear and hex splines so it would idle in an MU as a dummy. I would have to re-install those parts to get it to run again under it's own power.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
All I had to do was take the wire off the motor. The rubber bands were already gone.
Sounds silly, but the two engines I've converted to dummies were old Athearn rubber-band drive models. I removed the motors to get rid of the dead weight and added Soundbugs to them.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I do usually only remove the worm gears and disconnect one of the motor wires. Most time I find a place for the worm gears under the hood and I can reactivate the engine within minutes. I do also program the DCC decoder before I remove the motor wire to an address and light settings that match my consist requirements for that engine.
Reinhard
It really depends on the particular type of drive you're working with. Some cheap (train set) drives such as motor mounted truck can be more difficult to make the truck freewheel. Other powered truck models w/ 2 driveshafts/ flywheel, you just remove the worm gear to allow the truck to roll. You could disassemble the truck and remove the gears for less rolling resistance, but not really nec.
Basically you need to remove the motor and drive to gain free rolling of the trucks.
Is there a reason that you need to remove the motor and freewheel the trucks? If a half decent loco to begin with, you could repair or even remotor and add it to your roster.
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
I'd imagine you'd have to remove all the drivetrain components - like the motor, flywheels, worm gears, gear sets in the trucks, etc., leaving the wheels to freely spin as the dummy is moved.
I want to convert a powered locomotive into a dummy (non powered)one. How do I go about doing the conversion?