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Upgrading Electrical Pickup on My Steamers

I've mentioned a few times about upgrading the electrical pickup on my steamers.  Here is how I do it.


The first pic shows a truck with slider pick-up shoes.  This truck was harvested from a junker #293 steamer.  Otherwise, the sliders are available as repro items and if you have a truck with a post, or mount a post on a truck (I have done it, so it's possible), then you are in business.  Notice that I have also soldered a wire from the pick-up and taken it inside the tender to the other pick-up wires.  It probably is not needed, but I figure that everything I can do is a help.


This second pic shows diesel shoe boxes cemented in the truck.  To make an even more solid connection, I thinned the metal tabs down a little on the shoe boxes and drilled very small holes through the sheet-metal truck side frames.  Then I inserted the tabs through the holes and bent them over.  A dab of flat black paint makes them virtually invisible.  Next up will be to solder a wire from the shoe box to the inside of the tender.  Note that these diesel shoe boxes will not fit into the knuckle truck sintered side frames.

02/08/2011:  Just finishing up on the accessories, etc.  I installed a semaphore in case I want to run two trains.    I'm currently using two pressure track trips and it seems to be working reliably.  I figure that any vintage animation or illumination that I can add is a good thing to add interest - as long as it isn't too expensive.  I believe that I have that Semaphore located in a good position.  I think I will be able to stop a given train anywhere on the layout to do something and not have to worry about a collision.  I'll have to experiment with parking a train at various places to see what happens.  Hopefully, the other train will always get stuck at the Semaphore until I release the held train and it finds it's way to the Semaphore release trip.  I wired the Semaphore base post wire through an on/off switch so I can turn it off if I only want to run one train.  Anytime I wire up something to get activated with a track trip, I also wire it through an on/off switch so I can stop the madness whenever I want. lol