Van Hobbies brass CNR N-5-d 2-8-0 rebuild/ Finished pics add

[Wayne R]

    A top view of the reassembled drive showing the torque arm. Seeing as the gearbox floats on the axle of the geared driver it is needed to stop the gearbox from flopping forwards and backwards. I made it from some 0.015" brass sheet. The end at the gearbox was formed to match the top of the gearbox. The gearbox has two holes drilled and tapped for 1.4mm screws. They hold the torque arm on the gearbox. The torque arm is attached to the motor with a 2mm shouldered screw. This allows the geared driver some side to side movement for curves.

The assembled drive was wired for DC power and test ran with the rebuilt tender after the above photos were taken. The good news is it ran good but did have some issues with the side rod clearances and some small rubs and binds. A few thin thrust washers, some careful bending and a little filling took care of the problems. It now runs very well and is very quiet. I have a couple of Proto 2000 Heritage 0-8-0s in CN markings and it runs just about as well as they do. The low speed is nice and it will crawl along slow enough it takes about 30 seconds to cover three feet. The gearbox is new so hopefully with some running the slow speed will get slower yet.

Next was a test run with a DCC decoder. I rewired the drive for a Digitrax DH163 decoder. The preformance was the same except for the slow speed. The decoder has adjustments to help slow speed control and they made a difference. It will now creep along slow enough that a three foot stretch takes under a minute. I must say I am very pleased with the results. Seeing as it was a well run locomotive that was not taken care of I expected a bit of a struggle when it came to getting it to run smoothly and slow.

Next posting will be some pictures of the drive with the boiler remounted. I just need to download them off my camera and resize them.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Well still no sound decoder and speaker as of yet. Hopefully it is in tomorrows mail. Once I have it I will be able to drill some holes in the tender floor for the speaker and finish rewiring the drive. After a little test run I will be able to tear down the drive and get the remaining parts ready for paint.

I had put out a request a while back looking for a spare tender for a N-5-d on some other forums. I am going to need one for N-5-d #2 as the tender that came with it is for the most part junk.Only the main tender body and the floor are possibly usable. The oil bunker was cut up into 6 pieces.
I got a couple of replies and was able to purchase two other tenders a month ago .One was painted with floquil paint and decaled. The other had paint and no decals. The paint was real heavy and looked like it was done with a hardware store spray can. Today I finally stripped the paint from both. The one with the poor paint job was easy as a bath in lacquer thinner had the paint off in less than 20 minutes. This one was missing a rear step so I salvaged one from the floor of the destroyed tender and soldered it on.
Removing the paint from the tender that was painted with floquil paint and decaled proved to be a much harder job. The paint must have been baked on as after 2 hours in lacquer thinner it was not coming off.I finally got the paint off by sandblasting the tender and frame with baking soda. A messy job but the paint came off without too much trouble.

   
   
The two pictures show the floquil painted tender before I removed the paint. The paint job was okay except for the weathering. I also found the paint to be to grey looking. Easier to remove the paint and repaint with my black.

    This is the second tender I purchased. The shell has been primed to keep it from tarnishing. The floquil painted tender was left unpainted and is stored in a plastic ziplock baggies to keep it out of the air so it does not tarnish. I will be using it with the locomotive instead of the tender I repaired.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Even though I aready have three usable tenders and only two N-5-d locomotives that need tender I ended up buying another tender. I was given a tip about this one sitting on a hobby shop shelf. The price was really good so I bought it. It arrived in todays mail.

   
   

This one is new and unused and has a clear lacquer coating on it. It does have some minor tarnish spots under the clear coating but for now it will be staying as is.
This tender may end up behind a Genesis 2-8-2 sometime this winter.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

The pictures below show the repaired drive with the boiler mounted back on it. When the photos were taken it was being test on DCC and has a Digitrax decoder in the boiler. I had thought about replacing some of the factory details with new details that have a little more detail to them but decided to leave things as is. I am happy with the factory details. I am also very happy with how well things have turned out.
The pilot was in pieces when I got the locomotive as was the H handrail in front of the smokebox front. The pilot was soldered back together and a new uncoupling lever bent from 0.015 brass wire. The front H handrail was rebuilt from a few original parts and some brass wire.
The headlight and smoke box front were already drilled for a lightbulb so I will be installing a MV Products lens and a micro golden white LED headlight once everything is painted, decaled and clear coated.

   
   
   


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

The photos show the etched brass cab numbers I have aded to the cab. I decided to number this locomotive #2765. The full size #2765 was assigned to Smithers, British Columbia.

The etched brass cab numbers were glued in place with 5 minute epoxy. They were done one at a time. I mixed up a small puddle of epoxy and floated the cab number on it backside down for a few seconds. The number was then placed on the cab in the location I wanted it, aligned and pressed down. Once the epoxy reached a taffy like stage the extra that squeezed out around the number was removed with the tip of an x-acto blade.

The boiler for the most part was in really good shape underneath all the heavy paint. I only had to repair a few cracked solder joints and rebend a few bent handrails. There was a little tarnish under the paint but nothing serious. This was the easiest part of the whole restoration so far.

The boiler, smokebox front, pilot and steps have now been sandblasted and are in ziplock baggies awaiting painting. I am hoping to paint them this weekend.

   
   
   

Wayne R

[Wayne R]

This morning I took a couple of quick pictures of the locomotive and the clear coated brass tender together.

   
   

When I took the last picture I was playing around with my Digital cameras light settings. I thought this picture was kind of neat as it has an old time look.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

The following pictures are of the tender I received with the second locomotive I bought. The one with the destroyed oil bunker.

    This shot shows the CPR coal bunker that was added after the original owner removed the oil bunker. It has a Canadian look but for a real CNR fan it is not correct.

    This top view shows that the coal bunker was not glued on straight. The small pile of coal betwen the rear of the coal bunker and the water hatch is covering up the remaining hole left from the oil bunker removal that the coal bunker did not cover.

The way this tender looks in the pictures is for the most part how the tender I repaired looked before I removed the coal bunker and the paint.

Seeing as the oil bunker for the tender above is a bunch of cut up parts I may just end up making the needed changes to the main tender body and fabricate the needed parts from brass to turn it into a coal tender. I am sure with a little careful work and soldering it can be done. I have some HO and S scale drawings of the oil and coal tenders used behind the N-5-d class so I have something to work from.



Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Below are some more pictures of the second N-5-d I purchased with the first one. This one is going to require a lot more work to restore. Once I get locomotive #1 done this one will be next.

   
   
   

The front of the locomotive has a few problems. The pilot has had the solder joints broken and has been glued. The airpump and airpump sheild has been removed from the pilot. The headlight and headlight bracket seems to be made of plastic tubing and sheet stock and the front H handrail is in bad shape. The good news is I have the airpump and airpump sheild.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

More on N-5-d #2.

The right side is for the most part unmodified. There is an extra detail part on top the running board and some extra piping for the feedwater system and the bell has been relocated. These extra parts seemed to be glued on as well and possibly a hole drilled in the boiler to relocate the bell.

   
   

Here is a bottom view showing the original factory gearbox still in place. I am not sure but it looks like this locomotive was painted without taking it apart. The drivers have a lot of wear on this one and some wheels have no plating left. Surprisingly this one actually ran not to bad. It had a little gear noise and bit of a bind problem a real low speeds but for the most part ran good for a well used old brass locomotive. Most of all since some of the older Van Hobbies CNR brass from the 1970s are know to have problems.

   


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Well unforunatly I was unable to get any painting done this weekend. Other things kept me from working on the N-5-d.

The good news is Monday morning the Soundtraxx Tsunami sound decoder, speaker and speaker box showed up in the mail finally.

    The Tsunami light steam decoder, speaker and speaker box I will be using.

    A shot of the speaker & speaker box. The box seals the back side of the speaker which makes for better sound preformance.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

I spent Monday afternoon and evening planning out the sound install. My first hurdle was to decide how to get the sound out of the tender. I really was hoping to avoid drilling any holes but seeing as the tender is an oil tender I have no coal bunker to mount the speaker in. My other steam locomotives I installed Tsunami decoders in have the speaker mount facing up in the coal bunker with a piece of carved soft foam sponge with some coal glued to it hidding the speaker.

The first thing I did was test the sound decoder to make sure it was working fine. I do this with all new decoders before installing them. Next I decided to see how things would sound with the speaker in its box facing up inside the tender. Needless to say even with the volume turned all the way up the sound level was low and the sound quality was poor.

This left me with one option. Drill some holes. Seeing as the oil bunker made getting the sound out via the top of the shell impossible I was left with the tender floor. Also seeing as I had to get six wires from the locomotive into the tender it and space is at a premium at the front of the tender floor it meant the speaker would be at the back of the tender.

    The tender floor with a drilling template I made to help drill the holes where they would not be effected by things on the bottom of the tender.I was only able to drill six holes.

    This is how the speaker will be mounted. The white plastic frame the speaker box is sitting in was need because the speakers cone was touching the tender floor. I made the spacer from some .060" & .040" styrene plastic strips.

    The drilled tender floor, speaker setup and the spacer I made.



Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Now that I got the speaker mounting sorted out I needed to figure out where to have the six wires needed exit the tender. Needed are 2 motor leads, 2 power leads as the front part of the locomotive will be picking up power from both rails and 2 wires for the headlight. I also had to decide if I was going to use micro plugs so the locomotive and tender could be seperated if needed.

There were two problems I could see if I used the micro plugs.
#1 was they are not rated for more than 500 mah. Okay for the headlight but not so good for the motor or the power feeds.
#2 Due to the design of the tender there was no space under the tender for them and no real good spot under the cab either. Even though they are micro plugs they are still fair sized so leaving them hanging between the tender and cab was not an option either.

I wanted an clean setup and to be honest I rarely seperate the tender from my plastic steam locomotives and they all have built in plugs. I decided to hardwire the tender to the locomotive in such a way I could still seperate them without to much hassle.

    Using a kit for making circuit boards and some single sided circuit board I made this little piece. It measures 1.2" x .5" and has 6 contact srtips. It started off as a piece of copper coated circuit board blank. Using 1/16 pinstripping I masked the copper areas I wanted to etch off with the acid included in the kit. I was left with 6 strips 3/32" wide which were painted over with clear lacquer to protect the copper. The pinstripping was then removed and the board placed in the acid. When it came out I was left spaces between the pads and around the perimeter of the board. I also filed a small grove with a small triangular file between each pad to make sure they were all isolated from each other.

    To route the wires into the tender I drilled a 1/8" hole just in front of the front truck mounting point. The wires exit as two groups of three from under the cab and are routed one on each side of the draw bar. I would have liked to have them enter the tender closer to the tender front but due to the design of the tender front wall and a mounting screw for the tender shell being in the way this was my best option.

    This photo shows the speaker sitting in place and the circuit board I made. The circuit board will be stuck to the tender floor with some double sided tape in the postion shown in the photo. The six wires from the decoder will each be soldered to one end of each of the copper strips. The wires coming up through the tender floor from the locomotive will go the the other end of the copper strips. All the wires from the locomotive have been color coded to match the decoder wires.

If I ever need to seperate the tender I will just have to remove the tender shell and unsolder from the circuit board the six wires from the locomotive and pull them down through the hole. For safety the circuit board will be covered with some tape once the connections are made. No exposed contacts for this guy.

The decoder will be placed in the top of the tender shell up in the oil bunker. The wires between the locomotive and tender will be painted black so they look like hoses.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Today I painted the side cab windows red and the raised cab numbers CN yellow #11. Painting the windows was the easy job. I have shaky hands and the raised cab numbers proved to be a bit of a scary job as I was worried my hand would shake at the wrong time and the cab would get yellow where it was not needed.But with some patience and taking my time it came out okay.

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]The boiler with the raised cab numbers and windows painted. The boiler is mounted on a brass tube that sits on a wooden holder I made for painting. This way the boiler could be rotated so all the nooks and crannies could be painted.

[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]Tender shell painted. The rest of the parts look the same so no need to post pictures of them.

For paint I used Polly Scale steam power black. It is not a real dark black but is also not to gray. It is a water based acrylic. I had thought of using either Floquil or Scale Coat but decided seeing as I have always used either Modelflex or Polly Scale I would stick with what I am used to. The paint was thinned ( 15% ) using bottled water and sprayed with my Badger 175 dual action airbrush using a medium tip and needle. Most everything got two light coats followed by one final coat once I was sure I had not missed any hard to get spots.

Before any of the parts were painted they were sandblasted with baking soda using a Badger mini sandblaster. This helps the paint get a better hold on the brass and cleans the parts up real nice. Then it was a wash in warm soapy water and a rinse. Next a quick dip ( no more than 10 minutes ) in white vineager to remove any stubborn tarnish followed by a warm water rinse. Next a dip in lacquer thinner then a dip in 99% denatured alcohol. Between each cleaning step the parts were blown off with compressed air and dried with a hairdryer. Seeing as the parts had been handled a lot during the rebuild I wanted to make sure everything was real clean so the paint stuck real well.



Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Well I hope to be assembling the drive train tonight but it will now be this weekend before I can get to it.
I read about a neat trick to help keep the paint on the side rods and valve gear from wearing off when the locomotive is handled. I do not plan to handle it a lot but decided to try it. It involved cleaning the side rods and valve gear in lacquer thinner to remove all traces of oil and dirt. Next they got a little scuffing with some 800 grit wet/dry sandpaper. Just enough to dull the plating a little but not enough to break through the plating. Next was a bath in 99% alcohol then they got sprayed with some dullcote. This is supposed to help the paint grab better. Once the drive is reassembled they will get sprayed with the same black used on the locomotive with the wheels turning slowly.

Seeing as I could not assemble the drive tonight I decided to mount the steam chest, pilot, and boiler back on the frame to see how things were going to look. I have been dying to see how it will look now compared to when I got it. In short curiosity killed the cat finally.
I took a couple of pictures so here they are.

   
   

This is how it looked when I received it so many months back.

   

I am actually very happy with the color of the Polly Scale steam power black paint I used. I person it looks a little more blacker than the photos I took. Also depending on the lighting it looks anywhere from black to a gray color and seems to photograph nicely. The lighting I took the pictures with is just about the exact lighting I will be using on my new layout. I used a lamp for extra lighting for the pictures and the yellow light from it gave the paint a warm black look with a slight brown tint. More so in the picture than in person.


Wayne R

[Wayne R]

Now that I have made a copy of my build thread here it is time for a small update.

The good news is everything is painted and the locomotive except for the tender has been clear coated. I am still waiting on the " Fuel Oil " lettering but the GOOD news is I was informed everything I need to finish the decaling was shipped last Friday ( Dec 12th ). This means I should have the final little finishing touches done before Christmas and be able to post pictures of the finished locomotive and tender.

Since my last posts there has been a change to how the wires from the locomotive to the tender are connected. I will cover the change when I post the final pictures.

Work on N-5-d number 2 has been put on hold until I get the track plan for a new layout done. Right now I have only a test track to run my locomotives and a few freight cars on and seeing as my N-5-d rebuild will hopefully soon be finished I will need some more track so I can run it and enjoy all my hard work. I also have a fair number of freight car kits I need to build, paint and decal. Good thing winter is here it gives me a good excuse to hide away in my shop and work on trains.


Wayne R