Changing from Archbar to Andrews trucks would be appropriate. My old local hobby shop had and employee who was an engineer from the 1950's on. He told me that the Andrews trucks were a common replacement for Archbars because the Andrews could re-use some of the parts of the Archbar, so were more economical.

The other change that was required by the end of the 1930's for interchange service was a steel underframe, so your cars may need to have that added too. It wasn't uncommon for cars to keep their trussrods after having the steel underframe added, so on the layout I don't know if there would be that much difference in the appearance.

Quote from: Hunt on December 17, 2015, 02:23:28 PM

Johnny are you are thinking about "painted unlettered" 

Bachmann has offers at least some of their steam engines "painted / unlettered", and a few of their diesels. However those of us modeling a free-lanced railroad like to get undecorated gray plastic diesels, so we can paint and letter them for our own railroad. Bachmann doesn't offer undecorated versions, at least rarely if ever.

Just to refine the history a little, when the Bolsheviks took over Russia and formed the Soviet Union, they were not recognized by the US or UK (both of whom sent troops to Russia in 1918-19 to see if they could help the White Russians fighting the Communists in the Russian civil war) so President Wilson blocked the engines from being exported, so in effect cancelled the order for the engines.

Anyway, I have one that I decorated for the Minneapolis, Northfield and Southern, the railroad that ran by my house growing up. The herald from an O scale late steam era boxcar decal set is a pretty close match to the herald used on the MNS engines, it wasn't like the herald later used on MNS diesels.

If the engine has a fold-down 'apron' between the cab and the front deck of the tender, be sure that the apron isn't getting caught under the lip at the front of the tender. This can cause the tender to ride high in front, and easily derail. I usually fold the apron up (towards the cab), then wait until all the engine and tender wheels are on the track, and reach in with a pencil or small screwdriver and lower the apron.

Quote from: WGL on April 29, 2014, 08:23:49 PM

  At least, I can return the locomotive & tender the way I received them, in their separate compartments.

If the engine and tender were separate when you got them, I'd be sure they were connected correctly before sending it back. It may be the problem is something as simple as the connecting plug between engine and tender didn't get pushed in all the way. Believe me, it does happen. 

I know the Digitrax SDH164 decoders have a GG1 sound file you can download onto the decoder. If you don't have the ability to do that (PR3 hooked up to PC and a programming track) you may be able to find a DCC dealer that would download the file to the decoder for you. Otherwise, I suspect there are other sound decoder companies that offer GG1 or other electric sound decoders.

I believe real British coaches tend to be shorter than we're used to in the US. I think 60-70' are the norm, rather than 80-85' length that's been typical in the US for many decades.

So, if my math is right a 70' long OO coach would be 280mm long, and an HO 80' passenger car would be 280mm long...so they models would be the same length, but the OO model would be a bit wider and higher.

One thing to try if the engine has the "apron" that folds down between the cab and the front of the tender:

Fold up the apron so it's sticking straight up. Then put the engine and tender on the track. When you're sure all the wheels are on the track, reach in with a small screwdriver or pencil etc. and lower the apron onto the front of the tender deck.

There's usually a "lip" on the front of the tender, and that apron easily gets stuck underneath it, which raises up the engine and causes conductivity problems.

Also: try running the engine very slowly and see if it "sticks" at any particular spot in the rotation of the drivers. I've had a couple of Spectrum engines where the siderods got bent during the long trip in the box from China, and are bent in enough to foul one of the other rods or clip something else every rotation. If that looks to be the case, you can carefully bend the rods out a little.

It wouldn't be unusual for a few pieces of coal to be on the deck of the tender, or on the floor of the cab.

Maybe I'm missing something?? You know you can buy entire Bachmann tenders 'ready to use', I've bought several from TrainWorld to use in projects. You don't have to try to buy all the parts separately.

Also, not sure what you mean by the tender being too "low" - the body looks low, or the connection to the engine is too low, or ?? Many steam engines from the 1890's-1910's came with fairly small, low tenders. Often the railroads added extensions so more coal could be added, or replaced the tenders with larger ones.

Just to clarify your question, real railroads use degrees of curvature, in model railroading we use radius of curve in inches. A lot of equipment in HO will run on 22"R or even 18"R, but a lot of stuff - like large steam engines and full length passenger cars - won't. For example, Walthers passenger cars require 24"R or broader curves.

Even the cars and engines that will take the sharp curves will look much better on broader curves. Allowing 2" on the sides of the track, a 60" wide layout would handle an outer track of 28"R, with a track of 24-26"R inside of that. If you use No.5 or larger turnouts, you should be able to run anything you want.

As far as track plans, you can take a layout for a 4'x8' space and expand it out to fit your space, using broader curves. A 4'x8' layout generally uses 18"R curves.

If you can find a sound-equipped CB&Q Alco, whether an S-2 or other Alco engine with sound, you could run the sound and non-sound engines together. I do switching work with a sound-equipped NW-2 back to back with a non-sound SW-1200. From more than a couple of feet away, you can't really tell that only one unit has sound.

You should also check the CV for the overall volume. You can set the whistle up to the max, but if the overall volume is say 50%, the whistle is only going to be 50% as loud as maximum. Sometimes you need to set the overall volume way up, then turn down the other sounds leaving the whistle at top volume.

You can add resistors into the wiring of the faster engine or engines to slow them down. As long as the engines are close to each other in speed - say within 10-20% - they should be fine running together. The only way to make them really run the same is to convert to DCC.

The bell shouldn't start ringing as you power up. On some decoders under DCC, doing a quick flick back and forth of the direction switch triggers the bell I believe. A couple of companies have DC add-on devices which allow you to access the features of a DCC sound decoder, like bell, whistle etc. by using pushbuttons like the function buttons on a DCC controller.