7mm Richards P48 US Thread

[richard carr]

The other thing I did this weekend was convert the loco toP48. This time I decided to reprofile the existing wheels.

You need an arbour press to get the wheels off the axle, and to put them back on. The machining is straight forward you just need to take your time and concentrate. With these I took 0.4mm off the back, and 1mm off the front and dished the front.
I have a P48 form tool available from RIght O Way to cut the flange.






Now I need to find a way to narrow the trucks a bit.

Richard

 

[JasonD]

OK Richard, in my defence I worked in computers all my life. While I was earning money I acquired an original Unimat (yes, the 'toy' type with the round bars) and an old, small, arbour press to have a go at improving coarse/old NMRA (.175"ish) wheels to .145" (halfway to paradise - what you P48ers call .115"). Because the original .115" wheel thickness target didn't solve Ow5's main back-to-back problem, P48 was born.

Anyway, I never did get going on milling the gearbox sides and axle ends to get the wheels closer together. Do you have a plan?

Jason

 

[richard carr]

Hi Jason

The plan here is to do nothing and live with the trucks the width that they are.

They don't look too bad to be honest.

If you did want to narrow the trucks, you need to narrow the bolster and then initially lengthen the stub on the axle and then shorten it back again.

All of which can be done but you need to plan for in advance. I haven't this time so I will stick with how they are.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

I did buy a couple of pairs of the new Kadee 100 ton trucks, but after taking one of them apart, it's obvious that these aren't something that can be converted easily to P48. They are nice for OW5 as they have the 145 thou wheels and are the correct width over the frames. Clearly if they do make some with P48 wheels that would be great

The main reason for considering them was that Protocraft had sold out of 100ton P48 trucks, I bought the last 7 sets last year. Norm kept saying that he was getting some more done, but it did seem like it was taking forever and might yet be one of things that never gets done (Norm's not that young if you know what I mean)

I rang him about a month ago to see if there was any progress and he said yes, they had just arrived from Korea !

So here they are the latest Protocraft 100 ton Barber S2 trucks, they are really nice.









They are beautiful, they are fully sprung, the wheels run in roller bearings, there is almost no sideplay.

The only bad thing is that they have almost doubled in price !!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Stephen]

So here they are the latest Protocraft 100 ton Barber S2 trucks, they are really nice.


View attachment 201444

They are beautiful, they are fully sprung, the wheels run in roller bearings, there is almost no sideplay.

The only bad thing is that they have almost doubled in price !!!!!!!!!!!

Well you've done nothing but add further persuasion to obtain a couple of sets of the Protocraft 70Ton ACF A-3 Ride Control trucks to my shopping list in March.....alas I'll shamefully let the side down and opt for OW5 versions! Hopefully they wont look wasted on a number of Atlas 70ton Covered Hoppers.

Cheers,

Stephen

 

[richard carr]

Stephen

I'm sure they are really nice too, but I would check with Norm that he is taking some to the show, as I expect he won't unless you ask him to.

Richard

 

[Big Train James]

Does he even have Ow5 trucks available anymore? I know he brought them in with the p48 trucks in earlier runs, but I thought he stopped doing that.

 

[richard carr]

Yes they are still on the website, those without a price are sold out but 70 ton ACF A-3 ride control trucks are still shown as available at $52.95 a pair

 

[richard carr]

Now that I have some 100 ton trucks again, I can get on and finish a number of conversions.

I have 4 of these that need to be converted.



into these





The coupler box is on its 8th iteration, and this one still isn't quite right, but the next one will be.

The NS decals look good, and there were never any Trinity hoppers in DRGW livery. I also have some in COnrail and Southern Pacific, neither of which probably ever existed.


Richard

 

[Big Train James]

Interesting numbering on that NS hopper. Is it one of those that you can say is two different cars depending on which side is facing toward the aisle?

You are correct, there were never any Conrail or SP Trinity 5161 hoppers. Atlas brought in a bunch of fantasy schemes to broaden sales, which I don't have an issue with. The problem is they did an entire run of of foobies, with the single exception of one leasing company car. I can understand making a run with real roads for the majority and one or two foobs to pad the numbers, but not the other way around. In the meantime, the cars sell for 1½ times MSRP on ebay. It seems like a missed opportunity for Atlas in my opinion.

 

[richard carr]

Jim

Well I hadn't noticed that, the car is down int he shed at the moment, but I think it will have 298143 on the other side as the decals all have the 2 numbers 298043 and 298143 as the pre formed ones and those are the ones I used ! The decals are actually for a 5200 hopper as I couldn't find anything closer.

It is a shame they produced all those foobies, as getting hold of these is a bit of a nightmare. I'm sure Atlas will do another run soon but again they may be all foobies.

Richard

 

[JasonD]

Intermountain launched their O-scale kits in their boxes with brown colours. Not too long afterwards they were told they could have their cars supplied built-up for an extra $10. These sold well and when a surprising number of O-scalers said they would like them in their favourite roadnames they did so and the relevant boxes changed colour from brown to red. Virtually all O-scale RTR freight car models have had to bear quantity as well as quality in mind.
Jason

 

[richard carr]

The other thing I have been doing recently is converting my T&P GP9 to P48.

This is nice and easy as Right O Way sell replacement drop in wheel sets, so it's a simple 30 minute job. However on testing it, something clearly wasn't right. It turned out to be a missing roller bearing.



I don't think this fell out while I was changing the wheelsets, as I'm 99% certain I only removed the other bogie side.

Fortunately the roller bearings are 5mm outside diameter and 2mm inside, which is readily available size, I got some from online bearings at £2.50 each, these were 2.3mm deep. They turned out to be the exact size required.






Everything back together and running smoothly



I also change the Kadee to a 745, the more modern medium coupler.

 

[richard carr]

I have had a fairly free weekend so the plan was to get another GP60 converted to P48.
It's really easy to do the conversion as you can buy drop in wheel sets from North West Short Line, but they need a bit more doing to them than just that. The bogies need narrowing and I find this is best done first. They also a need a decoder adding and ditch lights..

So these 2 are all ready to go. The Rio Grande one is un powered so it needs all the lighting LEDs adding too, the Cotton belt one is 2 rail DC so powered with a board that allows you to plug in the decoder. I decided to start with the RIo Grande.



nothing inside 3156




Plenty in 9677

 

[richard carr]

I decided to start with the Rio Grande one, it needs quite a bit more work, pickups, adding a motor and lighting support as well as sound and decoder installation and the bogies need to be narrowed. Thats the first job as it's best done when they are removed from the body and adding the motor and replacement wheels at the same time.

This is the unpowered bogie.





It does make quite a difference, I just chop the mazac down with some track cutters, tidy things up with a file and then stick the bogie sides back on with some super glue, it bonds mazac really well.

 

[richard carr]

A friend has just come over for a Christmas visit and managed to bring this with him for me.



So this is an Atlas Premier SD70 ACe, they are of course the former MTH tooling that Atlas has acquired, they come with PS3 so they are DCC and sound ready. You had to pre order these about 18 months ago, which I didn't but this one turned up on US Ebay. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet but let's hope it sounds right, it certainly looks right if you ask me, but it isn't quite an Overland one, but it is only a quarter the price.
















In case you didn't know the Elkhart webcam on youtube is back in action.

Richard

 

[richard carr]

Today I have been finishing off the Rio Grande GP60.
To finish the loco off I have added the coupler boxes, fitted and wired up new 3D printed ditch lights and sorted out the QSi decoder.

One thing the QSi decoders don't have is a stay alive built in, so I have been trying to work out where to fit one. A search of the web eventaully found a post on the QSi group from a few years back that said put it on by one of the existing capacitors.



It's on the black capacitor, this is marked 560 micro farads 35Vs.
It does work, but if you are running the decoder using the quantum programmer it doesn't supply enough power to charge the stay alive. In fact it doesn;t really supply enough power to run an atlas loco, so I wouldn't recommend using it, other than for programming CVs (decoder pro works just as well for this) or to change the sound (Decoder Pro can't do this).

Next it was the ditch lights.



The LED is glued in with loads of canopy glue, it just takes about 12 hours to dry enough.

Fitting is fiddly but Atlas have a nice channel to feed the wires through




You remove the 2 screws and that T shaped cover comes out




Now you can feed the wires through from the lights into the loco body






Then the cover goes back on, that is the fiddly bit

 

[David Waite]

Hi Richard
You said (The LED is glued in with loads of canopy glue) what is this canopy glue I’ve never heard of it and dose it set hard or stay semi soft.
David.

 

[simond]

It’s what the aircraft modellers use to fix canopies….

It seems to be very like PVA, and dries clear, so it does not show.
It also does not cause frosting of the glazing, which MEK or CA glues can do.

 

[richard carr]

Hi David

As Simon says, it's probably just an expensive way to buy PVA !

This one is Micro Scale Kristal Klear. I fill the entire hole on the ditch light with it and eventually it will dry, it can take a whole day to do it and it does dry clear so the light works really well. In the photographs it is till drying out some some of it is still white

Richard