SJV had their show in Mishawaka IN I went to, and of course I went looking for specific things, but guess what, I ended up buying very different than expected, and learned a few things.
At the Michigan City show one vendor had the Walthers Milwaukee station, if he showed at the SJV show I would have bought it, but he wasnt there.
I do my usual scanning of the tables, one had a boxful of Tortoise machines, 10 bucks each, pulled from a layout. I ended up buying 2, if I was ready I woulda bought the box, but I couldnt do that because...
first, I found Soundtraxx is discontinuing their specific sound/dcc moduls and going Tsunami, one vendor had discontinued stuff, one was for the LifeLike 0-8-0 which I own, no DCC or sound, so I picked that up, 50 bucks for original price of about 80 bucks.
The big deal was a brass 2 car set of a CTA EL cars. Selling price, 140 bucks, these things go 300 bucks + on ebay. The owner who works a local hobby shop was selling it telling me it had stripped gears, heck, I know there are alternative powerings to make this run and I have a set of NWSL gears another hobbyshop owner sold right out cheap. Other people checked the model over including a friend of my fathers would buy it if went unsold. I was in the hunt for CTA cars anyways, I waited but very short and returned and bought the set. Not letting another 50buck 4-12-2 get away from me....
That was just about all I could purchase and not go broke but there wasn't heckuvalot I wanted there anyways, but these rare breeds are great finds and buys at these shows.
I got the cta cars home and checked it out. One is powered, the other dummy, the powered one truck powered. So I look at the power truck.
The worm gear has a very broad worm compared to other worm gears I know, like it just about didnt do any reduction at all, so it looks like the gear setup was designed to get all the speed reduction using the spur gears. The worm spur gear connected to a very tiny spur gear hooked to only one side of the brass support, and it had some pressure thing to slide on the nylon worm spur gear, bleeding no wonder this arrangement fell apart, its a shoddy design for a power truck. Imagine all the other CTA cars out there with this. OUCH to the buyer.
As usual the truck has very nice detail, but guess what, the tower gear is soldered together. This power truck needs a solid makeover to work right, change the worm gears and its gearing arrangement, this is no small feat. It may be do-able but requires accurate and correct work.
My best idea is to change it to a Bowser power truck, I have these already for my MTS CTA 1-50 kits I have and replacement correct size wheels, but I have to cut into the frame to make the bowser unit work, if I actually fix the original truck tho, that kills trying to mount the original back on.
MAYBE, I can power the trailer, make the powered a trailer until I fix the power truck if that happens.
Sounds like the best idea.
Pics later. Nice looking cars.
heres the trailer car, the motor is apart for repairs.
the culprit, this teeeeny gear was riveted to one side of the gear train.
Look at the worm gear, it has about a 45 degree worm arrangement, theres practically no gear reduction here.
the teeeny gear fits in the opening between theupper and lower gears simply transferring movement energy.
Now consider the speed this teeeeeeeny gear is running at, also see the wear on the other gear. The owner may have run this and never oiled it, even if they did this gear arrangement would have worn fast.
The maker wasnt thinking when they made this gearing arrangement because they could have had a higher worm ratio and do away with all the funky gear arrangements.
Lucky me tho I got a deal on the car. But think about all the rest of these cars that were manufactured this way....LOOK OUT YOU GUYS WHO OWN THIS CAR SET!!!!
I looked over the NWSL gear stuff, I thought maybe the Bowser drive could work and with body modding I could, however I wanted to save the truck detailing and sharp looks, so I found the smaller NWSL gearkit box for smaller equipment, It should fit inside the original gearing box size and use its built in transfer gears to the other axle. The current gears are trash. There is no way I will use them.
This is a car works CTA 6000 series. When fixed I hope it will be a great runner, it might run slower than expected, but I don't want super high speeds dangling on elevated tracks..YOW!!
Geez are those the MTS Imports cars that were brought out just a couple of years ago? If so that is a drastic reduction in price from the original list, and so quickly -- but problems with the drive train would explain that. In fact I think they are still available at full list price.
Some of these brass imports had drive trains where I swear they were making stuff up as they went along. I can't count the number of guys who have brass doodlebugs who were so thankful that the Bachmann plastic doodlebug had a fairly reliable drive chassis that they could modify and use to repower their expensive brass imports.
Somehow that reminds me of the time I bought a cheap but nice looking "made in China" magnifying ring with built in flourscent light, for close up model work. When the bulb failed I learned that it was a totally proprietary bulb for which no replacement was available anywhere -- they just invented the bulb to go with the product!
Dave Nelson