Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Humpty Dumpty is Back Together Again


Well, after being out of service for the past few months, my I1sa is back in action. Back in August, a certain klutz who shall remain nameless accidentally bumped the layout and knocked the engine off. It fell the floor and broke the crank on the fireman's side valve gear. Given that the Minitrix 2-10-0 has been out of production for years, parts are no longer available. It was looking very uncertain if she would ever run again.

Fast forward to last Sunday when I posted a query to the PRR N Scale Modeling Facebook group about obtaining a replacement crank. Member Chris Broughton very graciously offered to provide a replacement set of cylinders, cross heads, main rods and valve gear that he'd stripped off a junker. The parts arrived in the mail today.


Since the whole assembly is riveted together, I had to replace the whole thing, which really isn't that bad of a job. It was just a simple matter of removing two screws, removing the old assembly, replacing it with the new and reconnecting the side rods. I did have to clean a bit of CA out of the hole the vale gear crank connects two on the fireman's side. It was there from my botched first repair attempt. Other than that, it was pretty painless.

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