OK, I'm venturing from N scale into the land of the giants here for a short bit, and I don't know how some things are built in HO.
I bought a Bachmann "Sound Value" 4-4-0 in Royal Blue paint to run on my club's layout, and I want to put a keep alive on it, somehow. First issue is getting the tender detached from the locomotive. It appears that there is a white plug on the locomotive end of 6 wires coming out of the tender (which is the opposite end from what I usually see in N scale). Am I correct that plug can simply be pulled out for disassembly and reinserted during reassembly without problems damaging any pins?
And, on the tender, all I see on the underside is two small screws in the front corners, plus the truck mounting gizmos, which I also don't understand. Can I lift the shell off the tender just by taking out those two screws, or do I need to get the trucks off, too?
If so, how do the tender trucks come off? The drawing makes it look like they are held in by plastic tabs on their tops, and the pickup strips are held on by plastic plates that also seem to have plastic tabs. They look like they are supposed to be removed after the shell is removed so that those tabs inside the tender can be squeezed together to release the trucks. Because they contain the electric pickups, I don't want to be pulling on them without knowing how they are really intended to be removed.
Before posting, I did look at the drawings that come with the loco, but those don't even show that plug (or any of the wiring), and also don't show if there is some sort of hook on the tender frame to hold the back of the shell down. I did search here and also on the Bachmann forum, which has a lot of posts that have never been answered. So, I am hoping for better results here. It's the most helpful place I know.