This is what I like. I found old C&O # 2307 languishing on eBay. I don't usually go for these old Athearns but I didn't want it to end up like its sister....
So I called up some investors and we managed to come up with the $18 needed to keep 2307 from the scrap heap.
Luckily she had seen very little use....almost like new. The elements had been very kind.
But the technology was old.....no solid state motor controls here. But we began the rewiring. Isolate the motor. Add right track pickups.
Left track pickup is from the frame, so we needed to drill and tap a hole for a good pickup wire....
Keeping with our policy of going cheap and recycling we swapped out the old bulbs for bright new LEDs broken out of a dollar store light.....rather bright and blueish, but no extra cost....maybe we can run them on dim. Set the lights right up to the lenses in epoxy...easier to postion than guessing where to put them on the light board.
C&O neglected to put rear lights in this old loco....let's add one.
Add a light shield for the cab from the scrap plastic box.....
Now lets recycle an old Bachmann Standard line decoder from the junk drawer....snap off the ends a bit for more room.
Luckily our soldering is more precise than our photography !
Ok. Now have the boys push it out onto the programming track from the shop.....all is good.
So fire it up and run it around a bit.
Now, with lights connected and shell back on......add new couplers and test the height....run around some more.
Well, that's nice. Rescued, recycled some odds and ends and add a new loco to the roster. We didn't have a Chessie before, nor this model of U-boat. It is actually quite smooth, if not whisper quiet. But that is expected.
Thanks for sharing this, it will be added to my favorites for future reference (should I get that ambitious...I have yet to do a frame isolating conversion).
Paul
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
Glad you like it,Paul.
It is tongue in cheek. For proper reference I should have added more individual steps and more photos but I wanted to keep the post short.
Somewhere I have other posts with more complete instructions....and I think many other forum members do too.
This kind of conversion is really not difficult. Atlas/Kato and many others where there is hardly any room for a decoder (or speakers) and light bars have to be cut, LEDs arranged in the middle are more time consuming. I have six or so conversions where I used a drop-in loco-specific decoder or was able to put in a NMRA plug, but all the rest are rewired.
(Jump in...like most things the instructions seem longer than the process. That Chessie is my 136th conversion......maybe 25 are old open frame motors like this......older P2K BL2s especially. Just that a few years ago I didn't know one end of a loco from another and had never used a soldering iron. But making converting locos to DCC is what I like best.)
Very nicely documented, 'Cisco.
Your post sets a high standard for showing how this sort of conversion is done!
-Fritz Milhaupt, Publications Editor, Pere Marquette Historical Society, Inc.http://www.pmhistsoc.org
Modelling HO Scale with a focus on the West and Midwest USA