Picked up an old Bachman 2-8-0 yesterday for the outrangeous price of $25.
It was clean and looked almost like new - except for some driver wear.
It was in bad need of drive train cleaning & lubing - after which it ran as well as can be expected....
In any case, this gem has pickup from all four drivers with what appears to be bronze bushings in the plastic frame slots. The motor is built into the steel (is part of) boiler weight, - a spur gear on the motor shaft connected with a spur gear on one of the drivers.
at the price, I'm not complaining. But I would like some information if anyone has some to offer...
An image of the original documentation would be wonderful..
Villy
It did have a smoke generator - although it had a big crack in the plastic reservoir... I didn't notice if it had a wooten firebox (but then I didn't really look!). It was marked for CNR but with a road number for a Mountain. I am not sure about the traction markings - I think that it said 56% or thereabouts - which I think is supposed to mean 5600 tons. Again I don't know if that was prototypical for a mountain or a consolidation.
I am not sure what you mean by a split frame, the part that the drivers fit into is not split - but the boiler weight is - and the motor is embedded in that weight (looks to be part of it) - up near the front.
Should I be worried about the brushes - are they still available ??
My plans are to model a 1910-1930 coal branch (and in fact the area is called the coal branch to this day). Some of the subs were in pretty bad shape - so I fire 4-4-0s and moguls for those and a consolidation or two to haul from Coal Spur junction to the main line..
Compared to my IHC mogul - the usable range (from creep to full speed) is rather narrow - and creep is problematic - but then who cares....
I am using DC but with a microcontroller based throttle that provides DC and pulse - with control of the frequency and amount of pulse insertion as well as the capability to store configurations for 9 different locomotives...
I will have to re-label the thing as Canadian Northern, but that's no big deal. It won't be prototypical, but there are few images of the coal branch extant, so who's to know....
There was a coal mine in the Nordegg, Alberta area who's bitumous was so fragible that much of it was blowing up the stack. They decided to make the coal into briquettes.... The railway loved them - clean, easy to handle and dust free
The Bachmann 2-8-0 is (IIRC) based on a Reading prototype. It originally came out in maybe the 70's or '80's (I know it was common when I switched to HO in 1987) and was considered to have decent detailing but only OK running characteristics - it was basically a low-priced engine. Later Bachmann introduced their Spectrum line with improved detailing and much better motors etc. the 2-8-0 eventually became part of that line. Sounds like you have one of the earlier ones.
I think it had a list price c.1988 of $20-25. You can get a very nice running and nicely detailed undec Spectrum 2-8-2 for around $70 now.
Bachman added a rear set of wheels and made a 2-8-2 but that and the CNR markings are fictitious. IT is Reading all the way as a 2-8-0.
Looking down on the bolier weight you will see two halves with plastic spacers between. The armature spins in the same direction as the wheels and drives a series of reduction gears. There is no worm which may add to the speed problems. It is a very small armature sitting in a hole in one half of the weight and would be a bear to try and replace with a can motor or install DCC.
Don't know but any made can be used that fit the holes.
Perfect use for it repainted to your roads markings.
Definitely a Wooten - now I wonder where I can find some anthracite ???
http://www.hoseeker.net/otherhotrains.html
Don't know if this helps. Go to the Bachman Steam section. They have diagrams of a 2-8-0 and an old 2-8-2.
HOSeeker doesn't have paperwork for the Reading Consolidation, only the 90's Baldwin Spectrum. The Mikado is the recent production Chinese SY - in fact I submitted that particular diagram.
The Reading 2-8-0 had the pancake motor for years, and was refitted with a can motor and made part of their now defunct Plus line, I believe. One way to determine the type of motor is noise level - the pancake motor and drive made a lot of it. The pinion on the motor shaft was the culprit.
Does it run quietly, or is there gear noise? I wouldn't worry about brushes unless it's running erratically. Even then, a cleaning and lubrication my be all that's needed. It depends how much run-time it has on it.
Nelson
Ex-Southern 385 Being Hoisted
Actually the Reading fueled them with a mix of bitumonous and anthracite. The firemen were taught to layer bitumonous and anthracite coal in the bunkers.
There were 30 of them built in the late 20's, they had 61 1/2 in drivers. They had a 9x12 firebox. They were among the most powerful 2-8-0's built. They were main line luggers for coal trains.
In WW2 the Reading rebuilt the 25 newest ones into 4-8-4's, the T-1 class.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
It does have the pancake motor. The pinion is rather small - and brass...
It is running a little erratically - I took the plastic cover off the motor last night and cleaned the grundge out - that helped. The brushes look like sintered bronze - just about at the limit of my ability to see them <Grin>.
Were the axle bushings spring loaded ?? There seems to be a fair bit of play there (up and down). Also seems to loose power going over frogs (code 100) - I suspect that oversized flanges are the issue here). I will likely add pick-ups to the tender - that should help that situation.
I have been playing with the throttle trying to improve its running. I found that cutting back on the DC and boosting the pulse insertion really improves the low speed operation. I think that I will reprogram the throttle to let me dynamically vary the pulse frequency and see what that does....
Dave,
I want to use it on my coal line (somewhere in the 1910-1940 era - still to be determined) as well - so it should fit right in. Not very protoypical for what I will be doing but....
It is a bruiser - there's no doubt about that.
It would be nice if it looked a little older and a little less massive - but the price was right and no-one will likely even notice...
It must have been a pain to have to load two different types of coal - how did they manage that ??
Pretty large drivers for a coal drag.....
Villy wrote: Dave,I want to use it on my coal line (somewhere in the 1910-1940 era - still to be determined) as well - so it should fit right in. Not very protoypical for what I will be doing but.... It is a bruiser - there's no doubt about that. It would be nice if it looked a little older and a little less massive - Pretty large drivers for a coal drag..... Villy
It would be nice if it looked a little older and a little less massive - Pretty large drivers for a coal drag.....
IIRC the Reading 2-8-0's were the largest Consolidations built. I would assume they would have hauled coal on the Reading, though perhaps as double-headers?? I think Western Maryland did something like that, 2-8-0's doubleheading up front, another one in the rear.
I remember I had a Bachmann poster on my wall for a long time, a painting of one of their Reading 2-8-0's painted for the GN, with the title "Ol' Smoky". It (and "The Rock" companion poster) were kinda silly, but hey they were free !!
Well,
I took it apart,
cleaned and lubed everything
Changed the tender wheels to metal and added pickups
Played with the pulse insertion on my custom micro-controller based dc throttle (changed the pulse frequency to 20 hz (believe it or not). Maximum pulse width is about 16%, minimum is about 2% - which makes the motor hum a little bit, but which provides enough power for the lighting that is run off the track circuit (passenger cars, a control tower etc).
My power supply uses a bridge rectifier off a 16vac wall wart - which means the peak DC (with no or little load) is about 23V. The passenger car currently on the track has 5 strings of white leds (2 per string) and each string pulls about 2 ma. A tiny bridge rectifer and a 100mfd cap feeds a variable regulator wired as a constant current source. In theory, the passenger car is pulling a peak current of almost .5 amp when the throttle is set on minumum. In practice, I'm not so sure.. (but my overload detector does flicker <G>).
and I now have a steam engine that will move so slowly that it's main drivers are turning about once a minute (about 2 mph I think)...
A friend remarks that the sound of the multitudeous spur gears (and the valve motion noise) reminds him of a steam engine.
Villy wrote: and I now have a steam engine that will move so slowly that it's main drivers are turning about once a minute (about 2 mph I think)...
WOW! That's amazing for a pancake motor! To answer one of your above questions, I've got an old Bach 0-6-0 with a pancake and it has springs under the driver axles. I wish I could get mine to run like that!
Loather
ok - one minute it isn't, 20 seconds is more like it - still plenty slow. Only problem is that the torque causes the drivers to slip big time... While I can control the width of the pulse, I can't control it's amplitude. I was thinking of doing that - but I sort of put it on the backburner.
Still, its pretty impressive for an old pancake motor.....
Villy wrote:ok - one minute it isn't, 20 seconds is more like it - still plenty slow.
ok - one minute it isn't, 20 seconds is more like it - still plenty slow.
Whew! I was ready to put pancake motors in all of my locos after hearing that statistic.
Villy wrote:Only problem is that the torque causes the drivers to slip big time...
Only problem is that the torque causes the drivers to slip big time...
Does the loco have hardened traction tires? If the tires are in good shape, it shouldn't slip unless it's pulling too many cars.
Traction Tires!! Real locomotives don't have traction tires!!!
Now there might be some springs missing from the axles - which would reduce the traction too...
I think that a lot of is just the high jerk that occurs when the 16+volt spike flips the motor over a third of a revolution....
I can almost make my IHC mogul (can motor + worm gear) sit still - with it's wheels slowly turn - again the jerk is breaking the adhesion to the rails....
(now you have me wondering what the jerk is doing to the gears!!)