Peter,
All my tinplate cars have that sliding shoe for the electrocouplers. The
couplers would constantly fire when crossing my Atlas switches. I wound up
putting small pieces of double stick foam tape between the bottom of the truck
and the top of the shoe to retract the shoe from the rail. Works pretty well
except the tape isn't quite sticky enough and eventually the spring wins out
and the shoe drops back to its normal position. Just have to push it back up.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Condro <pcondro@xxxxxxxxx>
To: rc3r@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 19hwalker@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Mon, Sep 20, 2021 8:25 am
Subject: [rc3r] Update
1. REMINDER, this coming Saturday, October 25th, from 9-12, the storefront will
be open to run trains. Let me know if you are coming........I want to know if I
need to bring more than a dozen donuts.......
2. Since the distance between the 12x15 and 21x42 opened up a little.....the 4’
cord cover was too short. I bought a 6’ one and am stretching it out (see below)
3. This past Saturday, I was trying out the donated cinders ballast. This is
my 1st time using SuperWet. It is fantastic. I am a believer. The ballasting
game has changed! Cinders is the proposed color for the yard.
4. We have received some very good/good (condition) PostWar O27 passenger
cars. Unfortunately, they all have operable coil couplers and anytime they go
over a switch, they fire. I tried putting a little piece of black tape over the
contact. It works fine, but the friction on the slide shoe and the rail lifts
up the tape and they start firing again. Gary, anyone, do you have a solution?
I guess we can remove the connection to the pick up roller with disturbing the
wire to the illumination.......crazy glue would work to secure the tape, but I
didn’t want to permanently damage the pick up shoes. Jim Barrett has a
technique where he used a Dremel to file down the angle of the shoe, but I
didn’t want to attempt that without more research.
5. Member Paul Koza brought some books and placed them in the “FREE TO A GOOD
HOME” bin. One of the is: The Baltimore and Ohio in the Potomac Valley. I
borrowed it out of the box and read it this weekend. I will put it back in the
box. I am by no means a B&O fan, but I have lived in Cumberland for a short
period and in Baltimore for 4 years. It is an excellent book, minimal reading
but lots of well described pictures of the steam/diesel transition.
Marty McGuirk is also a knowledgeable railroader and good writer.
That’s all for now.
Peter
Sent from my iPad
