malletman
Alcohaulic
From previous experience and an article in the October of 1991 issue of Model Railroader magazine, I have found that the rubber tubing that connects the front driver set to the rear gear box tends to buck and shove the front driver set around, espicaly on curves. The drive shaft needs to just deliver rotational force to drive the engine, not resist the engine when going thru curves. North West Shortline makes some very nice small Universal coupling sets that include both a short dog bone shaft and 4 horned balls to use with a metal shaft to make any length of drive shaft. For this application I just used thier short dog bone shaft and 2 drive cups. Once you do this modification, the engine willl run much smoother thru curves without the bucking and vibration from the rubber tubing. However you have to be more carefull when picking up the engine not to flex the front driver set downward to much and dislodge the short drive shaft. I am also removing all the DCC wiring and reducing it to just power to the motor and lights. The lights on this model are still track power driven, I just have to add a simple diode from Radio Shack to keep the rear facing light off when running forward. I may eventualy upgrade the motor to rear gear box from rubber tubing to a dog bone shaft and coupler set up, but it will take a different cup on the one end as the motor's shaft is quite small when compared to the gear boxes. Cheers Mike
