Subject:
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Re: Hiawatha steam locomotive
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:41:28 GMT
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Viewed:
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13402 times
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In lugnet.trains, Benn Coifman wrote:
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In lugnet.trains, Cale Leiphart wrote:
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Thats great to hear. Your Hiawatha passenger train is quite nice and steam
engines look much better when running than wasting away in a train yard. I
know all to well how finicky LEGO steam can be. My
Pennsy Decapod is a
pretty solidly built engine but can be a real pain on uneven track due to
it’s long wheelbase. I’m interested in seeing your pilot truck solution.
Cale
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We’ll I finally was able to snap a few photos of the front truck fix for my
Hiawatha at last week’s
show. Before the fix the engine ran fine at home but would always derail at
shows. After some diagnostics, it became clear that with the three points of
contact, ridges in the rails would lift the front trucks off the tracks (the
tables are a little un-smooth).
Here’s a thumbnail of my solution retrofitted on to the older design,
The front truck is rigidly fixed in line with the track, but is allowed to drop
down as much as is needed to follow the uneven track and it still rotates to
follow curves. If I were designing this engine from scratch, I would have used
technic beams to build the hinge, but that will have to wait until the next
steam engine.
I had problems with the engine picking a switch just after a curve, so it isn’t
perfect, but the switch was sent to detention for causing trouble and everyone
was happy.
Before the show I also completed the repaint from redish brown to dark red (I
still need to get a photo of the bucket of brown).
Although it is hard to tell from the photos, it does look strikingly different
in person. Cosmetically, I changed the start of the stripe on the rear of the
tender so that it is now a half circle rather than rectangular (more
prototypical) and wrapped the red around the very front of the orange stripe on
the locomotive (not prototypical, but looks better than it did as long as I
remain unwilling to try to bring the orange all the way around the nose).
I also got tired of playing with the trainline to power the headlight from the
motors in the tender, so I stashed a battery box inside the boilder. Both days
of the show I forgot to turn of the headlight (Doh!).
On a semi related note, I got two better
shots of the GP20’s
too.
Benn
Hiawatha Full Gallery
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Hiawatha steam locomotive
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| (...) Very clever and simple design. The Train does look better with the dark red. And the GPs are nice too. It's sweet that you were able to work in a headlight. Didn't notice that before. I haven't messed with lighting too much. The 1x2 9v light (...) (17 years ago, 17-Feb-08, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Hiawatha steam locomotive
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| (...) Hi Cale (and Tony), thanks as well for the kind words. As background, the Hi has three sets of wheels, I chose to fix the pilot truck and the drivers to the boiler, using only one set of flanged drivers. Without reworking the whole mechanics, (...) (17 years ago, 24-Nov-07, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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