Monday, December 06, 2010

Pick up line

At the monthly support group meeting I had a chat with teach about putting some more pickups on some of his S scale steam locos. Several of his locos have the archaic 'one side of loco, other side of tender' system, which I think was invented as a medieval form of torture.

So yesterday I sat down with the first victim, an Online J. A first examination revealed a split frame mech, which was a pleasant surprise pick up wise. However since I was there 'we' decided to fit some more pickups to the tender anyway.
The first step was to solder some phosphor bronze spring wire to some thin PCB strips (well OK, sleepers). I then through a series of origami moves managed to fit the damn things and get them to work (well, rub without seizing the wheels up). Unfortunately we didn't have any thin flexible wire on hand (it was at home) so a full test was out of the question.

I should have got a photo....

One thing I did notice was just how much space there is on an S scale model to fit these sort of things. They are absolutely huge. I'm now looking forward to have a crack at some of the other locos.

3 comments:

sxytrain said...

Ohhhhhh! Is this an S scale blog posting on the nz120 site?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, its a takeover. Teach

Motorised Dandruff said...

Quiet in the cheaps seats or someones not getting their flexible wire......