A while back I mentioned an AristoCraft (New One) 4-6-0 I'd considered to pull my Selley passenger train, when the day arrived to need it. Well, the Selley passenger cars are still in kit form, in their boxes, awaiting their turn on the workbench. But another reason emerged for needing this engine, and one that's more apropos.
While searching for that elusive (and now suddenly everywhere!) New One "Supply Car", I ended up with a whole train of New One cars, nearly ready-to-run. It's a long story, and might find its way onto this blog someday. For now, suffice it to say that I've got a five-car "Open Enders" (New One's name for its cars) passenger train with one of each type plus an extra coach.
That brings us back to the 4-6-0. The poor old gal had a broken tender truck, a broken drawbar spring, and two broken main rods. After some cogitation I figured I could repair that truck, ditto the spring, and begin hunting for replacement main rods - more on that in a moment. I managed to "weld" the truck back together with the same two-part metal epoxy I had used on the frame of the 2-8-0 kit-mingle. I bent a new spring for the drawbar and soldered it in place.
With those repairs the thing should have run, and it did, briefly. After cleaning the wheel treads and oiling the motor bearings the performance improved but not by much. So I turned to what any reasonably skilled modeler would have done back in the day; I bought pickup shoes from Tomar and installed one under the loco. I try to follow the troubleshooter's creed of "fix one thing at a time - then test - then repeat as necessary"*
With that solitary change and more wheel cleaning the thing now runs reasonably well. Well enough, in fact, to pull the New One cars around Pine Branch Park without much difficulty. Of course it still needs those main rods and I may have the solution. Finding original parts will be less likely than a close-enough replacement, so I selected a pair of rods from an MDC 4-4-2. As you can see from the photos they're pretty close. Crucially, they're longer and I can drill a new hole (hopefully) in the beam and make it work. Fingers crossed.
*I don't know if that really is a troubleshooter's creed, it just sounds like it could be. Please don't come after me, members of the troubleshooter's guild. If there is such an organization. I'm just guessing.
