I've always had a hankering to add a brass locomotive to my fleet. Before the age of injection molded plastics, most model railroading locomotives and rolling stock were not much more than toy approximations, and prototype comparisons were pretty sad. Today's models are really, really nicely detailed and run very well - but they are not inexpensive.
One way to get more prototypical was the use of brass, and the Japanese got very good at creating some really good models in the 1960's and 1970's. There are still some great brass models out there, but their pricetags are often really hefty.
I ran into two auctions on ebay for 2 brass "RS3" Erie Lackawanna locomotives, and the starting bids were something like $20 each plus shipping. I figured, what the heck? Put a bid in, and while I didn't win one for $20, I don't think it went for more than $50 and it was on my way.
Pretty, ain't she? I really liked the ditch lights on the corners and the railings were 100 times better than just about anything else made in the 1970's
So, I started doing some research. KMT was the builder, a Japanese company that specialized in Alcos in brass. While people praised their nice work on the chassis and things like railings, they lamented the noisy motors and gear sets. That got me thinking - since I was going to make this thing DCC by installing a decoder, why didn't I think about re-motoring this beast?
There was an Athearn can motor on ebay at the same time that went for less than $15. Felt that was a pretty good deal for an exploratory. All it included were a couple of output knuckles from each of the flywheels.
When I got the locomotive in the mail, I disassembled the beast and started thinking about space and interface to the trucks. The Japanese motor was attached to the gear towers through a series of universal joints that were pinned in three places - they slipped together to form the load delivery from the motor. The final interface was another universal joint that slipped over a 0.093" diameter steel shaft.
Hmmm.... how could I find a replacment shaft from the can motor flywheels to that shaft on the gear towers? I seemed to remember that AHM locomotives typically had some decent plastic shafts that might work with the Athearn can motor. Bought an AHM RS2 on ebay - the seller advertised it as "doesn't run well at all". Parts beast, but that's exactly what I wanted. Here it is with the hood removed:
And here's the proposed driveline - Athearn motor and flywheels, shafts from the AHM locomotive, knuckles from the AHM locomotive drilled out and pushed onto the shafts of the gear towers of the original KMT:
I had to do some cutting of the drop in motor support to get the can motor and flywheels to fit, and I also had to drill out the AHM knuckles to get them onto the KMT shafts. Mounted a decoder and tried it out. Ran for about a minute before .... pffftt. Nothin'. I'd cut the green wire on the wiring harness short since it wasn't used. However, that doesn't mean that it can't hit the chassis or motor brush contact,. and I think that shorted out the decoder.
It was actually a blessing in disguise. I wasn't exactly enamored of the drivetrain, the output from the flywheels had a marked angle downward into the knuckles on the gear towers and I was getting some rubbing between the flywheels and the chassis. Tore humpty dumpty apart, mounted the motor bracket under the chassis, added some standoff between the bracket and the motor and drilled out the bracked in four places to allow me to put screws up into the motor mount. It's now much more secure than wrapping the motor in electrical tape. I'm currently waiting on a replacement decoder to test out everything.
I'm planning on weathering the whole beast and maybe adding some brackets around the ditch lights as in the prototype EL unit, note the flat metal back of each light and the rounded bracket that supports it:
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