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Hello S-Gaugers,

Happy New Year! Best wishes to you and yours for a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2017. I have a broken SHS SW9. It needs a Universal Set (Part #7 on page 20 of the Operating Manual, originally $5.00) — more specifically, one of the balls with a hole through it and two pegs protruding from it. The one on the rear truck of this engine is split and spins on the gear box drive shaft. Do you have either a full Universal Set or just one or two of the ball joints? Thanks.

Best regards,

Dave

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The horned-ball or pegged-ball from NWSL arrived yesterday and it works great (P/N 481-6).  

Thanks to help from several of you and others, these two scale ACL SHS SW9’s have been successfully converted to hi-rail wheels and AF KC’s, upgraded to LED directional lighting (instead of their original GOW bulbs), as well as enabled to run as one engine thanks to a tiny detachable four-conductor flat cable installed between them.  That allows them to leverage 16-wheel pick-up and use the reverse unit in one engine to control both at the same time.  They look and run very nicely together.  S-Helper engines are great, but their reverse units don’t stay synched very well when run as multi-units.  They tend to get out of synch and fight each other, so cabling them together helps.  [American Models reverse units for some reason are more dependable/predictable.]

PS  I realize they could be made to run with TMCC/Legacy or DCC and achieve the same or similar multi-unit results, but the owner of these engines runs their trains conventionally and requested they be set up this way.

David Horn

When looking for universals, don't forget the Hobbytown of Boston units (and clones made by MicroMark). I needed to replace the u-joints in my AM FP7 years ago (seems to me the originals were rather like the Athearn HO ball type), and it's the best running AM loco I have. I have several others, most with the spring universals, and I think I need to replace them all with Hobbytown units as well.

Bill in FtL

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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