Project Vulcan Part 4

Some more work has been done on the engine unit chassis. The brake beams, brake blocks, wheel weights, injector drain pipes, pony truck, connecting rods, motor/gearbox and pickups have been fitted.  I decided it was a good time to test the chassis before moving on to fitting the cylinders and motion gear. After wiring up the motor to the pickups and bending the pickups to touch the back of the coupled wheels I put the chassis on the test track. That was when the fun started, the chassis shorted out badly. The first thing I checked was the brake blocks in case they were touching the wheels (most common cause of short circuits on brass steam loco chassis) but they seemed to have clearance. Next thing I checked was if the pickups were touching the brake beams behind the wheels, but that wasn't it either. After 2 hours trying to figure out the problem I decided to sleep on it. Next morning I decided to check one thing I had taken for granted, the tags that locate the pickups on the solder pads on the underside of the PCB keeper plate. The first method to test if this was the cause was to put a layer of clear tape over the holes on top of the plate, but the tags poked through them. So I decided the only way to fix the problem properly was to remove all the pickups, trim the tags and refit them. Time to put everything back together and test again. Sucess...sort of. The wheels were now turning but not smoothly. I decided to turn the motor around in the gearbox and try again, improved but still not nearly perfect. I'll have a short break from the chassis for a while while I get other projects finished then come back to getting it tuned to run sweetly.

So while a photo doesn't show a whole lot, in other ways it shows a great deal of progress in details that have been added since the last update:

Attention will now turn to getting the 3 FQX container flats painted and decalled.