GWR AEC railcar Ultrascale wheels revised pickups

All the chassis is finished and tested and proves to run smoothly at all speeds and over my entire track work, which is not the best laid in the world! I am now going on the re-spray the body shell after the festive season. 

GWR AEC railcar Ultrascale wheels.

Today I collected the wheel sets from Ultrascale, really nice they are nickel silver tyres on insulated centres. 

This does mean I have to make new pickups which in the grand scheme of things cannot be a bad thing. First the trailing bogie was stripped and the new wheels pressed onto the axles. 

A strip of vero board and two vero pins make up the base of the pickups

In the time honoured method a strip of phosphor bronze is soldered. The pins serve two purposes one to locate the board and two the transfer the current to the inside of the bogie.

Doh! School boy error placing the pickups on the underside did not leave enough clearance to negotiate the points without fouling. A revised design has been implemented and clears the pointwork.

GWR AEC railcar con’t

The motors arrive from Finland with a spare pinion, rather than glue the motor as suggested I opted to make a skeletal frame to mount on the existing flange where the brush gear was located. 

The large lump of bar has been replace with a shorter length of lead to allow room for the decoder and the DCC socket has been fitted ready for conversion.

 
The wiring soldered into the respective pins on the Vero board tested with a blank plug on DC, I also added an extra pick up to the trailing bogie time now it’s to insert the chip and program.

 It runs after a fashion but the Lima wheels do not like Peco code 75 pointwork! I have to wait for a few months for my Ultrascale products replacement wheel sets I hope that will stop the clatter over the track.

Buffer beams will be populated with hosed and hooks after the wheel conversion is done.