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Consolidaton tender trucks

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rsmproductions

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
 Greetings Everyone,
 
It feels like I have been away from the hobby forever, but it's only been since last fall.  After getting the railroad cleaned up after a mild winter and dusting off the train and cars from their home in the garage I was excited to get everything on the tracks for a late spring debut.  My Bachmann Consolidation made it around the first major curve near the fountain and came to a dead stop and derailed.  I thought it must have been a few stray dead redwood tree needles but quickly discovered that the rear truck of tender had come apart. One plastic side had completely snapped off.  I was devistated.  With some guests arriving at any moment for a get together I decided to try some super glue.  It worked!!  I was able run the train for the night. 
 
I obviously need to replace the truck and wonder if I should order the part from Bachmann or should I go with another style perhaps of the metalic type.  Has anyone had this experience that could offer a suggestion?  I have an RC and battery assembly in the tender making it much heavier and am wondering if this extra weight migh have contributed to the piece breaking.
 
Thanks for your help!
 
Richard
 
#4 ·
The Connie trucks have been discussed a lot on the forum. I replaced mine with trucks from an Accucraft C21 tender and had Phil Dippel (Phil's Narrow Gauge) rework them with ball-bearings. They are great! You can try to rebuild the stock Bachmann trucks, but you might be putting quite a bit of work into trucks that are just not worth the time. Good luck with the fix.
 
#5 ·
Dave Goodson has posted a fix for these several times in response to various inquries... if you can find an effective way to search the archives, I'm sure it'll come up. Basically, it involves using glue, and longer screws ... the supplied screws are quite short, and don't have a lot of bite between the center pieces and the sideframes. Once broken, some can be salvaged, and some cannot. You may have better luck re-trucking the tender.

I have two, and so far both have held up.... fingers crossed.

Matthew (OV)

PS. If you do get some from Bachmann by some chance, make sure to do the modification before the new set breaks... it's a congenital problem!
 
#6 ·
The problem with the Consoildation trucks is that the screw that holds the sideframes on isn't long enough to extend into the "meat" of the sideframe, so the round bit that holds things in place has a tendency to snap off. The Consolidation sideframe has about 3/16" of extra material, making the truck about 3/8" wider than it needs to be. My guess is that since the prototype for this loco was 30" gauge, Baldwin (or someone) used a stock 36" gauge truck, with a narrowed wheelset, so the wheels sat inboard of the trucks a bit. (The K-37 tenders are like this, too, only using a standard gauge truck with 36" gauge wheelsets.) Bachmann likely modeled this, and instead of just expanding the wheelsets back out to 36" inches on a 36" gauged truck, expanded the width of the truck to roughly 42". This is just a guess, but it makes sense.

The simplest solution as Matt suggests is to replace the screw that holds the sideframe onto the bolster with a longer screw, so that the screw hits the larger squarish part of the bolster, not just that little stubby plastic tube. You may have to file off a bit of the little plastic extenders that slide into the bolster to stabilize the truck against the tender frame, because I think the bottom edge of that sits just about centered with the screw hole. (To get to this screw, gently pry off the leaf spring casting.) To fix the truck as it most likely exists now (assuming it broke similarly to the one in my scrap box), first remove the screw from the broken side of the sideframe to get separate the plastic tubular boss from the sideframe. Glue this back in place on the truck with a bit of solvent cement. Bachmann's plastic tends to be very responsive to solvent cements, so you shouldn't have to worry about it being a weak joint. Once dry, reassemble the truck with longer screws, replace the leaf spring castings, and reattach the trucks to the tender.

The alternative solution is to narrow the truck frame by cutting off the excess distance between the bolster and the side frame. I keep promising to take photos of that process, but it will probably have to wait until after the convention. Too much other stuff to do--stuff that realistically I should be doing now instead of typing this. The reality of narrowing the truck, however, is that the narrowed truck isn't really any stronger than what you'd get by using a longer screw, just that the sideframes are closer together and you can use the same screw. Aesthetically, I think it makes a good bit of difference, but operationally, it doesn't matter one bit.

Later,

K
 
#7 ·
In January 2008, I posted a series of pictures where I used Accucraft caboose trucks as replacements for my broken Bachmann tender trucks. At the time, they broke, Bachmann didn't have any replacements and TOC hadn't posted his fix. The Accucraft C-21 tender trucks didn't work because they raised the tender up too high. It would have required major surgery on either the trucks or the tender for them to work correctly.




http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/14/tpage/1/view/topic/postid/7950/Default.aspx#7950


Chuck
 
#9 ·
Richard,

I was remiss in NOT mentioning that I did have to rework the bottom of the tender and made a NEW set of bolsters for the tender. I didn't want to rework the trucks. Thank you Chuck for reminding me.
 
#11 ·
I just fixed one of these ..... got the truck from bachmann


this is what they e-mailed me


Hello, we sell the trucks for $35.00 each (complete) s/h is $5.00 for one truck and $7.50 for two trucks. Thanks, Bridget



and it was true
 
#12 ·
Here is TOC's fix.........
There is the occasioanl bad batch, but this was a bad design (or carry-through).
If you pull the spring pack, and pull the screw, see where the end of the screw is when installed.
It is ONLY in the boss, does NOT extend into the bolster.
This puts all the stress at the joint line, and it will break (rough handling, rough shipment, anything can fracture it).
It does NOT need to be replaced.
It's dirt simple to fix.
Find 4 screws and washers (or screws with wide heads), that are long enough to extend into the bolster fully.
Glue the boss back on, (Weld-On #16) when dry, drill out the hole into the bolster, then re-assemble with the long screws (you might want to dry-fit first without the sideframe to "tap" the hole).
It won't break there again.
TOC
 
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Dean Whipple
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