DCC Loco Conversions - 49 - Airfix GMR Rebuilt Scot 1977

I have two of these, BR 46100 and LMS 6103, bought new decades ago!

These are tender drive locos, personally I dislike tender drives because :-

• They always seem to wobble, generally due to being fitted with traction tyres
• I prefer the motor and transmission noise to come from the loco
• When their wheels slip, eek, much better if the loco drivers slip as in real life.
• Tyres create dirt on the rails especially as they wear and age

Both have have splits in the tender drive wheels from hub to tread, which luckily is tolerable, as these mechanisms always seem to wobble on their tyres any way. The tyres bridge the crack in the wheel tread.

Also there are cracks on the loco centre drivers from axle centre to the crankpin, however this does not seem to cause any issues at this time.

The conversion itself is simple as the motor is plastic cased, wiring is minimal with only a capacitor providing rudimentary interference suppression.

Motor Wiring

Capacitor removed, wires from loco desoldered, tags cleaned up and plenty of space to fit a Hattons Mini-Harness decoder on the tenders ballast weight.

First attempt, attached wires from the decoder to the solder tags as below.




Test run on layout it did not run smoothly, so swapped the decoder for a RoS-6D.

However I then noticed that the tags are only gripped lightly by the brush holders and were able to rotate, bad.

So I then soldered the wires to the brush holders, this is possible if you use non-corrosive liquid flux as in my techniques articles because the soldering action is very fast and avoids damaging the plastic body of the motor.




Decoder fitted in position, red and black leads connected to loco wires, fully tested before sleeves shrunk, job done.






Summary

These two locos run well despite being tender drive and having some age related issues, (like me), the simple design made them easy to convert, just be wary of the solder tags on the motor being a loose fit.


Discussion always

Jim

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