Model Power/MRC 4-6-2 Pacific Tender Swap with Bachmann Spectrum

[Roadgame]

Hello everyone,

 

After hours of researching online I have found a number of people assert that swapping the tender on a MP/MRC locomotive with one from Bachmann is a good way to improve electrical pickup and is commonly done, but the practical details have been harder to find. In particular, what to do about the physical connection as the MP drawbar is very different from the BM system. Using web photos (better than any photos of my own kit that I could take) I'll outline my plans below, but as I'm new to this level of loco fiddling I would appreciate any thoughts, tips, suggestions, links, etc.

This is my loco; an N-scale dcc & sound-equipped 2015-series Pacific

 

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while mine has a little speaker in addition to the wires and decoder, it looks just like this. I have superimposed a little arrow to highlight the post that the drawbar attaches to. I'm not sure what I would substitute this with in the Bachmann tender, short of shearing this one off and glueing it into the BM tender. 

 

 

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I have drawn little triangles pointing at the places where wire goes through the floor of the MP tender and connects to the axle wipers. At the moment I'm planning to snip these two where indicated.

 

 

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this is the bachman tender I have, a USRA medium 'DCC Ready'. 

 

 

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I was planning to remove the BM board, solder the two wires from the third photo to the copper strips where indicated with arrows, stuff the MP wires, decoder and speaker into the tender and seal it up again. Trouble is I don't know what to do with the drawbar post, as described above. 

 

 

Once again, any advice or other thoughts are gratefully received.

[rrinker]

 I'd say, fabricate a new one. If you really didn;t care about reusing either tender , you could probably combine the two so it has a Bachmann tender end and Model Power loco end, but I think my approach would be to make my own.

                        --Randy