Found this in some very old N scale stuff that has been stored for years. Can anyone tell me about this little beast?
You have a keen eye @freddy_fo ! Sans buffers, it's also Atlas Item 4069 which they called a "Dewenport" Switcher. My 1981 JMC catalog shows it at $16.00 Ea. Photo Courtesy Trovestar:
This and the saddle tank switcher, also by RoCo, were supposed to be much superior to the previous 0-6-0 tank and Plymouth WDT by Mehanotehnika but they really weren't. Doug
Looking back, the best 0-6-0 at the time was Rapido's, with Minitrix a good second place finisher. I don't know what Rapido's trick was. They weren't slow speed champions, but could certainly be run at reasonable speeds and they never stalled. I still have mine and a set of matching cars, and it still runs great. Rapido had class -- that's a turned brass stack that threads into a weight within the boiler.
I think Arnold Rapido's and Minitrix's secret was more precision in their motors. The commutators were much smoother and bearings/bushings more substantial and closer toleranced. The Rivarossi, Mehanotehnika, and RoCo motors were cruder. The main shortcoming in RoCo's motors was the brushes being too soft and loading up the commutator slots, however. There are a few more examples of getting the spelling wrong on product from Europe. If a German had seen the word "Davenport", it would have been pronounced "Dawenport" in this case, hence the "w" sneaking in there on the label. There are actually quite a few variations in pronunciation between the two languages with the letter "v" in English normally pronounced the same as our "f" but there are exceptions. It took RoCo (who made the first rolling stock for Atlas in the late sixties) three times to get the spelling correct on the inserts for the "State of Maine" boxcars in the A1G series. First, it was "...Main", then "...Mane", and finally, the correct "...Maine" Doug
The so called newer WDT now by Bachmann still sounds like a coffee grinder even though they said they upgraded it. Pretty much the same mechanism down through the years/
When I was a kid, I'd get SO frustrated trying to make those awful motors and mechanisms run better. I thought it was my lack of ability or that I'd bought the one-in-a-hundred lousy runners. Only later when I was a bit older did I notice that Minitrix and Rapido used metal gears and precision truck assemblies. Good point on motor quality Doug. I hadn't given that much thought, but you are so right.
The original Rivarossi "can" motor was terrible as far as the commutator. The form was made of a plastic that could not withstand the heat generated by the motor even running within normal operating temperatures and, if the load increased at all, the heat would destroy the commutator form. The commutator plates were, more often than not, out of round which didn't allow the motor to throttle down to a nice slow speed. Some were OK that way and a loco could crawl. Inconsistency. I remember the first time I tried to true one up on a lathe ala an article in MR. I made a real narrow cutter and brought it ever so slowly toward the commutator to make real fine cuts. The cutter immediately caught in the first commutator slot it encountered and ripped the commutator apart. Actually, this may have been with a Mehano motor but, same thing. I did use fine sandpaper and crocus cloth after that for nominal improvement. The Rivarossi and Mehano motors ran hot, anyway. Doug