My Latest Upgrade - Weaver Brass 8444

Excellent job! She runs and sounds great!

Hi Allan, I enjoyed your You Tube video. Well done train action, that tells the layout story.
• Cheers from Michigan

Gary

Great job, it looks and sounds great. 

Excellent.  Good runner, great smoke, nice sound (as much as I can hear here, anyway). Always loved that loco.  Big Northerns are cool!  Nice train, too.

Prize looking loco, Allan.  Like the smoke and the chuff sounds. 

Excellent work, sounds and runs great!!!!!!.

Alex

wow! looks and sounds fantastic! I've never been a fan of the Seuth units.

Nicely done! Looks and sounds wonderful! 

Boy you certainly did a lot of work on that engine. It sounds good.

Looks great,I love the FEF.  I have had the MTH Imperial model for some time.  However, this is a very timely post!  I just picked up that exact Weaver Brass FEF locomotive and I'm going to be upgrading it in pretty much the same way.  I may replace the markers and class lights with LED's, but I haven't looked closely to see if that works.

I'm going to get that stack adapter as I'll be using the MTH smoke unit in mine as well, nice tip.  I normally build a smoke box of brass sheet, but since someone has already done most of the work...  

Yes, amazing as it seems, I'll even put a Super-Chuffer in it.

Now that I see it running, I'm eager to duplicate the effort.

Hi All,

Thanks for all your kind words.

John, when you go to put in the Smoke Unit, you will need to unscrew the weight in the boiler and let it slide down so the smoke unit can be put in from the front since it is a tight fit.

Hopefully my pictures/narrative will help you with your upgrade.  

Hi Allan,

I'm working on this same locomotive right now, though with heavy modifications to it.  I can't see your pictures at work but saw the video and nice job.

I removed the boiler front to put the smoke unit in.  Worked great.  It's just press fit into the boiler.

Excellent result, loved the video as well.

Well, it's already helped, I didn't know about the stack adapter.

I've had to move and/or shave the weight for several brass upgrades to get a real smoke unit into them.  I expect to have to do something as a rule.

Here's the virgin, ready to be sacrificed to the upgrade gods.

The nice thing about this engine is that once you have the smoke unit in place, the weight can go right back in place and it then helps the smoke unit to stay in place (along with my styrene wedge).

I actually mount the smoke unit a slightly different way.

I JB-Weld a spring to the bottom, and build the stack to align with the boiler openings.  I just stuff the smoke unit in from the front and let the spring hold the smoke unit up to the top with the stack pieces extended into the shell.  When it comes time to take the smoke unit out, I can just pop the boiler front off and remove the smoke unit.

I have a few questions as I'm doing an ERR install on the same locomotive now.

1.  To have 4 chuffs/revolution, do I need to have 4 magnets?  I assume that's why you spaced them 90 degress apart.

2.  I'm mounting the magnets to the same driver as you.  They won't hold magnetically to the wheel..  Did you have the same problem?  I was going to super glue them in.

Thanks!

Thanks Allan.

Your thread was just in time!

Great mod!!!

Allan,

Today I got the magnets installed and the reed switch.  I used CA to install the magnets after roughing up the inside surface of the wheel with sandpaper.  Worked great.  Initially I used CA for the reed switch and added JB Weld to hold it.  Thanks for the information earlier.

Instead of using tape to mark the 90 degree spacing, I used liquid 'white out' (yeah, they still make that stuff, only costs .90$ now!) to mark the outside of the wheels.  Makes it easy to visualize 90 degrees and finding a 'spoke' for the magnet to adhere too.  Then, I marked the inside edge of the driver with 'white out' so I knew exactly where to place the magnet.

Though I have a long way to go on this project, I did manage to check the chuffs/commands/sounds of the ERR boards.

I have a super chuffer, may install it also.

If you want to see more, I'm making this into an FEF-1, click here.

Excellent work and a great video.

Douglas

You mean like this?  Hey, There is royalty for that idea! 

This is the Williams Brass J.  Did the same thing with the weight, though I had to carve some lead out of the weight.  But it supports the rear of the smoke unit, and between the stack and the spring, it is locked in place, until your ready to remove it for maintenance.  G

There certainly is, and my accounting department will be contacting you about your overdue royalty payments!

Now now John, you were using wood blocks, when I was mounting with the spring or brass brackets.

Wood blocks?  I have never used wood blocks.

Hi All,

Since my last post, I've done a few more things to get the engine where I want it.  

The first was to figure out how to detail the cab.  Since I didn't want to get individual parts, I found a picture of 8444's Cab back in the day and so I scaled it and printed it on sticker paper which I then installed in the cab.

Next, I needed to do something about the drivers and pilot truck wheels.  Rather than use Neolube like some mentioned, I decided to paint mine Engine Black to get the shine - the results were great!

Before:

After:

Lastly, I wanted to put a cab apron between the engine and tender to hide the wires.  I ordered from Lionel the setup for their Challenger.  The parts were 6SP8064069 (Apron), 6SP8064531 (Hinge L), 6SP8064533 (Hinge R), and 6101210264 (Screws for Apron Hinge).  I built up a spacer with styrene so when mounted, the apron could go up and down while the engine was moving.  I then glued it in place rather than screwing it in place.  You can see the results in the first picture above and in the one below.

Apron:

I really like how everything turned out!  

That looks great.  Can I get you to email the cab picture or post it in an attachment?  I'd like to see how that looks for mine.

It's the little details that make the big difference.

Looks great, what else are you going to do to it?

Here is the picture I used for the interior. I just put it in Word several times with various sizes so I could find the right one.  

The only other things I'll do is put another apron under the tender deck to keep the harness from lifting the cab apron and I'll probably add another seat or two in the cab with a second crew.

Thanks, I'm going to try the picture.  I use straight tethers so that I don't have to worry about loops.