I spent this past week doing some further modifications to my Life-Like 060t that I've shared before in these two threads, one and two. I'm starting this thread for a more appropriate title. Anyways, this saddle tank has come a long ways since my last post of it. I've added an operational headlight, put a (hopefully) permanent fix on the motor, (see thread two above), and gave it a fresh coat of paint. First off, you'll notice the new headlight. For that, I found a 1.5mm square LED in my fathers stash of MRR goodies. I simply hacked the plastic dummy headlight off and drilled two holes, one for each lead off the LED, then fed them through the shell down to the frame. I made them follow the outside just under the walk ways, and added a resistor to one lead. I soldered the leads to the pickups for power and had myself a working headlight. I then took some pollyscale paint to disguise the resistor as an air tank or something of that sort, and painted the back and sides of the square LED to look like an actual box headlight. You'll also notice in the pictures above, the grey smokebox and the newly painted brass. Before the smokebox was black and brass items were just painted yellow. The white trim is next, once I buy some white model paint. All I have in white now is acrylic which as you can see, does not stick very well.
Cool Mark! I would have had no idea that the base for the headlight was part of the LED. And I like how the resistor blends right in to the side of the loco. Great job! Mike
Very nice! I have a small suggestion to improve the look of the resistor: If it is not getting hot I suggest to wrap it into a small paper tube to hide the two "bulges" at the end of the resistor, making it look more like a cylindrical tank. You could also insert it into a small brass or styrene tune or a drinking straw, but you would need to unsolder it again to do so. But it looks already good as-is! Cheers Dirk
There's a LL saddle tanker at my LHS for $25, still in the blue box (& still with rapido couplers). Thanks to this fab thread, I'm thinking about getting it & doing the project. I'm sure it'll need lots of work, but yr end result is so very groovy! hmmm...
I did a little more tinkering with my Saddle Tank over the past weekend. Eventually a TCS Z2 will be installed, and yes, it will fit! But for now this guy is still in DC mode and the only power pack I have is one of those cheap little brick transformers. Since I cant get a good flow of power out of it, I decided to hard wire two more pick-ups on the first car after the engine. My camera's battery is dead, so I'll get pictures up tomorrow. For now I'll just leave you with a video to wet your appetite. This is my Ultimate Saddle Tank pulling 7 cars and a caboose up a 2% grade. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFDp8ksDz9w
Looks nice. I might do that with mine too sooner or later.. One suggestion tho. On that LED, you can take a drimmel tool with a sanding disk, and grind the LED down so it looks more like a flat lamp lenz rather than a bubble. I grind on LEDs all the time to make them fit the application. I took 4, 5mm LEDs because I didn't have any smaller ones, and ground them down to damn near to the LED inside itself. Took polishing sand paper and polished the surface I needed polished, and put them in sets of two on each end op a motor car. I made it so it would alternate red/white on each end, depending on which direction it was going. Turned out nice.. But, point is, most people don't think you can do that without destroying an LED, but you can, as long as you don't go so deep you get into the actual LED function. You can grind the plastic part to any shape you want to.. Just sayin..
Aw darn it! Now that you pointed it out, it looks funny to me too! That's actually a good idea, however the internals stick out into the bubble far enough for me to worry. I already ruined on LED getting the wire leads to bend just right (first try they just snapped off). The best solution might be to file down the dome just enough so it better resembles a lens, then fill in around the rest of the extrusion with putty or some workable material, essentially extending the light box forward. That way you get better look with out a chance of ruining the LED. Did you ever pick that tanker up and give it a go? I just noticed you're in the Bay Area. If you never got around picking up the tanker I wonder if it's still at the hobby shop. :clap:
Impressive! but one big mistake. Huge! - you should _never_ have told anyone about the resistor. Tisk Tisk. Love it. thanks for sharing.!
The resister wouldn't be a problem for me, because like he did, that can be explained about some sort of air tank or some other untilitary function. That was a good idea that I wouldn't have thought op. I tend to think out of the box allot with modeling, but that one, I hadn't. Sorry I ruined your light, lol... But, it is an easy fix. You can grind it down as far as you are comfortable with, and just paint more of it black to extend the light box. I dont think I would worry about puddying it to make it all square, because it could be explained as a bezel around the lens or something as is.
Mark, I dropped electrical pickups on both rails from the front and rear bumpers. It's finicky, as too much pressure on the pickups decreases the pulling power. Still it was interesting to watch it go down the track, arcing with every wobble. I eventually scrapped it for a box car with pickups. Then a powered boxcar. I had a bunch of the early Atlas FA-1s, which ran at the same speed on DC, and had a huge motor but no weight. That was back in the film days, so I didn't document it. I sent a query to Model Railroader about improving pickup with these little beasties, and was told "don't bother."
To clarify, these two extra pick-ups are strictly to improve performance from this cheap DC power pack I have. In this video, she's running on DCC, (decoder hidden in first car) and is getting power only from axle 1 and 3. (Pay no attention to the forward lunging, that was an issue with the wheelbase not pick-ups, and as seen in the most recent video, has been corrected.) Perhaps I should write this up as an article for MR.
