Received My GHB L1 From Factory Direct Trains

[kornellred]

I unwrapped it and put it immediately on my Unitrack loop, which fills the perimeter of a hollow core door.  No turnouts.  No crossings.

It operates smoothly and quietly around the loop both forwards and backwards.  No cogging, no waddling. Quite gratifying, to me at least.

Parked with drivers in the rods-down position, all of the running gear clears the top of the rails.  Only one axle is geared, with power delivered to the other three driver axles via the rods.  The water scoop on the tender is visibly and obviously below the top of the rails.  The gear cover on the driven axle appears to match the diameter of the driver minus the flange depth.  The screw affixing the front truck to the chassis may stick down a wee bit too far.  The non-geared driver axles appear to be metallic all the way across the width.  There is no way that I am going to attempt to disassemble or modify this unit until more experienced members of the Railwire make their investigations.

It is heavy, as advertised.  It has constant-intensity "golden-white" LEDs in the headlight and the tender back-up light which currently agree with the direction of the locomotive.  There are no traction tires.  The overall appearance of this locomotive is excellent.

[Lemosteam]

Here are some early shots of mine.  I use a drill press for press operations, shaft out, shaft in.  The interference fit is light, and once broken, re installation is a little easier.  Pilot, trailing and tender trucks went fast, I have not tried the driver.  Chris Broughton tells me that the eccentric crank is removable with a flat blade screwdriver. The remainder are hex head screws.

By the way, the loco made a full trip around the Lavis Junction (code 80) with no issues before I started re-gauging.



The tender axles are removed by removing one screw and pulling off the sideframe.  I don't recommend trying to remove the whole truck first.



Here are some beauty shots:

[peteski]

John,
from the arrangement of the wheel set in photos I assume that the gauge is too tight. Is that correct?  By how much?
Funny, I also use an old box-cutter (hardened-steel) blade for the same purpose you do. 

What strikes my in the beauty shots are the *GIANT* rivets on the cylinders. Like something I would expect from and early Bachmann model.  The cross-head casting is also a bit rough looking. Rest of the model looks like a brass model should - very good.

[Scott Lupia]

My L-1 lands more in the fixer-upper category. The motor was slipping and found that the gear tower cover was allowing the idler gear to move. That was the first item I fixed. Now that the motor is not slipping I have to address the fact that the tender axles are all locked. The wipers on the top of the wheels are so stiff that they prevent them from rolling. I noticed this when the engine was sitting there doing a burnout!  The engine can't pull its own tender!  So the trucks are apart and I am building a new system of wipers for the tender. Also since all this fiddling is going on most of the wires are detaching themselves from their soldered to locations. I am having fun tinkering mostly because I see what this engines potential is and the price was right. I haven't even gotten to the regearing of the wheels yet!

The Bachmann K4 has nicer looking rivets!

[towl1996]

It operates smoothly and quietly around the loop both forwards and backwards.  No cogging, no waddling. Quite gratifying, to me at least.

Parked with drivers in the rods-down position, all of the running gear clears the top of the rails. 

Well, this is positive. And based upon what others have said and are doing, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on one. Fingers crossed.

[Scott Lupia]

Had some fun with my misfit L-1 today.  Gauged all of the wheels with my NWSL gear puller.  Found the source of my locomotive slippage issue.  Driver #1 and #4 were about .003" lower than driver #2 and #3.  It wasn't much bit it was enough to keep the drivers in the air and not pulling.  After a little work all 4 paws are on the ground now and the engine pulls much better.  There are included traction tires but I haven't decided if I want to go that route yet.  Now that the engine can pull its tender I am going to put it on the test loop for a few hours to break it in.  Won't be long before there are Lehigh and New England markings on that tender. 

Scott Lupia

[mmagliaro]

Had some fun with my misfit L-1 today.  Gauged all of the wheels with my NWSL gear puller.  Found the source of my locomotive slippage issue.  Driver #1 and #4 were about .003" lower than driver #2 and #3.  It wasn't much bit it was enough to keep the drivers in the air and not pulling.  After a little work all 4 paws are on the ground now and the engine pulls much better.  There are included traction tires but I haven't decided if I want to go that route yet.  Now that the engine can pull its tender I am going to put it on the test loop for a few hours to break it in.  Won't be long before there are Lehigh and New England markings on that tender. 

Scott Lupia

Scott, this is huge.
You were able to pull the crankpins, take out the driver axles, and widen the gauge using a regular NWSL puller?
That is excellent news.  That means fixing the gauge isn't the nightmare I feared it might be
(where the drivers are so tight they won't budge, even with a wheel puller).

[Scott Lupia]

The gear puller worked very well. I was able to turn the press with my fingers and had excellent control over the process. The press didn't even damage the paint on the axle!  The crank pin was s little unnerving. It is a press fit pin rather than a screw in pin. The pin came out with a bit of careful pressure and a lot of patience. Regauging the drivers was actually easy. Unfortunately, I was wrong about my model getting its footing back. At the slowest speed you can see the wheels slipping with every revolution. I am stumped so far. I checked the weight distribution and balance over the drivers, made sure the pilot and trailing trucks didn't push the drivers up off the rail, cleaned the wheel tread of oil... Etc. the engine shouldn't slip trying to pull its own tender.

Scott Lupia

[Chris333]

You can try putting it on a flat surface. Grab the spokes with tweezers and see if you can lift a wheel up. If so shim that one down till they are all flat.

Also you said it comes with a traction tire. Is this a whole nuther wheel or is there a slot for it in an existing wheel?

[Scott Lupia]

Chris, I have been checking the wheels for the problem you refer to. I think there are definitely problems with wheels not align good contact with the rail head. I did find that the engine runs a little better on atlas code 80 rail than it does on atlas code 55 rail. The traction tires are a joke. They are thin rubbery rings that you put on the wheel surface. No slot in the wheel. For fun I installed a pair on the #4 driver. The engine looked like it was going to wobble itself right off the rail. The tires don't spread evenly leaving thick and thin spots. I also did replace the LED headlights with an incandescent looking LED. The orange LEDs the engine comes with are irritating to look at.

Scott Lupia

[mmagliaro]

Well, there needs to be just a little float to each wheel so it can negotiate uneven track.
But no matter what, on a 4-axle locomotive, no matter how weirdly the drivers are balanced,
there has to be a minimum of 3 on the rails at any one moment.

And that should be able to pull the engine and its tender. 

If it can't, before you start shimming and messing with drivers,  I'd be looking at the sources of drag
in that tender.  It looks like it has wiper wires on the axles.  Is that right?  Ugh.
They may be too stiff.

[glakedylan]

not knowing, but wondering:
in so much as driver tires are provided that can be installed
as in so much that there is no groove in driver wheels for such to be installed into
might the vertical movement of drivers to compensate for diameter difference
with TTs installed...
thinking out loud but be glad for replies
unless this is simply irrelevant, as I can be at times

[kornellred]

The features list that comes with this locomotive says:  no traction tires.  And: sufficient locomotive weight to pull many n scale freight cars.  Those four translucent rubbery rings are flat - the thickness is the height.  What they are for is not apparent, but certainly not for use as traction tires.

[Chris333]

Funny all this tinkering just to get it running sounds like a regular brass locomotive, not a defective one.

[central.vermont]

Just a thought. Is it possible to disconnect the engine from the tender and run it with out it to see if all the drag is in the tender? I know the tender is part of the pickup but maybe some test leads can be fashioned just for this test.

Jon