ALCO RS-11 by Rapido Trains

[Schraddel]

Wayne,

o.k. let's wait if they will give an answer.

To tell the story further:


This will be an investment into the future, it is my personally device for me.
This kind of current pick up was done by several manufacturers, i believe Sandakan was the first of them who made it. When it is new and clean it works flawless. But when these locos have had a certain measure of runtime, the reliability of an uninterrupted current pick up drops down. So it is known from Athearn Genesis, P2K, Atlas and others. The cause or better the causes are:
- oil or grease had found it's way into the axle bearings
- dirt also
- fibers wound around the axle blunt ends
All of them cause a certain amount of electric insulation and thus is resulting at worst case in a stalling loco. Of course I can demount the truck as shown there in the photo above and clean finicky all blunt ends and bearings. The loco will run then for another while. But once a day I was tired to do so again and again.





My answer and because I am lazy, were additional wipers. Here 0.3mm Bronze wire was soldered onto the copper frame.





Then bend the ends down. They will wipe on the blunt ends.
Here I have done it to prevent hassle in the future and yes I am some over-sophisticated. 





Time to reassemble the loco.
The Speaker was glued firm onto the frame. This is to eliminate clattering and whirring.
The 2 remaining parts of the weight were mounted.
Kapton tape was used to prevent shorts and to restrain the wires.
Hope I had packed up all wires, parts and other stuff.



And then:

Pipe down and the shell was fitting again without squeezing onto the running gear.
The couplers were replaced by Kadee Scaleheads #158.
The i-phone speaker will stored for another project.



Lutz