Absolute Nightmare of a Steam Locomotive - Will it Run?

well folks in today's video we're gonna be working on another one of the British locomotives I picked up in a lot a few months ago this is a 442 Atlantic locomotive and out of all the locomotives in that lot this one's probably one of the worst ones I actually believe it was never run I suspect it was a mantelpiece because if you look at these cosmetic details they're actually pretty good somebody clearly put some effort into it however in terms of making a running locomotive it's terrible you can see that there's paint all over the wheels there's actually paint on the motor uh it's the drivers are all just bent completely out of shape the front is bent in so I think that somebody must have bought this thing as a kit or made it themselves just as some sort of a decoration but never actually had the intention of using it so we have an engine which may be sap 40 years without riding the rails once in that entire time so I figured today we're gonna try to get it going again when we tested this thing the motor actually moved slightly but it's far from being around So today we're going to see if we can take this whole thing apart correct a lot of the damage which has been done to it and uh if we're lucky we might be able to get this thing going I don't really know what's gonna happen but I figure figure why not give it a chance now before we go working on this thing I just want to quickly show you all what it's currently doing it did move ever so slightly last time but it is far from being a runner and that's really not surprising with paint on the wheels so we'll put some power in the track and um well there's some smoke actually uh coming out to the motor and I'm not sure if you saw but it actually did turn a little bit so we know that power is capable of getting to the motor the question is whether or not we can free this whole thing up well enough to actually run let's bring it back over to the workbench so we're now going to attempt to disassemble this thing I'm not really sure where to start to be honest with all of you you know usually you'd find a screw up here which would hold the whole body together but in this case I'm really not seeing that and since it's such a customized locomotive it's not inconceivable that maybe some things are glued together I don't really know but I guess we'll just start removing some screws and hopefully we'll find something that will allow us to pull the entire drive out of this locomotive I really would love to know the history on it I mean there's no way of finding it but you gotta wonder if this actually was a working locomotive at some point just because I don't know why somebody building a kit would bother to put a motor into it and that doesn't really make a lot of sense anyways it looks like there should be a screw there but there's not so this side of the frame is actually already loose so I think we'll try disconnecting this and since it's connected to the rest of it hopefully it will all pop out I don't know if this is gonna work or not all right well managed to get that nut off oh that's interesting it feels like there's still something hanging on here I don't quite know what oh hey there we go okay I think all that paint was just preventing us from moving it no it's not the paint I just put all the uh little rivets right through this shell so it's being held in by that that's a very unique problem well here we are uh this appears to be some sort of a Hornby trying drive and uh you know remarkably the motor is not locked in place as I was saying earlier there is some paint right on the Armature there so I'm not sure how that's gonna affect things there's paint on the brushes I think we'll try to remove this just so that we can take it all apart because uh this is all gonna have to be uh serviced obviously foreign so I think the first thing we should do is try to get this motor working properly now it is turning over so that's a good sign but obviously there's way more to it that needs to work so we'll take this off and you can see that things are pretty messed up on the commutator and there we go using a fiberglass pencil to see if we can polish up that commutator I don't know how well it's going to uh turn out though but it might not be as bad as it looks it seems to be coming out quite well so far I'm really hoping that that's not a piece of the winding right there that could be trouble decent thank you all right well I guess at this point we'll try to find a power source and see if we can actually get this thing to turn over I'm gonna be kind of surprised if the Armature is still good but uh let's give it a chance all right everybody cross your fingers not good I can't give up oh so those were really not the results I was hoping for however a lot of people have been asking me to get a volt meter and I finally went and bought one now um apparently what you need to do is Select for uh continuity and if they have continuity it should mean that this is a good motor I don't know if this is the correct way to do a test but this is what I've been told so we'll try it out here hmm so there seems to be continuity on one of the coils but we're short on another it's weird though that motor was turning over when this engine was on the track and we didn't have high current draw so I'm still kind of skeptical that that's the case let's try cleaning those gaps out a little more so it's now a while later and I've concluded that unfortunately this Armature is bad I think that it was still turning over because it hadn't fully burnt up yet but something's gone wrong in the commutator so I don't think this motor is gonna work again now uh not all hope is lost I'm gonna try something which is pretty risky and that's a rewind I'm not very good at rewinding Motors but uh I figure we'll try to get this one going again because I don't have any more x04 Motors in stock right now so we'll take it apart and see if I can rebuild this thing I I don't have High Hopes but uh it's worth a shot all right so we'll disassemble the motor here um I believe this is the only thing holding it all together okay we're gonna somehow have to pull the worm gear here this certainly is not ideal but when you're dealing with something like this which you know the other option is just to throw it out you don't really have to worry if you mess it up more Days Later unfortunately I was not able to rewind the original motor as you saw the windings were actually connected from the bottom of the plates on the commutator I have no idea why they made it like that but I made trying to rewind that motor a lot more complicated and I also did more damage to it trying to remove this part right here but anyways there was actually a train show over the weekend and there was a guy selling a whole bunch of Hornby trying stuff and I was able to get my hands on another x04 motor so I just stuck the original worm gear onto this and I think it should be a good fit now so we'll try to put this back in this locomotive get everything back together and if we're lucky we might just be able to get this locomotive going again I'm still not optimistic about it but this has definitely given us a better chance I I can't believe I was able to find one of these I guess we'll start off by uh seeing if we can get this motor to fit in place I believe this was the original motor mount screw so we'll throw that in there oh yeah all right well that seems pretty good let's maybe try just putting a little bit of weight on it yeah that motor seems quite healthy so that's terrific things are now back in the right direction again so I think at this point what we'll do is we'll clean up the wheels try to get all this paint and junk off of them we'll clean up the drivers everything else and then we'll just try to reassemble everything well those wheels are looking a little bit better than they did before I figure I'll do all the other Wheel sets too just because I don't think that this paint could be doing any good at least for stability I don't know if this actually does pick up power or not but uh either way I will clean them up foreign well that's good it doesn't seem to be binding so uh I guess at this point we can just put the rest of it back together foreign so as you can see the front of the locomotive is quite severely bent right here and you can see it's even cracked this could be zinc pest I don't really know what but uh I'm gonna try to bend it back into place it might just snap off but we'll try it anyway here that's actually straightened out quite well maybe somebody just dropped it on this corner that would kind of explain a lot anyways let's uh see if we can get the rest of this whole thing back together I've already gone ahead and trimmed all the little pieces of wire back so I think that they should go in a little bit easier than it did before yeah I'd say that that's a little bit better all right well I think we've got this thing officially back together I also added a nut right here just because before we did work on this thing there wasn't actually anything holding this in place other than those pins so why don't we take it over to the track and see if she'll run all right well moment of truth let's see if this thing can ride the rails after being a mantle piece for probably many decades look at the tendril uh set up here I really don't know how this is gonna go with those drivers but uh let's just give it some power here and huh let's turn it over not doing a great job at picking up power though oh trying to pull through oh yeah come on so I wouldn't exactly call those results good but I've been looking this thing over and I discovered something which I think makes a little more sense yep I uh over torqued these screws a little bit so basically the driving Wheels which pick up the power are not sitting on the track so it's just picking up power bites flanges so we're just gonna loosen uh both of these up a little bit and uh you can see right now the locomotive is actually putting its weight on the driving wheels so I'll grease and oil everything up a little bit here we'll take it back over and I think our results will be a little bit better this time all right let's take it back over to the track all right well hopefully that will have sorted out all the bugs a little bit of a funny problem but uh anyway let's give it some power oh yeah that's way better well look at her go flanges are getting a little caught up but I think we've got a runner yeah okay flanges are definitely too big for uh all my switches yeah okay well that is uh absolutely awesome let's see if we got reverse reversing no problem I think what I really need to do is just get this thing set up on some Hornby trying track like we did with the Davy Crockett I'll just quickly went ahead and set up my circle of Hornby trying track and I think that this is going to work a lot better with this locomotive because this is basically what this would have been run on when it left the factory in the 50s or 60s it's probably about the equivalent to code 100 if there is such a thing but that's really what these older Hornby locomotives are suited for I've also modified the tender I added on a wire tie coupler very high quality so we'll get that on there we'll see if this runs a little better than it did on my layout yeah no problems seems to be pretty smooth I mean there's a little bit of wobble but uh this really is not that bad [Applause] [Applause] well folks I think that that's going to be it for today's video I hope you all enjoyed I'm thoroughly impressed with this thing you know at the beginning of this episode I wasn't even sure if this thing would ever run again this was definitely some sort of a decoration and here it is riding the rails for the first time in probably many years anyways with that I just want to thank you all so much for watching [Applause] oh shoot I lost the wheel

Channel: SMT Mainline

Views: 62,765

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Id: Z8Tx6mptKaY

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 30 2023