2 rail a K-line 2-8-2 question

I have 2-railed a couple of K-Lines.  It is very straightforward if you have a 9" lathe or larger.  You need iron pipe of roughly the same diameter as the driver over the flange, some paper, and shaft loctite.  It helps to have a quartering jig, but as I recall the axles are splined, so good marking will enable you to press them back exactly the way the factory pressed them.  You need to remove the steel rings, face the drivers, and install new tires on all drivers.

Bob, 

Thanks for the info.  If I could isolated the drivers I could also go DCC with pick-ups in the tender....hmmm.

Two railing any scale hi rail steam loco is possible if, as Bob above says, you have a good metal lathe and the knowledge to use it.  I have converted many many 3 rail steam models to 2 rail from various manufacturers and they all turned out to be good 2 rail runners.  Most if not all 3 rail steam drivers measure between 0.230" and 0.260" in width.  When I am finished with a conversion, the full width of the tire is 0.160" with a 0.045" flange.  I machine a 2 degree taper onto the driver treads.

To complete the job, you have to shorten the axles so they do not stick out from the face of the narrower scale driver centers.  I then machine brass axle spacers to set the lateral motion in the axles to allow the model to negotiate a reasonable scale curve.  Of course for someone who want to run on a 42" radius, I can leave the two center pair of drivers blind on a Mikado.

I quarter my drivers on a surface plate using a surface gauge and this gets everything back in tram.

Joe Foehrkolb

Baldwin Forge & Machine

We make it sound simple.  Joe is a good resource - we tried to do this commercially, but couldn't pay the electric bill with the profits.  There are maybe ten or twelve Williams PRR T1s out there that we did, but now I confine my efforts to my own stuff.

If you do not have a lathe (a big one, not a Sherline), contact Joe.

Dear Mark,

     Joe F. has converted 41 locomotives for me, including 2 K-Line Mikes and 1 K-Line Pacific, which are some of my favorite operating locos at the Cherry Valley club. He is THE MAN,spend the money and get him to do it,right. John

A mistake it seems on converting may end up with bad drivers and wheels. How easy is it to replace the drivers if a mistake is made?

It is very straightforward if you have a 9" lathe or larger.

Bob, do you a 9" swing or a 9" or longer bed?  I have a 7x14 mini-lathe and was thinking that should be fine.

You can try it. A 6" Atlas could probably cut the iron pipe, but I use my 11" Sheldon, and it bogs down sometimes.  I keep the 9" South Bend at the airport, kind of on display.

A lathe is named after what it swings - a 9" lathe can turn a 9" diameter disc.  For bed length, generally it makes very little difference in O Scale, and a lot of difference if you are making rifles.

Bob and I would be referring to a nine inch swing lathe (9" is the largest diameter the lathe can turn across the bedways).  The length of the lathe's bed is not that important for driver work which is generally done close to the headstock.  Before I had my 9" Southbend I machined drivers on a 6" Atlas lathe with a bed of approximately 18".  So a 7" can certainly do the job but perhaps at a slower pace due to its smaller size and rigidity.

I also have an old (1937 vintage) 13" swing Southbend with a 1 HP motor that is primarily used to cut driver tire blanks from heavy wall steel tube or lead alloy steel bar stock once it has been drilled and bored out to size.  A standard cutoff tool is used running the lathe at about 60 rpm to cut off the blanks.  The blanks are then fitted to the driver castings, half of them insulated with 0.010" "fish paper" insulation and finished to size and profile on a special mandrel held in a lathe collet on the 9" lathe to maintain concentricity.

Exact replacement driver castings are not readily available for the diecast hi rail models.  When House of Duddy was still around I would purchase their machined GG-1 drivers for conversions when I could get them.  Other than those, I found it easier to remachine the hi rail drivers.  I have machined thousands of steam loco drivers at this point in time and now remachine the Lionel, WIlliams, Weaver and MTH GG-1 drivers as well.

Joe Foehrkolb

I was in the middle of something. It does get cleaned and oiled.

I do everything on my layout myself.  If I don't know how to do it, I learn so I can.  The one exception is converting drivers.  I leave that to Joe.