Greetings from the Highland Rim, and beautiful Cumberland heights, Home of impossibly cool summer wearhther, and equally impossible humidity levels, that make our OEM cooling systems useless, thourougly negating any bennifit that might have been derived from the cooler weather.
Dr Tom has been running passenger trains at the club, and he found that my little Bachman consolodation is considerably stouter than his old Mountain, which is close to twice it's size. I wanted to relay this information to you, as you once expressed an interest in the Bachman consolodations.
Once opon a time I was nuetral in my evaluation of the Bachman 2-8-0; in spite of the fact that the mechanism was glass smooth, and the detailing was quite good, I was deeply concerned about the availability of certain parts. when I last worked on the SR 2-8-0 from my home layout, many of the parts I was most concerned about were not available. ( for those of you not familair with my history, I have turned into a mechanism freak- my first locomotive is still in active service after 47 years). the last time I checked the Bachman parts catalouge they did not have some critical parts available, but now they do, so the bachman 2-8-0, which was always a very well engneered piece of equipment, is now well supported with avilable parts, so it is now something I can recomend whole heartedly.
The Club's SR 2-8-0, which I appropriated after doing massive electrical and mechanical repairs , and adding a medium steam Tsunami, has been so much fun I'm ready to Replace some parts on my Home RR's SR 2-8-0, to get it to run as smooth as the unit at the club. I'm thinking another Tsunami installation is in order, to allow double headding at the club; and that had me looking at the Bachman parts website.
The critical design flaw with this locomotive, which is comon amoung steam locomotive design, is that the drawbar between the locomotive and the tender slips on a pin on the tender. if this pin comes off the drawbar, the locomotive pulls the train by the wires between the tender and the locomotive, the strain on the wires causes wires to break, and the micro wirng repairs, while possible if highly skilled are an ugly job.
the soulotion, stip a tiny piece of insulation off a sutibly sized wire , press it n the tendr post so the drawbar can't slide off, and secure it with a drop of ACC
Moderately intelegent readers might be wondering, "what does this have to do with the Whiskey River?" Highly intelegent readers would have seen my Shay on the bridge picture, realized the source, and gone on to look for real information elsewhere; but while trolling the Bachman web site I found they have
Tender trucks available for thier old time 4-4-0s. the old rivarossi 2-4-0s and 4-4-0's had similar trucks, but they had a tendancy to crack, and no trucks were available in HO with such a small wheel size. but I now have a source for wheels that small which means I can use a set to lower the Casey Jones Tender enough to get a tender mounted motor in line with the old AHM Genoa frame, so I can get back to work on the Bizzare kitbash project to create a 4-4-0 for the Whiskey river with a tender and boiler from an AHM Casey Jones 4-6-0, and a frame and mechanism from a n AHM 4-4-0 , and possibly a cab from an NWSL Sierra 2-8-0, iffin I can find it.
I will be ordering parts soon, when I get them, and can restart the locobashing project I will share photos, Stay safe, and stay in touch
Nelson
