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I have heard about these drives now for a few decades and yet have seen nothing about them other than being installed in large UP engines, U50Cs and DD40s. I have now seen on Ebay this last month a couple of  these Overland U 50s selling for near and over 1,000 much more than the $695 I paid for mine. The latest one seen is unpainted and missing a hatch door and still selling for $950+ but it has this mentioned Doug Cockerham custom drive. What is this drive and are they still available as I have 2 of these U50Cs and neither has the custom drive but both are painted and weathered making nice viewing pieces.

Phill.  

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Doug Cockerham Died several years ago. All his work was for contract speciific

for his customers and the model he was working on. There are nor drives available for sale that I know of.

 

He would install them in the Crappy drives that overland models had in most all the big O scale UP models. They were garbage IMO.

 

Marty

Sadly, Doug died a couple of years ago. I have several articulated steam locomotives that he rebuilt for me, one of which he completed and returned to me only a few months before his death. Not only did he rebuild the drive train with a large Pittman ball-bearing motor, ball-bearing gear tower, and ball-bearing NWSL gearboxes, he gave my old Max Gray Rio Grande L-132 a beautiful paint job. Doug's work on diesel models typically incorporated the large Pittman motor, a central gear tower transmission, and drive shafts with excellent machined universal joints powering Overland gear boxes. 

I had a bit of gear whine in one of Doug's steam engine conversions, but lubrication of the gear train in the transmission to the lower drive shaft helped with that. Strangely, the noise is at low speeds only; at normal running speeds, all the engines that he rebuilt for me run very quietly.

 

My big MG Rio Grande L-132 (a 2-8-8-2) draws less than 0.50 amp at around 10.5 volts pulling 30 free-rolling cars at a stately speed. Also, it will creep along very, very slowly without hesitation, when necessary, as will a USH L-105 that Doug rebuilt and painted about 10 years ago.

 

I agree that the quietness and simplicity of a toothed-belt design has a lot to recommend it. So far, however, Doug's drives have been "bullet proof" in my experience. 

i believe Stu Kleinschmidt  is still doing drives. i have a custom brass Milw BiPolar that he did as well as a gem PRR F3 2 6 0 a Milwaukee Atlantic as well as a PRR streamlined K4. they are all excellent runners and super quiet. as far as i'm concerned money well spent. my bipolar couldn't pull itself now there's not much it can't pull. his drives Jerry White and Chuck Strayer did some amazing stuff when it comes to powerful stuff.        

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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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