The Return of the Shifter

The time has come, at long last, to finish the Mantua Shifter.  I began rebuilding this little metal monster in 2002 or thereabouts and have tinkered with it occasionally over the years.  Why has it taken me this long?  I have some thoughts about that and will share them in an upcoming post once they've had time to mellow and mature.  Suffice it to say I'm committing to completing this project NOW before beginning any other model railroad project.

 

Obligatory un-boxing shot.  Former notes, parts packaging and bits.

The first step was assessing the state of things and determining an order of operations.  The tender is completely detailed at this point unless I decide to add any other little bits, minus the coal, of course.  The locomotive still needs some piping beneath the cab and backhead details added.  That's the easy bit, however.  The real challenge is under the hood, er, deck plate.

I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I drilled holes in the locomotive and tender frames for routing the wiring.  The two holes - one on each side - were only large enough for one wire each.  To wire the headlight and motor will require four wires, and if I want any power from the loco to get back to the decoder in the tender that'll take two more.  (I say IF, because I might be able to get by with only the tender trucks for pickup and a keep-alive circuit on the decoder, but that's still to be determined).

So the first order of business was enlarging those holes.  Here's the result after a few minutes with a Dremel, a sharp drill bit and some cutting oil:

The front tender truck has been pushed back in order to enlarge the holes behind the white strips.

These holes will sit between the firebox sides and the motor.  Just enough room...I hope.

The wires pass beneath the deck plate through these two holes, beneath the brake cylinders.

 
The metal debris has been cleaned from the bench and I've begun setting up for the next step, determining the resistance for the front and tender lights.  After that I'll begin cutting wire and soldering to connectors; not my favorite task, but essential.

 

Solid State

 

An unassuming gray box holds the key to worry free motor tool excellence.

This has to be one of the best investments I've made in my hobby tool set. The Dremel Solid State Motor Speed Control lets me dial the motor tool speed down to a near crawl.  I've shattered countless cutoff discs and melted too much plastic with the high rpm built-in speed control Dremel tools.  This vintage beauty combined with an old Weller motor tool lets me use a spinning grinding and cutting tool the way I always imagined - with careful precision - to do fine work.

Note: this variable speed control was made for single-speed, on/off motor tools only.  Fortunately they, like the speed control, can be found readily online.  Not sure where I picked up this Weller but I'm glad it survived the latest round of tool purging.  I found the speed control box on eBay in its original packaging, with spare fuses, for under $30.  Of course the low speed operation doesn't have much torque, but for grinding and shaping soft material this is definitely the way to go.