My hopes of producing this in N scale took a serious hit today, as the N Scale LL 2-8-4 Berkshire I recently acquired will not run on 9 3/4" radius curves without derailing the forward pair of drivers. I have tried everything I can think of, and it still derails.
Try eleven inch radius curves or even wider curves. You aren't the only one who has tried to get away with tight radius curves. Push those curves out and you won't believe the difference it makes.
Funny thing, but that sounded just like me umpteen years ago. Well anyway, that's the best advice I can give you.
Here is an idea. Remove the flange from one of the middle driver sets to make a blind driver. That's how the manufacturers make the steamers run on smaller radius, even the real railroads did it.
After looking at this some more, removing the flange would not help. Here's why: the wires that I had for the motor and pickup for each frame half on the locomotive were touching the sides of the hole I made in the tender for the wires to pass, thereby lifting up the front of the locomotive. I need to make the hole bigger, then maybe it won't derail. With that said, I might see if I can find ways to pack on more weight on the front. Here are some ideas. If I take apart the front plastic smokebox (where the light is), there is the lightboard inside there and some empty space around it inside the shell. I could pack in some small BB-type weight. It would add some small amount of weight, or I could use some type of putty, like tungsten putty. This might make it difficult to remove the boiler shell, but I don't think I'd need to remove the shell if I wired up the lights and ran wires to the tender for DCC. I could also find replace some of the plastic parts on the pilot with equivalent-sized metal parts. I'd have to do research on this though. I could then cut up a metal smokebox front, like from a spare 4-8-2 Heavy Mountain or 4-6-2 that I have, and replace the plastic piece with a metal piece. One other option is to pack on a few square pieces of weight on the pilot. Yes, this would be obvious, but at this point, I need as much weight as possible. This Berkshire is back heavy, and if I pull more than two passenger cars, it's going to derail and frustrate me again.
The best solution I've seen to the weight issue is to cut off the front of the boiler frame (where it narrows for the smokebox) and replace it with a piece of solid Tungsten. I saw photos of this somewhere, but now I forget where. Of course, doing this requires complete disassembly of the loco, including removing the drivers, and then reassembling and quartering, which is just too much work for me. It is possible, however, to wrap some thin lead sheet around the front of the boiler frame to add a bit of weight. But don't forget to insulate the frame with kapton tape before you do anything, or you'll get a short - even with tungsten putty (ask me how I know this) - and tungsten putty gets a bit messy, so I'd probably opt for pure lead sheet. My Berks will pull 30-car trains with each car weighted to 1 oz. or better without lifting the front drivers, but my minimum radius is 16". No question that the model needs more front weight (or less rear weight) to balance it better. John C.
I would stay with Tungsten putty. The advantages are that it is moldable and can be shaped and fitted almost anywhere including inserting and packing in a hollow smoke stack. It does have some conductivity though so be careful to keep from bridging the split frame. Way back when Detail Associates made some cast pilots for steam along with a bunch of other stuff. The question is would the type shown below be appropriate for the Berkshire? Also they are a bit of a bear to try and fit a working coupler to.
I think I'll first try a metal smokebox front. If the drivers still derail, I'll open the front smokebox near the light and pack little bits of tungsten in there.
If you figure they might they are yours. I have have built and modified all the steam I am going to do. The top beam is in N scale feet 10 ft. The tube pilot and the side braces are 8.5 ft. and about 3 ft. high.
Success! I was finally able to get it to run around my small layout on 9 3/4" radius curves! I added weight inside the notch on the frame above the second pair of drivers, and added even more weight inside the sand dome inside the shell over the third drivers. This was all even without the shell and pilot. I'm going to add some more weight on the pilot. Maybe I can take you up on your offer John and cut apart some of the plastic pilot and add part of the metal pilot. That would add even more weight. Now I'm debating whether or not to sell it at all.
I've decided to keep this bad boy. I bought Polar Express decals and put them on the engine. and tender. Now I just have to find some heavyweight passenger cars.
OK, so my son owns the "Art of the Polar Express" book, from the movie. After looking at a couple of the pages with pictures of the passenger cars, the passenger cars have four wheel trucks, and not six. Can anyone confirm this from scenes from the movie?
The Lionel Polar Express has 4 wheel trucks and at least one scene from a movie clip on YouTube shows six wheel trucks. Plus they are heavyweights and 6 wheel would be the norm for them. Also the HO version has 6 wheel trucks.
So I noticed a couple of things watching the movie. 1. There is no "1225" as the engine number anywhere on the engine. Not the front number boards, not the sides of the rear of the locomotive, not the rear of the tender. 2. The lettering to the "Polar Express" on the side of the tender is white, not yellow. 3. The lettering to the "Polar Express" on each of the cars seems to be gold, or at least a dingy yellow. 4. The cars in the movie may represent heavy weight passenger cars, but they don't have six wheel trucks. They have four wheel trucks.
I have found that the N scale Bachmann 60'-65' passenger cars come very close to matching what is in the movie. Unfortunately, they're not very detailed, and I will need to add benches to the interiors, which is going to be a time-consuming chore. http://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Gau...844668?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item4d1f31e23c
A couple of other things. 1. The box behind the bell on the front of the engine that shows up on the Life Like Berkshire does not show up in the movie. I removed mine. 2. The front numberboards the the left and right of the bell are not there in the movie. I removed mine. 3. After I install the ESU sound decoder, I plan on adding firebox flicker and a light in the cab.
So I bought two more Bachmann passenger cars at the National N Scale Convention. My Berkshire could not pull three of them (one has track pickups for lights inside the car) without stalling. That's pathetic. Tonight, I'm going to attempt to put on traction tires from a Kato GG1. We'll see if that helps. The nose is lifting off the tracks. If I add two more passenger cars like in the Polar Express movie, the Berkshire will for sure just sit there and stall.
