Texas Special Lives!

Well.. since my HO parts STILL haven't even shipped.. almost a week after I ordered them GRRR there isn't much to do with the train platform. So I moved to working on overhauling 2245 - The Texas Special

When first pulled out of storage.. it would marginally go backwards, but not forward and needed some TLC after it had a battery leak in it.

I took notes as I went, and stripped it down as far as possible.. leaving only the motor itself intact. The die cast stuff doesn't clean up well with only soap and water as I was using.. not sure how to get those looking pretty since they seem to be almost painted finishes which wears away. Where battery acid was, it had completely eaten away the metal making any cleanup purely a stabilizing move. With a metal brush, I removed all lose material and washed what was left behind. I even tried grinding in several places without much difference.


A look at the filth inside (and battery damage)

The first fun was finding the electro coupler on the front truck was busted up. It had a plastic flange where the wire from the pickup would attach. Well that whole section was snapped off. I rigged up a small washer to act as the tie point between the angel hair thin coil wire and the wire coming off the track pickup. It's not pretty, but it appears functional. I pulled the truck all a part, cleaning as best as possible and oiled the axles.

Up next was the rear truck which had the gears in it. This thing was filthy. Even once off the engine, I couldn't really turn the wheels by hand. So it got broken down, cleaned out, and re-greased.


50+ years of grime

I intended to pull the motor apart and clean.. but chickened out when disassembly did not look easy without desoldering all the hookups which I did not want to do. I also did not play with the reversing unit.. which seems pretty loud right now.

Once I rebuild the rear end.. a test was in order to try out if it actually all worked :)



Up next was to try to figure something out about the horn. The horn works by a vibrating coil powered by the track opening and closing a contact between the battery and the horn.



Stripped it all apart, cleaned it up, but still was a big unknown. First attempts went no where with testing it. Even the first runs on the track itself were unsuccessful. But after a second breakdown with more attention cleaning up the contact points where the different plates touch.. we had continuity tests that finally worked.

The body work got a washing and cleanup. And finally it was time for some test runs!

The one casualty of the whole thing was the thumb screw that held the battery door. It snapped, and I still need to figure out how to remove the remaining part of the screw. Right now the door remains partially open, and we used a quarter under the battery to ensure contact between the battery and door (which serves as the - terminal contact).

Here she is.. running slow and then full speed

Inventory Done, and we have rolling trains!

Well, first stage of working with the trains is complete.. knowing what you got! A gallery of the O gauge pieces can be found here. I went through surveying what is there, and what appears salvagable. Looks like the most significant pieces are the Diesel locomotive and the Operating Water Tower. I hope to refurb those parts so the kids can play with them with their new set. We've already put the red top station and caboose on the Harry Potter set so they have more to play with.

This weekend we started opening the HO gauge sets, which were from my childhood (vs the O gauge which were assembled when my oldest Uncle was young). We made a first pass to look at what we had, and from the diligence of my father, most of the stuff is in steller condition. You can see a visual gallery of this stuff here.

Tonight I even setup a simple circle track so some of the gear could be tested. Most of the track is still in good to reasonable condition. Firing up the newest pieces which were trains I had bought myself when I was a teen.. they came right up! The steamer worked like a champ.. the blue Santa Fe Diesel went without a hiccup! The newer red Santa Fe Diesel took awhile before it worked out its cramps.. but after some assisted loops, it was going full steam on its own. The Chessle Diesel was dead, but I didn't persue repairs on it. I wonder if its been dead for awhile, as I don't remember playing with that one as a kid. The Spirit of 76 locomotive didn't fire up at first. But after spending some time on cleaning its wheels with an eraser.. he was flying around as usual! Unfortunately though, its last remaining coupler did not survive :( The plastic pin that holds the coupler in place was broken on the rear of the engine, and the front one broke off tonight as well. So its a speedy little engine that can't carry anyone :( But overall it was great to see most of the pieces fire up without any cleaning or tweaking at all. So with some TLC they should really improve.

I rigged up some wiring to make it easier to test some of the electric components, but the HO stuff is in good enough shape I think its probably better to just jump to trying to build a layout. I'll figure out gaps of what I have, and just order as needed. We'll build a track first, and then try to populate the buildings, etc and I'll clean them as I set each one up.

Now the question is.. stay legacy, or ponder one of these new control systems.. hrmmm.

A Train Story.. Day 1 and 2

With the house settled, we finally have room for things we haven't in the past. That includes something I grew up with a kid, as well as my father.. a train garden. I'll try to log some history here on the blog as it progresses. These posts will be tagged with 'Trains' (see right panel on page)

My father had Lionel O Gauge trains as a kid that he and his family would put up every Christmas Eve. When I was a kid, we had HO gauge trains that we'd setup each season and each year a fun part of Christmas was gifts to expand the set. My father had younger brothers, and his trains stayed with his father when my father moved out of the house. At that time, they were living in Baltimore City, but since then moved to Reisterstown after my father left for College.

When my Grandmother died, and my Grandfather was looking to sell their house and move back into the city, the family pitched in and cleaned up and out the house they had been living in for the last approx 25 years. My father saved the trains which had been in storage in the basement and moved them into storage at his house. At that time, I got a peek at the trains, but it wasn't the time for them and they went back into their boxes.

Skip ahead to current time.. I had been telling my kids about the trains and they had started to show interest, asking all kinds of questions. They had seen some train gardens at various Christmas-time exhibits and were showing a real curiosity. So we discussed pulling out the old train sets and possibly setting them up in the new house. For Christmas, my father got them a starter Lionel set styled to Harry Potter. We set those up under the tree as soon as we got home. The thing about these trains tho is they are EXPENSIVE and pretty delicate. With my kids all 10 and under, I really worry about them breaking the details on the cars. So thinking my HO trains may be more tolerable to their play.. I pushed ahead with gathering up the trains from storage to complement their new Lionel set.

At Christmas, we pulled the train boxes from deep storage at my father's house and did a quick inspection of his O Gauge pieces. The trains actually started with my uncle who is 9 years older then my father. We don't know when their collection started, but conversation with my uncle at Christmas makes us think the collection started about 1950. Most of the trains are still in original Lionel boxes. With no space to take them Christmas day, we decided to come back another day just to take the trains themselves.

On New Years Eve, I drove down to my fathers to retrieve the boxes from storage. Included was the 8x4 platform we built when I was a kid to put the trains on. We had a smaller platform we'd put under the tree when I was very little, but as we got older, we built a 'proper' platform straight from the Atlas train guides. This had been in storage at my fathers house since (including a move!). We fit the platform in my minivan (ha.. can your SUV do that??) and loaded up the train boxes.
Today I managed to set the platform up as a starting point.. mainly to have a work surface. The O Gauge trains are 50 years old, and haven't been used since sometime around 1968-1970 or so...sitting in basement storage since then. I plan on trying to revitalize the Lionel pieces as much as possible to make them usable by my kids. The HO sets I had will serve as good fodder for their need to crash/bang more :)
Today as an easy starter step.. I started with my Tyco US-1 Trucking slot car sets. These are slot car sets themed to construction/highway things. I think these sets were from when I was probably 9-13 years old or so. They had action pieces, including a gravel hopper that dumped into the truck, an operating crane that loaded pipe sections into a dump truck, and a Firehouse that included a switching track and a fire truck with working lights and bell.

I pulled them out, setup a basic track, and tried them out. Initial signs were pretty gloom with the various cars just barely showing signs of life. But after some warm up and coaxing.. they were flying around the track. After a bit of tweaking and cleaning, we had all the action pieces working, and all cars flying. The kids loved playing with the action pieces. So Day 1 (yesterday)... we successfully loaded and hauled all the gear to my house. Day 2, we successfully got the platform up, and got the slot trucks out for a warm up exercise.
All the photos are at picasa.. the gallery is here
Some teaser shots..

From A train story

From A train story

From A train story