The latest addition to the PE&A rolling stock roster is a Burlington Northern flatcar. Some assembly was required—the trucks were not attached to the car which is fine with me as I wanted to swap out the wheels and couplers so it would match my other cars. I've done this a few times before so now it only takes a few minutes.
In other PE&A news, I took advantage of a dry and partly sunny day to clean up the railroad right of way and test my recently converted locomotives outside. I filled up a 32 gallon container with yard waste from the train area alone, mostly dead scales from the redceder. I ran both locomotives simultaneously on the track first independently and then operating together as a consist. It is unlikely that I would operative these two locomotives together in a consist but I wanted to make sure it would work and I knew how to do it.
Next I wanted to do some load testing and see how many cars the locomotives could haul now, both independently and together as a consist. But I ran out of time so that will have to wait for another day.
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| Burlington Northern flatcar, BN 623250 |
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| The components are laid out and I'm ready to start. The provided trucks have hook-and-look couplers which I'll remove and replace with Kadee 909 truck-mounted couplers. I'm also replacing the provided plastic wheels with metal wheels. |
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| The first step is assembling the Kadee couplers. |
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| The next step is removing the existing couplers and then sawing off a small plastic tab from the bar which attaches to the coupler. Some coupler types use this support but it's in the way for Kadee couplers. |
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| With the tab removed, the Kadee coupler slides right on and is attached with a single screw from below. This picture shows the completed truck in the upright position with the new metal wheels in place. |
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| The trucks are then attached to the car body. |
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| And the last step is attaching the decorative pieces that came with the car. In this case it only came with four step ladders and a brake wheel. There were holes drilled for grab irons but none were provided, so I found a few extras I had on hand. |
In other PE&A news, I took advantage of a dry and partly sunny day to clean up the railroad right of way and test my recently converted locomotives outside. I filled up a 32 gallon container with yard waste from the train area alone, mostly dead scales from the redceder. I ran both locomotives simultaneously on the track first independently and then operating together as a consist. It is unlikely that I would operative these two locomotives together in a consist but I wanted to make sure it would work and I knew how to do it.
Next I wanted to do some load testing and see how many cars the locomotives could haul now, both independently and together as a consist. But I ran out of time so that will have to wait for another day.
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| A sunny day on the PE&A. As I don't have a second designated battery car yet, the UP battery is being hauled in a gondola. |
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