This is the Republic Locomotive Works C-16 kit sent to me by John Engbers. I received the kit and went through the checklist included with it, and verified that all of the parts were present and accounted for. I filed them away in one of my kitboxes and sat down to digest the instructions.
The instructions recommed that you start with the tender and build it first or work on both the tender and the loco at the same time. I'm not one to argue(yeah,right), so I started with the tender. The instructions led off by explaining the assembly of the trucks. John had already completed this step, and had even installed the Marklin metal wheelsets. I decided to improve the look of the truck sideframes by opening up the casting for the "see through" effect. I removed the wheelsets, and drilled out the flash in the areas shown in this photo. Use a drill that is small enough to fit into the recessed area, but large enough to remove the most material. The next step is to carve out the remaining flash. I used a fresh no. 11 x-acto blade and cleaned them up. I sandblasted the truck sideframes from the backside of each to dispell of any remaining burrs. Speaking of burrs, the small raised flange that is under the trucks was pretty rough. This could cause the truck to bind when pivoting or even lean to one side when installed. I filed this area flat to help it swivel freely. Once filed and blasted, I taped the backsides of each truck to prevent these areas from being painted, that'd interfere with electrical pickup. I set them aside and went to work on the tender underframe.
The instructions for the underframe say to drill out the bolsters and install some 3/32 plastic tube and ream it for 00-80 screws. Later on in the instructions it talks about making paper washers to insulate the nuts put on the backside of the bolster screws and the chances for the the wheels to short on the underframe. I decided that I didn't like the method outlined in the instructions, so here's how I did it. John had already drilled out the bolsters for the 3/32 tube. I straightened them up and reamed them for 1/8 plastic tube(Evergreen part number 224). I also filed off one cast on bolster pad and then the other. I replaced these with a length of .015x.250 styrene(Evergreen 119). This should help to eliminate the possibility of the wheels shorting on the original cast on pad when the tender trucks swing in. This photo shows the new styrene bolster and the two 1/8" styrene tubes in the background. The bolsters are glued on with ACC and allowed to dry. Once dry, I installed the tubes and glued them in place with MEK. Don't worry about the amount of pin extending out of the floor, they'll get filed down in the future to allow the tender to sit at the right height. From the top of the tender floor, you can see that I had to drill the holes oversize to get the tubes centered in each bolster. Since this left a nasty gap, I filled it up with a little JB Weld(fix your cracked cyl. head, anyone?) to stiffen up the joint. This stuff has to dry overnight, so now's the time to remove the material from the coal bunker. This is done to remove excess material from the tender so as not to reduce the pulling power of the loco. John had drilled out most of it, so I cleaned out the rest using the dremel and a carbide cutter. Remove everything except for the lip that runs around three sides. This will hold up our removable coal load. When finished, it should look like this.
I painted the truck castings with grimy black, removed the tape from the backsides and inserted the Marklin metal wheelsets. I filed down the 1/8" tubes until they extended past the frame rails 1/32". The trucks were test fit using two 1-72 x 3/8" screws. The 1-72 screws will self tap into the 1/8" tube and is a tight enough fit to keep them from loosening. A 1-72 washer between the tender floor and the trucks will ease friction and provide the correct ride height. The bolster screws protrude through the tender floor and will attach to the pickup wires. These pickup wires are soldered to 1-72 washers and will be secured with a 1-72 nut on each bolster screw. The nuts will also act as a jamb nut to further retain the bolster screws. With the shell all hogged out, it was ready to attach to the tender floor. I drilled the tender floor in all four corners for 00-90 screws to attach the tender floor to the tender shell and added a Micro Trains 905 coupler. I also drilled two small holes in the tender floor directly behind the front of the tender shell. These holes are drilled to the same diameter as some wire I had from a micro-bulb and are visible in this photo. The tender pickup wires will be routed through these holes to the locomotive. I added the front tender steps as well as the rear ones at this stage. Remember to only glue them to the tender floor if you want the tender shell to be removable.
The next step is to prepaint the tender floor and prepare to assemble the rear truck and all it's electrical pickup junk to the tender floor. I used the 1-72 screws, flat washers and nuts to retain the truck to the frame and they fit together in this order. Be careful to install the wipers in the correct orientation, the pronounced round side should be facing the insulated wheels. This keeps the wipers farther away from the insulated wheel and helps to avoid any unwanted electical shorts. Start by scraping any paint from the area underneath the truck where the washer contacts the truck, lay a 1-72 washer down on the upside down truck, then, slide the wiper under the axle of one wheelsets, over the washer and under the axle of the other wheelset. It's a piece of cake to explain and a real b**** to do. Once done, it should look like this. Find your 1-72 screw, add a flat washer and the second wiper and stick this assembly through the truck. Next, slide another flat washer onto the screw so it ends up between the truck and the tender frame. Install this whole mess by screwing it into the 1/8" styrene tube in the tender frame. Snug it up and then back it off an eighth of a turn to allow the trucks to swivel freely. Add the elecrical pickups to the part of the screw that protrudes inside the tender and cap it off with a 1-72 nut. You can use a dot of ACC as a threadlocker to prevent this nut from coming loose. Now that you're really happy and have learned some new words, repeat the process for the front truck. Feed both the pickup wires through the holes in the front of the tender floor. You have to make sure one truck picks up current from the left rail and its wire is fed through the left hole and the other picks up from the right rail and is routed through the hole on the right, elementary to be sure, but I had to change one around.......
Now that the hardest part of the tender is finished, you can screw the shell to the tender floor and add the remaining details. I prepainted the front of the air tank and the area of the tender that it fits in with grimy black and ACC'd the air tank and water hatch castings in place. The straps had to be lightly filed on the airtank to allow it to fit between the coal bunker and the water hatch casting. Install the water hatch casting first and test fit and file the air tank until it drops into place. The bunker has alot of room to add a Lenz decoder for those of you that can't live without DCC. I'll just cover this area up with a removable coal load and let John handle any future DCC conversions. At this point, it's starting to look like a tender.
The tender is ready for airlines and grab irons at this point, I started with the airlines. These are bent from the .015 brass wire that is included in the kit. I drilled one hole in each end of the air tank near the top using a .016(#78) bit. I laid the tender on its side and started to fit the airlines to it, one bend at a time. I made the first bend 1/8" back from the end of the wire. Insert this end into the air tank and then mark the wire for the second bend and so on.... With the airline bent and laying in position, I marked and drilled two #80 holes on the tender side. Drill them all of the way through the tender side. These holes will accept the tiny .010 hooks that retain the airlines. I made these by wrapping the .010 wire around the .015 wire and then cutting to a length that is 1/16" longer than the tender side is thick. Dip these into a drop of ACC and insert them into the holes, pinning the airlines to the tender sides. I clamped them in place with hairpins while the ACC sets. Apply a drop of ACC to the part of the hook extending inside the tender, fold it flat against the inside of the tender. This prevents the airlines from bouncing off of the tender while it makes its way along your handlaid track. When finished it should look like this.
I'm not one to follow directions when I put anything together, but I do read them. In this case, the directions say to put the tender together first or work on both the tender and the loco at the same time. Since we need the loco to be close to finished to determine the length of the drawbar, I went ahead and started on the locomotive. This unit uses the Marklin 8896 as its starting point. I started by test running the unit that John had sent. It bound up hard, just kidding John, it ran like a gem. I stripped off the shell, motor, rear truck, and the red thing-a-ma-jig (technical term) that sticks through the frame. To fit the rather huge 8896 into the tiny C-16 boiler, it has to be hacked beyond recognition. The first cut to be made is to the top of the unit where the shell attaches. This has to be cut flat across the tops of the round plastic electrical pickup retainers. The rest of the cuts have to be made close to the drivers, so I removed the bottom cover, took a real deap breath, and pulled out the idler gears and all the drivers. After a couple of hours of wondering if that last move was a good one, I made the first cut using a slim cut off wheel in the dremel. Here's the close up. The next part to get the axe is the front pilot. It gets cut back to properly mount the front pilot casting. Now that I was comfortable hacking up someone else's two hundred dollar locomotive, I made the side cuts required. When you make these cuts, make sure you tape the electrical pickups tight against the loco sides with masking tape to prevent any mentally disturbing accidents with the dremel. This view shows the masking tape retainers, my scribe marks for these cuts and where I cut in relation to the scribed lines. I'll file it to the lines when I'm done with the rough cuts. With the two side cuts done, I cut the remaining rear of the chassis to length. I cut the slot for the C-16 cylinder casting, using the same thin dremel wheel. I filed it to size using the casting as a guide.
With the chassis almost finished, I wanted to test fit the boiler casting to the chassis before I filed anything to my scribed lines to be sure I didn't remove too much material. The boiler casting is a real nice piece, but is cast solid and you have to hog it out with something before it will fit over the 8896. I used a dremel and a carbide cutting bit to hog out the material using the sides of the boiler casting as a guide. This took a bit of care and alot of time. I figure my labor rate is now at about twelve cents an hour, but what the hell, it's fun. The casting, now a bit lighter, fit pretty well on the chassis for a first fit. This test fit gives you a pretty good idea of how much (or how little) room you have to mount the Sagami motor. The instructions show some cuts that need to be done where the front of the motor fits in. I used another larger carbide bit in the dremel to massage this area. I'm using a different mounting position of the Sagami than the one shown in the instructions. It'll be mounted a little flatter and a little farther in, and maybe even mounted with the wires to the front.
I've done a bit of struggling with the motor mounting issue, the pros of mounting the sagami with the wires to the front are the ease of routing and installing the wires, the clean lines of the motor with no wires glued to the side and a lot less headaches when it comes to replacing the motor should we ever burn it up. The cons are, well, the little nub on the other end of the motor that sticks out slightly. My conclusion was that I can live with the little nub, and that Sagami ran the damn wires through the wrong end of the motor. So here it is.......I milled the motor mounting pad in the manner outlined in the directions. Then, instead of drilling for the fancy motor mounting plate, I drilled a single .035 hole behind the existing plate retaining screw hole. This will serve to secure my motor sleeve. The motor mounting pad was cut to the contour of the mounting sleeve and also angled so the motor will sit up in the rear to engage the worm and worm gear and the hole was tapped 00-90. I picked some brass tube from the scrapbox which was just small enough to prevent the Sagami from being slipped into it, cut a 1/4" piece from one end, and fashioned it into this mounting sleeve. I cut the gap into the ring to allow it to expand when the motor is inserted, yet still grip it tightly. I drilled a .045 hole in the ring so I can secure it with a 00-90 screw. This hole had to be countersunk from the inside to prevent the screw head from pushing the motor up in the mount. With the mount screwed to the chassis, you can see the angle that the motor will sit at. Before I could mount the Sagami, I installed the worm on the rear end and cut off the extra shaft on that side. I left the shaft on the front, in case my method didn't work out and I had to go to plan B. Luckily (as if you had a doubt!), it all worked out and my motor sits somewhat flatter than the directions show, but due to the gear reduction setup in the 8896, it's not much farther forward. Remember that pesky screw head that came up earlier? Here's what it was doing. You can see the small gap between the motor mounting sleeve and the motor. The screw head was holding up the motor. I solved this problem by applying flux to the entire area and covering it with solder. This soldered the mount to both the screw and to the 8896. I filed off the excess solder from the frame sides as well as the inside of the motor sleeve. Problem solved. To finish up the chassis, I drilled the .035 holes for both the boiler retaining screw and the front cylinder retaining srew. These were then tapped 00-90. The front cylinder casting was counter sunk to accept a 00-90 screw,(I used a coupler mounting screw with the smaller head) and then mounted in position. You probably noticed in that picture that I also reinstalled the drivers. I thought this would be a real ordeal and would require great restraint to control my extensive four letter vocabulary. I got lucky. When I removed these, I left everything intact including the side rods. When I reinstalled them, I just laid them in place and began to insert the intermediate gears. Within a few minutes they were in and correctly oriented. That's when I noticed the main rods were upside down. (yeah, you got me)With a few choice examples of the aforementioned vocabulary, I pulled them out. While the drivers were out, I gave the whole chassis a bath with CRC 03130 contact cleaner. It'll remove all residue including rosin flux, and wash out all chips and filings since it's a pressurized spray can. I reinstalled the drivetrain, stuck the motor in, added a drop of HL653 oil and hooked up the test leads. It ran real smooth and slow. Should be a close match to the K-27's speed.
With the chassis almost finished and running well, I started on the shell. I assembled the cab sides and roof to the boiler casting using ACC. This is a straightforward process and the pieces only required some straightening and light file work to get a good fit. I had previously hogged out the boiler casting and decided to see how it fit on the chassis. I mounted the shell to the chassis, temporarily added the pilot casting and sat it next to the K-27. The K-27 just provides something to compare the C-16 to, just to make sure it didn't end up out of proportion somehow. This view seems to show that it's a bit high in the rear and will require some cutting inside the boiler, but nothing about it looks really out of whack.....and yes, I know, these pictures were taken while the siderods and drivers were in upside down....
Now that we know this thing is headed in the right direction, we can start to finish up the chassis and some of the tender details that we left off. In the previous pictures the pilot was just friction fit to the chassis for the photo comparison with the K-27. John had expressed an interest in having a Micro Trains front coupler installed on this loco so he could double head locos and maybe switch a consist or two with it. I thanked him for making a hard job harder and promptly assured him that a working front coupler was no problem. After uncrossing my fingers, I pulled the pilot off of the loco and stared at it for about two hours. I decided to cut out the coupler pocket and started to drill holes around the perimeter. I drilled one # 74 hole in each of the lower corners of the coupler pocket. I drilled another #74 hole directly above each of those and stopped. I decided that the couplers, if modified, might fit in these slots without the draft box.
The coupler needed to be cut and narrowed as shown in this photo. You can see how they compare to the uncut MT903 couplers on the sprues. I drilled #76 holes through the shank of both pieces of the coupler. This will form the new pivot point for the coupler to swing and spread. The little legs of the U shaped end of the coupler will be put into the slots formed by the #74 holes that were drilled into the pilot. When the coupler swings in either direction or spreads to couple, the legs will bear against the pilot and act as a centering spring. I didn't have room for a trip pin as it would hit on the pilot. I inserted the first piece into the pilot, then the second as a test fit to see if it would work. It slides in and fits good, although from this view, it looks as if it needs a shim under it to bring the coupler to a true horizontal position. I cut out the pilot deck from a piece of .010 copper and installed it on the pilot. It gets notched for cylinder clearance, make sure you do this and test fit it before attaching it with ACC. I drilled a #76 hole down through the pilot. This will accept a piece of .020 music wire which will pin the coupler assembly in place. Attach this pilot assembly to the frame using ACC. Before we can mount the pilot, the cylinders have to be drilled out and attached to the frame. I drilled out the raised bumps using a .035 drill bit to a depth of 3/16". Be real careful not to drill all of the way through. Once drilled, I painted the cylinders using Testors 1146 silver gloss enamel and Polly Scale F414137 grimy black, another Testors product. The pilot assembly and cylinders are then screwed onto the chassis with the main rods inserted in the .035 holes. Now this is ready to catch any stray cows that venture onto the right of way. Here's a shot of how the painted chassis looks with the pilot and cylinders attached. We'll add the valve hanger and touch up the paint later.
The next skipped step was fashioning the drawbar. Since the tender was finished way before the motor was mounted in the chassis, I had to wait to determine the drawbar length until the motor was mounted and the loco and tender could be positioned together. I drilled an .035 hole in the tender floor, as close to the front truck center as I could get it, and then tapped it 00-90. I then positioned the tender close to the loco allowing room for the motor to swing and determined that my drawbar needed to be 1/2 inch center to center. I used a side rod from a Bachman 0-6-0 as a drawbar on Michael's J&LW loco, but it's center to center measurement was too short. It would've been smarter to find or fashion an appropriate drawbar and then drill the hole in the tender for it, so learn from my mistakes. Luckily after an hour or so of searching the bits boxes and watching TV, I found the perfect drawbar. It's the main rod from a failed 4-4-0 conversion. The length was about right, all it needed was this pin removed. I twisted the pin out, replaced it with a 00-90 coupler screw and installed it on the tender.
With the drawbar done and the chassis at 90%, it was time to throw the shell on the chassis, hook the other end of the drawbar up to the rear truck screw on the 8896, and see what the end result was. I still have to solder on the motor leads and tender pickup wires, as well as adding the pumps, piping, coupler lift bars, and headlight before this loco heads into the paint shop, but here's the first look, and a close up showing the coupling distance. What do you think so far?
In those last two shots, you can clearly see that the boiler wasn't detailed and the tender pickup wires weren't soldered in place. I removed the boiler casting from the loco and soldered in the motor leads from the 1013 Sagami as well as the tender pickup wires and then reinstalled the boiler casting to test run the loco. I oiled the gears with three drops of HL653 oil, added a pin tip of oil where the siderods attached to the drivers and then oiled the mainrod at the cylinder. After placing the loco on piece of clean track, I ran it in each direction. It ran real smooth and rivalled the LOK in low speed performance, mainly due to the torque filled Sagami coupled with the tender pickup. The pulling power isn't much compared with the LOK, but how many narrow gauge cars would a C-16 pull, anyway? They were frequently run in trains with another C-16 pushing or cut into the middle of the mix. Satisfied with the loco's performance, I pulled the boiler casting off for detailing.
The first thing I added was the first air pump and plumbing. I drilled the pump out with a no. 80 drill and ran the brass wire through the pump and secured it with ACC. I glued the second air pump to the boiler and added the piping for this pump in the same fashion. The instructions give you some bending templates and a few photos, but be prepared with a stack of prototype photos to get the right plumbing job on your C-16. Next up are the bell and generator. These are attached with ACC and their positions on the boiler are clearly marked with cast in dimples. I decided to add the piping under the cab before I went too far with the boiler detailing. I used music wire instead of brass for these pipes because of the location. When you remove the shell from the loco and set it down, it'll be resting on these pipes. The music wire insures that they'll retain their shape. I secured these with ACC and once they set up, I added the front headlight, bell pull, steam dome line, and the generator exhaust. These will give me some details to try and knock off when I'm handling the shell as well as making it look like an actual C-16. I filed the handrail stancheons with a triangular file to a 'V' shape and installed the left and right handrails. At this stage, It just lacks the headlight conduit, smokebox handrail, the piping on the left side as well as that on the right.
I set aside the boiler so all of the ACC could set up, and started to finish the tender details. I added the ladder on the rear according to the instructions, (I followed them this one time, anyway) and then cut a piece of styrene to form the base of our removable coal load. This piece of styrene should fit loose enough to fall out when the tender is tipped over. I put a piece of clear sandwhich wrap under the styrene and positioned it back in the tender. Using a mix of Arizona Rock and Mineral fine and extra fine crushed coal, I filled the the bunker on top of the styrene making a pleasant looking coal load. I applied a few drops of rubbing alcohol and secured the coal with a mix of matte medium and water. After curing for 24 hours, I ended up with a nice looking coal load that was removable for access into the tender body.
The front of this loco needed the coupler lift bar on the front pilot and I started to install that by inserting two .010" soft copper wires into the pilot. These will be cut off and wrapped around the coupler lift bar to hold it in place. I bent up the coupler lift bar from this .009 music wire. It took several attempts and I wasted almost a foot of wire to finally get it right. I'm planning on using this wire for grab irons and such in the future. It is available down to .003 if your checkbook is big enough, and it is much more resistant to bending when a loco is handled verses brass wire. I installed the coupler lift bar and then wrapped the copper wires around it and secured it with a drop of ACC. You can see the results here, and notice the screw holding the coupler down. I ended up using a tiny screw from a watch to keep the coupler in place. I also bent up and glued on the pipes from the tops of the cylinder to the boiler. These get folded over so they tuck under the boiler to allow the boiler to be removed. The cab also needed some grab irons which were bent up from .010 brass and attached to the cab with ACC. With all of the details wrapped up on the chassis, boiler and tender, I shot them with the first coat of grimy black paint. I used Polly Scale F414137 thinned with water and sprayed on through a Paasch air brush to paint the tender and the boiler casting. The chassis was painted by brush using the same paint.
Once the the second coat of grimy black was covering everything, I started to detail paint the shell. I coated the smokebox front with Testors 1146 silver. I painted the fronts of the marker lights with this as well and then detailed the marker lights with more grimy black to form the 'glass' front of the marker light. I also touched up the handrails with grimy black where I had bumped them with the silver brush as well as painting the front smokebox grab black. The bell and steam dome cluster were painted with a coat of Testors 1144 gold. I couldn't get in to paint the bell even with my smallest brush so I used a piece of .010 copper wire bent to an 'L' shape, and dipped it into the gold paint and applied it to the bell. The cab curtains needed to be painted to finish the shell detailing and I painted these with a single thin wash of Polly Scale 41497 gray over the black under coat.
With all the painting finished, I started the decal process. John had requested C-16 #223 and had sent me a sheet of MicroScale decals. I started by laying the tender on its side and spraying the side with a coat of Micro Gloss and letting it dry. I cut out the appropriate decals and dipped them in water and set them nearby to loosen up. I applied the text decal and then the herald decal using Micro Set and then blotted them with a piece of foam to work them into the details. I repeated this step until the decals were wrapped around any details. When I had assembled the tender, I gave no thought to the decals and in the case of the herald decal, the air pipe on the tender side was in the way. I had to cut the decal and slide each side of it into place so as to look like it was on before the pipe was put into place. With the decals fixed in place, I sprayed the tender side with Dullcote. This was ALOT of work, but I think the results were worth the effort. The cab also needs some decals and on the MicroScale sheet were enough numbers of the appropriate size to make up our 223. I sprayed the cab sides with Micro Gloss and cut out the needed numbers. I applied the '23' decal first since they were together and I could center the decals this way, and then added the other '2' in front to complete the '223'. To cap off an otherwise fine model, I decided that the front plate needed the '223' on it. I cut out some single digits and proceeded to set them in. This was an hour long process in itself, but once finished, seems an absolute "must have" feature. If premade '223' decals were available, I'd have put them in the numberboards on the light as well. Once all of the decals were set up, I sprayed the entire superstructure with dullcote using an airbrush. You're probably wondering what it all looks like at this point, and well you're gonna see it all together, with the coal load in place in these five shots. D&RGW C-16 #223 with tender. It's almost finished, lacking only something to hold up the pilot, which I formed from .015 brass. I prepainted the end that sets on the pilot and then installed them into the .016 holes that I had previously drilled in the boiler. I touched up the paint after the ACC had set and gave the bars a light coat of Dullcoat with a fine brush. Now it's finished. What? What do mean, let's see it in action? OK, fine. I'll stoke it up and run some freight with it........yeah, I'll even double head it with the K-27.....
C-16 #223 taking sand C-16 #223 with caboose C-16 #223 headin' out
C-16 #223 roundin' the slide C-16 #223 double headin' with a string(?) of cattle cars
C-16 #223 out front C-16 #223 pulling the MOW C-16 back in town for more
C-16 #223 with the 'big iron' in town C-16 #223 on the truss to Rockhill
C-16 #223 with a 'wide' combine in tow C-16 #223 final destination-Rockhill station
OK guys, we had chance to put 'er to the test at the National Train Show in St. Louis, Missouri and she failed to pull it's own weight up a 4% grade due to the heavy cast tender. John had sent me an etched brass tender wrapper for this loco, but I used the cast one that came with the kit because it looked five hundred percent better and I thought the added weight would help the tender's electrical pickup. At the St. Louis show, John had asked me to assemble the brass etchings and send them back to him to install on the C-16's tender frame. We removed the heavy cast tender shell and I brought it home to add the details from it to the etched tender. I started to compare the etching and the casting and decided on a better way. I stripped down the cast shell removing all details including paint and decals. I cut a simple mold box from sheet styrene and glued it together with MEK. The cast metal tender was ACC'd into the center of the box and a batch of Dow Corning HSII was poured in over it. Once the HSII had set up over night, I removed the mold from the box and prepared it for casting. I used Smooth-On's Smoothcast 300 to cast out a lightweight version of the tender shell. Since the casting came out of the mold as a solid chunk, I had to mill out the underside of the shell so it would fit onto the original tender frame. I used the cast metal tender body as a guide and test fit it onto a tender frame from my own C-16 kit to make sure it would fit on easily when John received it. Curious as to how much weight was saved, I got out the postal scale and found out the following:
Original cast tender shell 18 grams
Brass etchings for tender 10 grams
SC300 resin cast tender shell 7 grams
It's a little obvious as to how well the resin tender shell has worked out as far as saving weight is concerned, it's just too bad that we can't add those saved grams into the loco shell directly over the drivers!! Shortly before completing this stage, John had emailed and indicated that he wasn't satisfied with the loco's performance and wanted to take me up on the offer to buy it back that I'd made him at St. Louis. D&RGW #223 showed up at my doorstep a couple days later.
Once back at the shops, it was clear that 223 was in need of some work. I tweaked, lubed, and fiddled with the rods and still couldn't make it pull much. With the purchase of my Digitrax unit, I promptly wired it up on the test loop and kept on running and testing the C-16. The performance kept going downhill and I still had no idea what was causing it, but started to suspect the Sagami can motor. Turns out I had installed the back set of drivers one tooth out of synch with the rest and it was binding when running 223 forward. The degredation in motor performance, I'm chalking up to the stretched analog operation of it on DCC.
After inflicting so much damage, I decided to fix it and detail it as well. I started by removing the Sagami motor and epoxying on the original three pole Marklin motor. The space above this motor prompted me to look into the possibility of adding DCC. The Lenz LE010XF is currently the smallest decoder available and would be the easiest to fit up under the cab roof.
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