Santa Fe 1800 Class

[Schraddel]

Hello,

As the tender was the same as the one of the 1480 Class, the electrics, wipers and DCC installations were made just in the same manner:
https://bigbluetrains.com/showthread.php?tid=7017
Even the gearbox was the same and in the 1480 Atlantic it runs flawless, so i thought why not keep it?


The loco was reassembled, a simple decoder plugged in an let's try how she is running.

But ...
Nothing was working here like in the 1480 Atlantic.  
- the motor has not the guts to power this loco properly
- the gearbox makes grinding sounds
- there is a bucking twice at each rotation of the driving wheels
A bad day.

Intensive trouble shooting was started the next day.
At first the too-small motor was exchanged. It's follower was an 1833 Mashima motor with 5-pole skew wound armature. More power, but gearbox more than ever the was screaming and the bucking was still there.



The first task was to eliminate the bucking. This photo shows the initial state. To ease understanding what i mean: http://www.fs160.eu/fiNeweb/Lconstructio...haerts.php
Have a closer look at the expansion link on the photo. In it's most rearward position it collides with the link rod between the lifting arm and the radius rod. Either it snaps over the link rod or it jams into it. Both actions caused the mechanism to run in a bucking manner. And as the same is the case on the other side of the loco, there is a twice bucking each revolution.






So I removed the rivets on the lifting levers, so they can be repositioned a little away from the radius rod. That relaxed the situation and the loco began to run evenly. A piece of brass rectangular profile was soldered onto the gear supporter on each side to create new mounting points for the lifting levers.




Next was to make a little bit of more detailing.
Three of Santa Fe's 1800 class loco were saved and are still existing. Here are some photos which showing a "dangerous" level of details:
http://www.rgusrail.com/album/ksatsf1880...880_18.jpg
http://www.rgusrail.com/album/ksatsf1880...880_17.jpg
Dangerous because you will discover a lot more details which the prototype has and the model didn't.
The question is: What you can replicate to upgrade your model in a realistic manner of the given possibilities and in realistic judging of your own skills?





I tried this:
- the footsteps under the crossheads were made new out of brass profile and elongated till the ends of the crosshead guides.
- the upper crosshead guides were extended according to the prototype photos
- there were made connections between the crosshead guides and the valve gear supporter





- there were made links between the lowest steps of the ladders an the new footboards to create a more stiff and not so delicate structure
- the link between valve gear supporter and was placed between main rod and eccentric rod as per prototype
There are some more structural complements, but in aspects of what will be really visible when the loco is painted and running on the layout, I decided not to aspire to 150% perfection. Instead app. 95% here will be still an excellent result. Otherwise you'd have to rebuild the loco from scratch onward.


The growling gearbox was replaced by an NWSL 1:28 one. Now she is running as smooth as I like.