Life-Like/Walthers Y3 tender converted to electrical pick-up

[jmlaboda]

Well, after waiting a couple of years I finally found a Life-Like Mallet tender on eBay by itself and was fortunate enough to win it.  Now I need to figure out what can be done to provide electrical pick-up... has anyone done this?  Can you share what steps it will take to provide for this?  TIA

[peteski]

Not sure what you mean.  I have both, the initial run and the one with factory-installed QSI sound decoder and in both versions tender trucks pick up power.  If you want a better truck, you could try retrofitting the tender with Kato GS-4 trucks.

[jmlaboda]

Thanks Peteski!!!  Looked at the trucks once again under better light and saw the pick-ups.  Just hate I didn't see it the first time...

[peteski]

Thanks Peteski!!!  Looked at the trucks once again under better light and saw the pick-ups.  Just hate I didn't see it the first time...

No problem - the older I get, the more bright lights I install over my workbench! 

[brokemoto]

The first LL run of these was curious in that while the tender was live on all twelve wheels, it had no electrical connexion to the locomotive.  As I had purchased the locomotive for my then non-historic railroad, I put a B-mann whaleback behind it and used the LL to bash a looks-much-like a N&W E-3 from a TRIX K-4 (with the cab from the B-6.  At one point, some of the E-3s had a similar tender.  The twelve wheels live tender rendered a marked improvement to the TRIX chassis performance.

[peteski]

The first LL run of these was curious in that while the tender was live on all twelve wheels, it had no electrical connexion to the locomotive. 

Yes, that's true. The tender pickup was only used to power the rear headlight. A bit of an unconventional arrangement. I guess they didn't want to fuss with wires and connector between the tender and the loco.

[jmlaboda]

[quote[The tender pickup was only used to power the rear headlight.[/quote]

I noticed that on this one... no wires exposed or truncated.  Probably helped lead me the wrong way.  But this can be rectified, hopefully, when I go after the Bachmann Heavy URSA Mountain to go with it.  Have no clue how to do it yet but I believe I will find a way to get this took care of.

[Iain]

Speaking of, where can you get Gs4 tender trucks these days?  My NS F1 is held up on tender trucks.