Why not just leave the axle gears be? Once you remove the rest of the gearset, the axle gears just hold the wheels together.
Rotor
That's the way the dummy trucks in my PB1 and F7's were. I took out the adapter that the dummy axles went through (they have pieces on the that fit where the bronze bearings would go) and replaced them with regular wheel sets. That's when I ran across Athearn's little trick of using the same truck for front and rear. Luckily I had some other trucks of the right polarity to use as rear trucks in the models I was rebuilding. When I finished I had three pairs of power trucks for the F7's and a power truck for the front of the PB1. The trucks were for the most part just like the regular power truck. They lacked the contact arm (solder a wire to the rivet the would have held the arm) and they had those clips in the bottom that held the dummy axles. I took the bottom plate of the truck and the clips fell out.Larry ya wanna take pics of what ya did?
I know the dummy wheel sets have smaller axle but they are also held in place by a lil clip that sits in the actual truck. If ya take that out ya can put regular metal wheel sets in place.
Larry, If I understood your method of rigging up those dummy loco metal wheels. You could take them out of your loco set them on the tracks and they would still cause a direct short. Metal wheel to metal axle to metal wheel - Wha-la BuZZZZZ short, correct ?