How I spent my New Year's weekend

FiatFan

Member
I have two of the MDC/Roundhouse Critters. They run very well (on DC) but occasionally stall on the frog of Atlas turnouts. I decided to double head them and semi-permanently couple and wire them together. Here's what I did.

First, I slightly enlarged the hole for the mounting tabs for the hood. A little patience and a pin vise in the drill press was all it took.

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Then I routed wires from one engine to the other.

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Next step was to remove the lead from one LED on each engine so that only one headlight would light depending on the direction of travel.

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Then I fabricated a drawbar out of some scrap styrene to connect the two engines together.

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Put everything back together and they are in service with no stalling on the frogs.

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A couple of things I might change. First, I want to make the drawbar a little shorter. I think the gap between the two engines is too large. The other thing I might change is to use solid rather than stranded wire. I think it will be easier to route the wires inside the body.

All in all, an easy project which I can easily roll back if I every decide to build my own turnouts.

Tom
 

FiatFan

Member
Thank you. I just pulled 10 cars up a 2% grade on a 22" radius curve. It can probably do 11 or 12 factory weighted cars.

Tom
 
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