Big Blue has inspired some purchases

[TMo]

Got a little time to tear open the RS2 last night before heading to bed.  I was tired of cutting, folding and gluing paper.  Discovered a few things.

1)  This might become one of the simplest DCC conversions ever (aside from those "plug and play" types).  The motor has big ole' solder tabs, the track pickups are right on top of the gear towers and the incandescent lights have already been routed with plenty of extra wire length.  The gear towers are isolated from the chassis via a set of washers that the gear towers pivot on - I'll check for any continuity with a multimeter in the coming days, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to get an open circuit between the chassis and track.  I'll also look for an open circuit between the chassis and either of the motor connections.

   

2)  Pretty darn clean!

3)  The power transfer from the motor to the gear towers is through 2 universal joints that use 3 equally spaced pins to connect to the mating joints on the motor and gear towers.  After wiggling them free it looks like one of u-joints has become debonded from it's metal rod - nothing that some epoxy can't fix toot sweet.  While I'm at it I might just epoxy all of the joints - if one failed, they might all be ready to go.

       

4)  If all of my efforts to tighten up the power transfer are successful and some of the noise is reduced, I'm thinking of going with the original motor.  I do have a can motor coming just in case, but that's going to require some adaptation.

5)  Just ran the chassis with the motor uncoupled from the gear towers and not tightened down to the frame, and the thing isn't that loud.  If I tighten down the motor in the chassis and the vibration resonates through the chassis.  I'm thinking a piece of Isodamp between motor and chassis is going to go a long way to significant noise reduction.