Introduction
Warning: This is a very long, detailed post!
I like Lionel steam locomotives because Lionel designed them for simplified servicing, and Lionel’s documentation and parts are easily-available. Also, some of the locomotives, such as the H-7, are nicely detailed and are rich in features such as extensive lighting, smoke, and excellent speakers. Lionel very much “gets” the importance of the user experience.
What I don’t like are Lionel’s high-rail flanges and three-rail operation. The high-rail flanges look awful and will not work well on 2-rail trackage that meets NMRA standards S-3.2 “Scale Track, Standard Scale.” Also, many of the locomotive driver wheels are mounted on a “trapped” axle, requiring removal of the driver wheels from the axle “in situ” with a wheel puller and subsequent remounting in the correct “quarter.”
I have performed three dead-rail conversions of Lionel’s H-7 2-8-8-2 locomotive. This post will be a composite of these three locomotives.
The conversion process consists of the following:
- Mechanical conversion: modifying or replacing all wheels and coupler replacement.
- Electronics: All Lionel electronics are removed and replaced with a DCC decoder
- Dead-rail: Addition of a ProMiniAir (PMA) receiver and DCC amplifier, battery, antenna, charging plug, and power/charging switch
Mechanical Conversion
Locomotive
Before proceeding with the locomotive conversion, several “magic screws” must be removed to separate the upper boiler shell from the lower shell and wheel chassis. This step is necessary to provide clear access to the drivers for removal and modification.
Removal also provides access to the locomotive’s electronics for removal and replacement with a DCC decoder and its wiring.
Removing the flexible hose mounting shown below provides clearance to remove the drivers.
After I gained enough clearance around the drivers, I used a wheel puller to remove those drivers whose axles were “trapped” in the chassis.
The locomotive drivers present several issues:
- Large, ugly flanges
- Grooved tires with rubber traction tires
- All drivers are uninsulated. This aspect is important only if you want track-powered 2-rail operation.
Lionel manufactures the locomotive driver center and flange as s single unit with a separate cylindrical tire with no flange.
The photo below shows an end mill to separate the driver tire from the driver center integrated with the flange. The process was the following:
- A 3/16″ brass tube was fit in the axle.
- A small brass tube was inserted into the crank-pin hole to prevent wheel rotation while milling.
- Two pieces of brass close to the height serve as height spacers that avoid cutting into the flange.
- The tooling is a 1/16″, two-flute end mill in a Tormach collet
- Cutting oil was applied.
- The end mill was very carefully translated along the radius, cutting into the cylindrical tire without cutting into the flange.
- After the radial cut was deep enough, I used an “ordinary screwdriver to pop off the tire with an axial twist.
I used two strategies for modifying the Lionel driver wheels:
- Machine down the large flanges and leave the tire in place with the driver uninsulated. I used this technique when using the locomotive strictly as dead rail.
- Completely machine off the flange. I use this technique when creating insulated drivers for 2-rail operations using track power.
Machining down the drivers
I used a 3/16″ brass tube as a reasonably close match to the driver’s axle diameter. Because the fit is not tight, a separate small brass tube is inserted in the driver pin that will butt up against the lathe chuck’s jaws when cutting torque is applied. This technique is a bit of a kludge, but I have successfully machined down the flanges of 8 H-7 drivers on two different H-7s with this technique.
Before matching down the large flanges, you must address the grooved tires. The rubber in these tires increases the tire diameter, increasing the chances that the reduced flanges will derail. And these rubber tires are a bad idea since they could cause the locomotive to simply stall rather than slip when pulling heavy loads. Stalling is very bad since it dramatically increases the motor current, potentially causing a decoder shutdown and/or significant heating.
I used J-B Weld 8267 SteelStik Steel Reinforced Epoxy Putty Stick to fill the rubber traction rim groove. This material is metal-filled, providing traction and wear resistance.
I applied an excess of putty in the groove, and after curing, I cut the putty excess down to the radius in the lathe. It’s a fool’s errand attempting to shape the putty in the groove. The epoxy sets fairly quickly, so you have a short window of time to work the putty into place.
The photo below shows the finished driver wheel with the Steel Reinforced Epoxy Putty machined to the driver center radius and a machined-down flange with a flange height of 0.036″ and a flange width of 0.040″. As previously, a small diameter rod was inserted into the side rod hole to prevent wheel rotation relative to the axle while machining.
Completely Machining OFF the Original Flange
First, I’ll show you how I created a new tire with a small flange. This is a long detailed section, perhaps of interest to only a few of you.
First, the driver’s tire center must be prepared. The idea is to entirely cut off the integral flange to ensure a constant radius from the front to the back of the driver center.
First, you must remove the cylindrical tire. In this case, you can use a cutting wheel to cut a slot through the flange and the tire without cutting into the driver center. Then the tire can be popped off with an axial twist using a standard screwdriver. Care must be taken not to nick the driver’s wheel center.
The slightly undersized brass tube fits somewhat loosely in the crank-pin hole but will prevent slippage in the spindle by butting against the jaws once torque is exerted by the cutting tool on the rim as the spindle rotates.
After the wheel center’s rim is machined flat, I use 0.010″ fish paper to insulate the left-side drivers. You can hold the fish paper in place with a touch of CA on the side of the rim opposite where the fish paper ends will join. This allows a shorter run to hold the fish paper tight on the rim while applying CA to the ends.
With our wheel center ready to mount inside a tire, we now create a tire with the proper dimensions. Caveat: My tire machining technique fits my modest matching skills using a small Sherline lathe. This technique is wasteful of metal blanks, but their cost is low. Other more skilled model railroad machinists have more efficient techniques that utilize a larger lathe and specialized tooling.
To help the discussion, the figure below shows the terminology from NMRA Standard S-4.2. The important terms/dimensions are flange width, flange depth, and tread width. Creating a tire within an acceptable range of these dimensions is necessary to ensure that the driver will work on 2-rail trackage defined by NMRA standard S-3.2.
I start with a 1.5″ diameter Ledalloy 12L14 1″ long blank obtained from OnLineMetals.com. This represents a maximum driver size of 72″, which is plenty large for our 57″ plus twice our flange depth of 0.036″ for 2-rail operation (1.1875″+2 x 0.036″=1.2655″).
A 1/2″ hole is drilled into the center of the blank to provide clearance for the boring bar that will hollow out the blank to fit the outer diameter of the driver’s center.
The blank is then placed in the lathe, the face is squared off with an end cut, and then a side cut reduces the blank’s diameter to the final wheel diameter + 0.072″ to account for the additional flange depth (0.036″). For our H-7’s 57″ drivers, this diameter works out to 57/48″=1.1875″ plus twice our flange depth of 2 x 0.032″=0.072 for 2-rail operation: 1.1875″+2 x 0.036″=1.2655″.
Now we make an angled side cut to create the tire surface by tilting the Sherline lathe’s spin axis by 2.5-3.0 degrees. This cut produces a shallow angle across the tire’s tread width. This angle was obtained from NMRA Recommended Practices 25.
A careful series of side cuts are made to reduce the blank to the wheel’s diameter at the base of the flange step with a width of the wheel width (N) of 0.172″ – the flange width of 0.039″ = 0.132″. I use a wheel width slightly smaller than “code 175″ (0.175”, from NMRA Recommended Practices 25) to improve appearance, and maintain operability with 2-rail track standards.
Next, we “straighten out” the lathe and use a boring bar to hollow out the blank’s center to be slightly smaller than the driver’s center diameter. This cut reduces the amount of material removed during the difficult cut-off operation.
Next, the tire is cut off from the rest of the blank at a distance greater than 0.039″ (the flange width) behind the flange step.
The now-separate tire is remounted in the lathe using the flange step as an indexed surface, and a careful series of face cuts are made to reduce the flange width to 0.039″.
A spacer (an old tire cut off the driver) is now inserted to displace the flange from the lathe chuck’s jaws to provide clearance for rounding the edges of the flange with a file.
With the lathe spinning, a file is used to carefully smooth the sharp edges of the flange.
Now, the tire is remounted against the lathe chuck’s jaws, and a series of careful cuts with the boring bar increases the tire’s inner diameter until the driver’s center fits inside the tire. This step is tedious since very small (0.001″) cuts should be used to prevent making the tire’s inner diameter too large! The fit should not be extremely tight since we will apply Loctite to the rim of the driver’s wheel center to lock the tire to the driver’s wheel center.
Loctite 609 is applied to the fish paper, and the driver’s center is inserted into the new tire. While inserting the driver’s center, I take the opportunity to ensure it is pressed into the rim to the proper depth. This depth is a bit of a judgment call based on examining the original mounting depth.
Before the Loctite dries, the driver’s center must be aligned with the tire. I use a simple technique of inserting a 3/16″ metal rod or tube into the driver axle hole and mounting the assembly in the jaws of a milling clamp with a small “v” machined into one side of the jaws, as shown in the photo below. I firmly press the tire rim onto some brass plates placed on top of the jaws, then tighten the jaws to very lightly bind the metal tube and rotate the driver wheel. This rotation action will force the driver’s center into alignment with the tire.
While aligning these components, I take the opportunity to ensure the driver’s center is still pressed into the rim to the proper depth.
Tender Mechanical Modifications
I removed the rather ugly Lionel coupler by cutting off the tender coupler mount and mounting a Kadee coupler directly to the tender. Micro-Mark coupler shims provide the proper coupler mounting height.
DCC Additions
I used a Zimo MX696KS DCC decoder from SBS4DCC with the “Standard Gauge Steam Locomotive Alco/Baldwin Mallet 2-8-8-2” sound file DA_R_US_2_8_8_2 V2.zip. Modifications were made to the function mappings and set-up of the smoke unit.
Some of the sound project’s settings are shown in the following screen captures from Zimo’s ZCS software.
Dead-Rail Conversion
Tender Modifications
My typical 14.8 LiPo battery did not comfortably fit in the back end of the tender, but a rather unusually-shaped 14.8V LiPo batter from MTO fit well: the TRAIN-10 LI-ION.
The tender’s LEDs must have “protection” resistors added since Lionel provided these resistors on electronics boards that were removed for dead-rail conversion.
Locomotive Electronics Modifications
The conversion strategy is completely removing all Lionel electronics and replacing them with a Zimo MX696KS DCC decoder, providing excellent sound, lighting, and smoke unit control.
Because the original Lionel electronics provided the protection diodes for the locomotive’s LED marker lights at low voltage, 5K resistors were added in series with the maker lights so that 14.8V power would not burn them out when activated by the Zimo decoder.
The red LED lighting for the firebox presented a bit of a challenge. The photo below shows where I added protection resistors for the two sets of LEDs that flicker independently using the “random” firebox setting for the Zimo decoder’s FO6 and FO8 outputs, as shown on the ZCS configuration menus elsewhere.
For one of the H-7s, I replaced the incandescent cabin light with an LED. See the photo below.
I replaced the original low-current LED front marker lights with “nano” LEDs after I accidentally burned them out.
The Proof in the Pudding
The video below is the “proof in the pudding,” showing off the lights, firebox effects, smoke, and great sound!
