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 Posted - February 09 2024 : 10:31:33 AM
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I was interested in getting one of these for a long time, and then couldn't pass up a good deal! It's a really interesting model, and I think the effort to build it was worth it. This is also my first time trying AntonioFP45's method of metallizing, and although it didn't come out as good as what he does, I'm happy with the results!
Darth Santa Fe, doing weird and challenging projects for the fun of it!
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 Posted - February 09 2024 : 12:03:57 PM
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Very nice results. Thanks for sharing this with us.
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 Posted - February 09 2024 : 1:48:30 PM
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That might be the best looking metal RDC ever assembled! Another member here (Frank) was nice enough to sell me a box of these several years back. They were a little rough and I've only restored two so far. I wanted to preserve the original metal look so spent some time with a dremel + polishing bit and metal polish. There is some discolouration that I wasn't able to remove, but I like the overall character. One day I'll print off some of the little missing details.
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Posted - February 11 2024 : 5:04:42 PM
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Those polished RDCs look great! That's what I was hoping to do with mine if it still had the plating, but it was too far gone for that to be possible.
Darth Santa Fe, doing weird and challenging projects for the fun of it!
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Posted - February 11 2024 : 7:16:00 PM
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https://youtu.be/kuoM2F5b06k
Who knew Queensdale had an RDC??  
I'm assuming yours have the rubber band drive. A nuisance to maintain, it did give a fairly smooth
performance as the stored energy of the stretch was enough to flick it over current interruptions.
It was about 1960, maybe '59, there was a horrific accident involving an ATSF Budd, in California,
the details of which can be Googled, I am too lazy, and it was a distressing mess. Thereafter the
ATSF label disappeared, so it seems, from Athearn's Budd line up. I often wondered if that was
because of the tragedy.
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Posted - February 11 2024 : 11:35:31 PM
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This one's actually older than the rubber band drive! It has a vertical Pittman-designed motor with metal gearing in a single truck drive system. The gear ratio is only around 6:1 though, so it runs fast and has very little torque.
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Posted - February 12 2024 : 12:20:43 PM
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Darth, your before shots look quite a bit more corroded than mine. You can see the passenger end on my RDC2 in the first and third pictures has a couple of dark spots that didn't polish out, presumably where the plating is gone.
I'd never heard of that crash Chops. Those RDCs hit a curve going 4x the speed limit. As for the Queensdale RDCs, they have the same geared Pittman motor as in the video. They don't come out much, but make occasional video appearances.
https://youtu.be/GLyKBkpQesQ?si=XKFihwdVcWL_ED1u&t=129
Edited by - DaCheez on February 12 2024 12:30:21 PM
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Posted - February 12 2024 : 9:00:08 PM
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Thanks for the video! It sounds like your RDCs have a slower gear ratio that apparently came out later. Another with one of these metal RDCs says that his has straight gear teeth instead of the helical cut teeth in mine as well as a single threaded worm and an actual spring for the motor brushes.
Darth Santa Fe, doing weird and challenging projects for the fun of it!
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Posted - February 13 2024 : 11:03:39 AM
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It's been a while since I've had the RDC apart, but I found a couple pictures from the tear-down. I believe the back-end of the motor has a large spring between the brushes.
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Posted - February 13 2024 : 6:00:25 PM
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That old set runs smooth as glass. Very interesting gearing, thanks for showing.
There was a horrific tragedy involving some 30 souls in 1956.
The ATSF version, according to Greenberg's,
is listed as rare, as Athearn abruptly stopped issuing ATSF, other roads kept
producing, but not ATSF. Google Redondo Junction train wreck 1956.
It strikes me as odd that Athearn would stop producing an ATSF labeling, considering
ATSF is quintessential.
Always a joy to ride the Queensdale.
Edited by - Chops124 on February 13 2024 6:01:52 PM
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Posted - February 13 2024 : 10:49:17 PM
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That mechanism looks like, if you turned it into plastic, you'd have something very similar to the "coffee grinder" AHM C-Liner. I wonder if the maker of the C-Liner did a little copying off of Athearn.
Carpe Manana!
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Posted - February 14 2024 : 8:08:17 PM
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The vertical motor with direct drive into the truck was actually fairly common at the time. You can find similar mechanisms from Rivarossi, Pennsylvania Scale Models/Bowser, various brass imports and some others. The AHM C-LINER was originally made by Rivarossi before the tooling was licensed to Mehano in the 60's.
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Posted - February 15 2024 : 12:10:23 AM
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Darth, you have an above average insight into the lineage of these things. Perhaps you can tell
shed some light onto Tyo Australia? Who, what, why, where and when? There appears to be a
Black Hole when trying to find information about how Tyco tried to enter the Australian market,
when and why and how it was ultimately abandoned.
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Posted - February 15 2024 : 10:50:18 PM
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For that, I only know as much as what's on this page: https://tycotrain.tripod.com/tycotrains/id71.html
Looks like they painted a few US models for Australian railways not long after they started making the PT drive, but only sold them for a few years. With that amount of time, I wouldn't be surprised if they only made one batch, didn't get the sales they hoped for, then sold whatever stock was left before moving on.
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Posted - February 16 2024 : 01:23:50 AM
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Well, that's more information than I had before today! Interesting deductions, but why Australia???
Why not New Zealand or Spain? It is 4,000 miles from Hong Kong to Australia, so shipping was
not a factor as a cost center. Doesn't it cost a big chunk of change to create the necessary
paint schemes? Some of those paint schemes are fairly intricate.
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Posted - February 16 2024 : 1:32:20 PM
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quote:The vertical motor with direct drive into the truck was actually fairly common at the time. You can find similar mechanisms from Rivarossi, Pennsylvania Scale Models/Bowser, various brass imports and some others. The AHM C-LINER was originally made by Rivarossi before the tooling was licensed to Mehano in the 60's.
Originally posted by Darth Santa Fe - February 14 2024 : 8:08:17 PM
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Yup, virtually every one of my trolley models from the period has a similar vertical motor.
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Posted - February 17 2024 : 11:47:04 AM
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Looking at Australia vs. New Zealand and Spain, they were sort of an emerging market at the time with a decent sized population and had some US-built diesels for their railroads, so they could easily paint some existing models to resemble modern Australian trains of the day. Tyco didn't have any existing products that matched Spanish or other European railroads, and New Zealand's population in the mid 70's was less than half the size of Chicago, so it simply wouldn't have been worth it for them to tool NZ specific trains when there was barely a market for a manufacturer that survived on high-volume low-profit trains.
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