Hi Bob,
I had to have North West Short Line make an idler gear for my 2 RS-2's several
years ago - don't remember the details now, but the gear had cracked. It cost
$95; $75 for the tooling setup and $5 each for 4 gears (I bought 3 extras). I
dealt with Raoul Martin at NWSL. They machined the gears out of delrin which
would outlast the original molded plastic ones. NWSL had the gears in stock
(after making mine), or did at the time (1999).
Roger Nulton
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Werre
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 12:20 PM
Subject: {S-Scale List} Re: Alco model's Alcos
Friends,
I don't know how many of you folks have some of the original Alco
Models models of Alcos--(trying saying that 3 times!), but as several
have found out, there is trouble in River City. When those units
arrived we were in Heaven, finally a brass diesel that wasn't a crude
kit! However, one of our local members, Bill Green who had two
different styles painted for the ATSF noticed problems several years
ago. He noticed the truck/gearbox castings were starting to distort
eventually jamming the whole mechanism.
I had been quite pleased with mine and not seeing such a problem.
I remotored both of mine with a larger can motor with flywheel and the
performance improved. The last time I lubed the unit, I had a problem
with a mounting lug that holds the brass truck side frames to the
gearbox--part of it broke off. A washer and a little longer screw put
the unit back on the rails till now.
In a recent conversation and visits with Jack Troxell, who owns
three units, confirmed that none of his worked anymore. I went and
tore into my a RS-3 that was running a little rough. We have confirmed
that all the zamac gearboxes are swelling around the drive axles.
Additionally, Jack and I have both lost several mounting lugs
completely. Now Jack, who owns a milling machine, lathe and all the
knowledge to fix this sort of thing is dealing with his units. I made a
new mounting lug to get the side frames back in position and a few
passes with a rat-tail file opened the axle holes. I hopefully, will
check out my second unit (one of my favorites, a Milwaukee RSD-5)
shortly. It seems readily apparent that these all will sidelined to the
scrap line as the metal continues to distort, swell and eventually crumble.
This brings about a question we might want to consider. Would it
be productive to try and have new drive units made for these? Or has
somebody solved this problem by using a Railmaster, SHS or AM drive and
just mated them to the body shell!
Bob Werre
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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