Lighting BachmanTrain Cars with LEDs

I thought I would memorialize my efforts to get my lighting enhancements to work again.  Years ago I had followed another modelers procedure for lighting Bachmann cars.  The cars I have were from a "Hawthorn Village" set made by Bachmann.  The cars were originally lit by a single incandescent bulb.  As you will see the light is powered by the current in the track on which the car runs and the car has a small circuit board that controls the light.  This set up is bypassed with the LED rehab.  Evans Designs LED chips come with capacitors that control the current to the chips so they will be run just as the original incandescent set up.  The Bachmann cars are easily disassembled.  The original installation was simple by wiring the LEDs to the existing wire lead.  After popping off the car roof and snipping off the existing bulb and the wire lead from the little circuit board you just twist all the LED leads to the internal lead.  There are several places within the car frame to attach the lights.  The two lights I used for overhead the outside platforms required me to drill holes to insert the lights but that was not difficult.

Here is the reason for this tutorial - yuk!  After a few Christmas seasons the lights began to flicker, followed eventually by not lighting at all.  At first I  thought that the wire lead from the wheels trucks may have broken, which was true in a couple of cases.

This shows how the cars are manufactured.  The wire lead into the car is soldered to a copper tab that is attached to the metal wheel truck by the screw then the truck face to the yoke.  This solder has broken is a couple of trucks.  To repair I discarded the copper, stripped some insulation and twisted the wire around the screw shank.  This solved my problem temporarily, but he flickering continued.  Before the Christmas season of 2020 I decided to break every thing down.  The cars can be disassembled fairly easily and the trucks removed and taken apart.

As seen above the culprit is exposed.  Dirt and lint etc. slowly wraps around the axles where they contact the truck face.

Once all the gunk is removed and everything is cleaned the trucks can be reassembled.

The power from the track is transferred to the truck face via wheel/axle.  The pointed end of the axle into the truck has to be clean and and in contact so that the power can be transferred to the truck yoke where the wire lead is attached.

With the grime removed the trucks are reassembled, lead attached and truck inserted back into the car floor.

This photo shows the original circuit board to which the lead and incandescent bulb were attached.  This is a simple single LED light I added to a more recent ELF passenger car I acquired.  The photos that follow show the various stages of rehab that I originally did back in 2017.

All wired in parallel. 

Note that the LEDs have been inserted to holes drilled through the frame.

While I had the cars opened up I painted the interiors and added "O" gauge figures.  The remaining challenge is to gather the wires together and snapping the roof(s) back on.

Speaking of roofs, I masked the windows and sprayed white so the various cars all had a white roof.  These are Christmas train cars.

Cargo pallets I found online are glued down into the cars before the roof is back in place. 

A RR worker is added .....

.....along with a jolly Conductor.  Passengers are added to some of the seats inside the cars before the wires are gathered together and the roof(s) put back on.  Now with the cars on the powered track the passengers can be seen.

Conductor pals (shows the over platform lighting too).

Ok, so what is going to haul these cars?

Stock photo of a nice ON30 - 4-4-0 I found in Canada for under $110!  Of course it needed customization for a Christmas Loco!

Catwalk, Cow Catcher and panels under the cab windows have been painted red.  A gold/brass edge added to the catwalk and some peppermint flags.

Lettering added to the tender.  Gold rub-on with paint touch up.

E & N painted over the red painted panel.  Ho, Ho, Ho!

Purists Beware: Budget Consolidation, or, making a standard gauge loco look like DRGW NG.

Many moons ago, Model Die Casting produced what remains the only real "budget" entry into HO narrow gauge. A kit, not RTR, it

was a fairly inaccurate, non-specific 2-8-0, which could, with some skill and patience, be turned into something not unlike a few of the larger C class prototypes. I bult one to resemble No. 375, but to this day still have no dedicated place to run it (despite a small collection of rolling stock to go with it).

Fast forward a decade or so. Visiting Durango,  CO, and after the always great train ride, picked up a set of D&SNG passenger cars. Yes, they're standard gauge.  Yes, they're the wrong car roof style. But hey, I bought them there, so...

Fast forward to 2022. Doing a lot of refurbishing and outright rebuilding of my vintage HO layout, and thought "why not get a standard gauge MDC kit and DRGW-ize it, so I have something to pull those cars.

***trigger warning***

Yes, I am going to build an imaginary engine to pull imaginary cars on an imaginary railroad. No apologies offered. If this bothers you, click elsewhere. 

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Still here? OK. Here's where we begin.

Scanned ebay for available kits. All vintage, prices vary, all roughly 50-100 depending on condition. Found one slightly incomplete on the low end, bought it 

Missing pilot truck wheels, stack, motor mounting screw. Main gear badly worn down by an ill-fitted pinion. V&T prototype.

1. The Plan

I am using DRGW C19 and C21 class consolidations as a basis for detailing, primarily 360 and 361. I'll probably number it as imaginary 362

Cut down the firebox and steamchest to lower the boiler.

Replace the damaged factory gears with NWSL replacements, which will lower the speed

Option, replace the motor with a NWSL flat can, and prep for future DCC

Remove all handrails and fittings on the  boiler. Replace with / add fixtures consistent with the above prototypes,  to include working lighting.

Same with the tender, which appears a few ft shorter than I'd like, but we'll make do.

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Here she is with boiler deets removed, puttied up, sanded, and primed. New K27 style stack by Wiseman added. Removed the back of the coal bunker extension and shortened the sides, removed a small air tank, backup light, and cast-on ladder.

Next, we'll dremel the frame as noted to lower the boiler. DRGW NG engines were Railroad Low Riders, and this one needs to come down closer to the weeds to capture that NG look. May require clearancing inside the upper boiler shell to clear the motor, could be tight. We'll build, test, and finish the running gear before we get into cosmetics,  I want this to run without a hitch.

Fetch the dremel...

First, lets remove the top 1/8 of the firebox, and re-notch the back to clear the backhead. File smooth.

Now for the delicate bit. The steam chest and boiler saddle are cast as one piece. Drenel the saddle off and file down the steam chest until the boiler sits level.  This will take a while unless you have a micro milling machine...

Given enough time,  sweat, and patience, you can get it lowered to match the firebox.

Now let's see how it looks.

Before

After

Now, about that gear and motor replacement...

The folks at Northwest Short Line still make re-gear and motor upgrade kits for these vintage MDC locos. A small press is needed to remove your old gears; replacement also includes a stack of thrust washers to prevent the misalignments that ate the teeth from the kit's original gearset. The motor rests on a blob of gorilla glue construction adhesive, so maje sure you have it where you want it in terms of alignment before it sets. The motor fits inside the boiler shell without modification. Then we'll reassemble and run it around the track. Mechanically and electrically it checks out. My only concern is its high starting speed. As soon as you cravk the throttle,  she sprints away.  Will need to lool for a solution to gradual starts and good slow speed operation. 

With the heart transplant out of the way,  I  csn begin to detail the boiler and tender. My goal is to add details typical to a DRGW NG steam engine of the 40s, specifically the newer and larger C classes C19 and C21, but asheringbto no specific prototype. I will rely primarily on Precision Scale brass details except as noted.

Two prototypes for reference:

I sketched the engine and tender from both sides and began choosing detail bits necessary to capture the DRG look:

 Headlamp #3085

 Headlamp base #3107

 Smokestack cap #32430

 Number board #31362

 Smokebox braces #31248

 Boiler check valves #3099

 Sand fittings #3191

Twin air pumps #32584

...and plumbing #3482

 Bell #3089

 Pop valves #3200

 Whistle # 3136

 Generator #3148

 Injector #3143

 Brake cylinders #3194

 Handrail stanchions #3303

 Valve stem arms #31534

 Tender ladder #32435

 Tender air tank #32091

 

As the kit was missing a pilot truck, I raided the parts box for some sheet brass and a inside frame pilot, the 26" wheelset coming from eBay. A bit of soldering and drilling and some plastic spacers and we have a functional pilot truck. The headlight contained clear lenses, but no room for a buld, so I drilled out the back and mounted a flat micro LED. How to get power to it? The kit was not designed with this in mind, and a few broken tool bits later I decided drilling through the mass of white metal inside the plastic boiler wrapper and smokebox was not viable, so I ran.it along the boiler and into the cab. Once the rest of the plumbing and handrails are on it should be less obtrusive.

Here we can see braces, bell, air pumps, pop valves and whistle mounted, and the "361-style" tender, coal bunker extensions scratch built and installed, and a coal load of real coal filched from Durango long ago ;-)

I cut out the inner coal bunker to make room for future dcc and speaker, and mounted the coal onto a chunk of foam to allow sound to get out.

On the opposite side you can see the injector in front of the cab, and the step and handrail on the smokebox up to the headlight (also scratch).

A 1/72 Martin B-10B - Not for the faint of Heart

For the longest time only  the Williams Bro. limited run kit existed.  I wanted to build a unique aircraft pre-WWII and the B-10 fit the bill.  It was the forerunner of the great bombers that followed and ahead of it's time when initially considered.  All metal monoplane that was faster than the pursuit craft of the day.  Doolittle is said to have considered it for the raid on Tokyo.  It is a challenging build that requires patience and skill to overcome excessive mold flash and fit issues.

The instruction sheet schematic does not follow any numbered sequence, but there is a general order of construction text on the reverse side along with some minimal painting suggestions,  Builder needs to rely on historical and museum photos and experience in building military aircraft.

An early decision was to search for after market M2 guns (not included in the kit) for the nose turret and the rear cockpit.  Apparently there was a third ventral gun, but I found little evidence and no modeled examples so I discarded the idea and ordered a set of Eduard M2s.  Six resin and PE guns arrived.  By their length they may be 50Cal instead of the specified 30Cal in the B-10, but the scale was close so I did not worry about it.  The difficult part was how to mount them since I could find little detail about that.

I show this pic now in order to see the detail of the resin and installation of the PE parts (I have not yet added the forward sight).

So lets get to the B-10B itself.

This is an example of the molding/flash issue that must be carefully removed.

As with most all aircraft models the interior components, such as they are, must be assembled and painted.  I did add some wine bottle foil seat belts!

A particular and time consuming issue was the molding of the canopy and nose turret.  Framing was almost none existent in the mold - very difficult to see and; therefore mask for painting.  Note the pile of Tamiya in the foreground!  Compound curves are challenging and require multiple pieces of mask.

Once painted, the nose turret received her (Eduard) M2.  I used a piece of PE for a mounting lug across the turret opening.

I've jumped ahead a bit here and closed the fuselage and attached the greenhouse canopies.  The vertical stabilizer has been painted yellow - more on yellow color later.

The motors are molded fairly well and were painted simply with a gunmetal mix and silver push rod highlights.  The gear legs are painted aluminum.  Rubber tires are supplied and are easy to mount on the wheel hubs (molded in yellow).

And speaking of yellow, I thought the molded yellow was a good color, but plastic parts will look like plastic if they are left unpainted.  The color I mixed in the bottle cap was very close and used on the vertical stabilizer, but I wanted to find a proper yellow to spray on the wings.  The old kit has some raised panel lines but the the control surfaces have recessed panel lines which took a black wash rather well.

I found a gloss Krylon that was almost the identical color of the mold and when applied was almost like a clear gloss coat.  Also note that interior green was applied to the wheel wells.

The tail/elevators accepted a black wash that I rubbed off with my finger and left the raised panel lines highlighted, which was nice!

Before putting the wing halves together I drilled holes for the wing rigging and tied monofilament to a piece of styrene rod and glued it down.

Aluminum foil is glued to the interior behind the holes for the landing lights and intakes.

With the wing closed the foil shows the landing light.

Next I had to mask the wing so that I could paint the engine nacelles to match the fuselage and cowl dark Navy Blue.  

I had a nice Navy Blue spray used on my TBF Avenger that would be perfect on the B-10.

The Blue looks good so I continued with application of the kit decals on top and bottom.

With the wings decaled I then inserted the gear and fixed the internal lugs and braces and glued the wing halves together.

The fuselage has been given a coat of the Navy Blue and the tails have been installed.

Next it was time to attach the motors with the props installed and add the cowl halves to the motors.  The cowls had previously been given a coat of Navy Blue along with the fuselage.

The single most positive fit was the wing to the fuselage.  The receiving flare in the fuselage to receive the wing was a perfect fit.  The best design idea in the entire kit.

After attaching both wing assemblies I added the nose turret.  I was a little worried about this since there was no real seating for the turret in the molding.  A receiving ring would have been a good idea.  I was able to get the turret in the best position I could and tacked it down with cyano.  I sealed it with window glue (note the 174 decal,  added before the turret was installed).

The fuselage decals have been applied and the rear M2 and canopy installed in the gun position.  The mounting was tricky.  There were resin pieces included in the Eduard kit that I modified to glue to the rear of the cockpit. PE lugs on each side of the M2 are to rest in a notch in those resin pieces so I had to line things up with care.  I also had to cut a notch in the cockpit ring for the M2 to be secured without pointing upward at too severe a degree.  

The motor and cockpit walkway decals have been applied and Tamiya Weathering applied to the wings.  The air intake/exhaust have been painted and added to the nacelles.

View of the underside.

The antenna/mast has been installed and the previously installed radio wires attached  to the mast.  The B-10B is done.  Note the supplied "Winglets" between  the fuselage and nacelles have been attached.  this was only on the B-10B.

The Winglets up close.  Also note the engine intakes/exhaust.  These required significant flash removal.  Study was required to make sure I was not trimming off actual parts of the intake or exhaust.  Also note the haze on the walkway decals.  This appeared after a dullcoat spray.  I have never has that happen before.  A few extra applications of Microsol helped remove some but not all of the haze.

More weathering of the wings.

Challenge Complete!