After about 2 years... I am going to continue with my On30 Bachmann mogul saga... I hope to start with a brake cylinder mounting modification. It should look like the photo to the left.

Note that the outside edge of the cylinder sets slightly inside of the outer edge of the wheel, and the back of the cylinder sits flush against the chassis.

Looking at the model, it seems that we have some work to do...

So here below is the North Pole version of the Bachmann On30 Mogul. Because it's brightly colored, it's fairly easy to see what it is missing... Yeah...a lot....

I think the protruding tab on the bottom of the cab support can be removed, and even the water line can be replaced with a brass rod and reshaped more like the prototype.    

However...this is only a model. If it were exactly right, it would be mostly all steel and run on steam. But I think that we can get closer to the real deal... without too much trouble or money...

Look at how far the brake cylinders are from the chassis!  We are going to fix this!

Just in case you are wondering, I am going to wait to put things into a black color until after I am done modifying and photographing... so you can see what I am doing. The bright colors make the details stand out well.

Obviously, on the real C&S #22, the brake cylinders were not hanging out on the end of posts, but are firmly attached to the chassis.  So as this is a 30" guage loco rather than a 36" gauge loco as in the prototype, we need to do some creative engineering.

So if C&S modified a simular loco to 30" guage, how would they do it?   I would assume that they would have a new chassis built, re-guage the wheels, then adjust the running gear?

So if the difference between 30" gauge and 36" gauge is 6" that would be 3" of frame width per side or 1/16" in 1/48 scale per side. So engineers being what they are in both the real world and the scale world and a few things get forgotton in design (like on this model)...  maybe the brake cylinders need something like a 1/16" or .062" of  shim behind them. 

We just want the outside of the cylinder brake lever top to be closer to the outside of the rear wheel as in the top picture of #22.

I'll see what plastic I have and give it a shot.

I found my plastic--1/8" evergreen plastic tube.  I shortened the brake cylinder posts so that the cylinder fits as close as our spacer allows... without bottoming out in its mounting hole.  Now for pictures instead of a thousand words....note the notch in the side of the 1/8" tube section that allows it to fit around the rim of the cylinder...

Once this section of tube is super-glued to the cylinder, it can be painted and glued into the chassis. I am thinking about either notching the coverplate where the lower pin enters into it or cutting off the lower pin entirely... That way the cover plate is easily removable...( I like easily removable )

With the larger mounting area, the cylinder will be much more stable...

Just a note: I have noticed that when I add  the firebox sides that the top part of the spacer ring runs a foul of the fire box sides sitting completely level. So either the firebox side needs a small notch needs to be removed to clear the 1/8" spacer ring or the top of the spacer ring needs to be trimmed even with the cylinder mounting pin to clear the firebox side...

I still like this way much than better than the Bachmann way...

Hmmm... Made in China, rebuilt in the USA.

I'll finish up the other side and be back later. Cheers.

P.S. There is also a single pin brake cylinder version which is glued into the lower plate wheel retainer only. I don't have a lot of confidence in that arrangement and will endevor to make an overall better system for both variants as time permitts....

Other thoughts... Don't think that all On30 Bachmann 2-6-0 moguls are the same... There are differences in the chassis, brake cylinders, circuit boards and so forth as per the production run...but they are all pretty close....The Hawthorne Village variety seems to be exactly the same as the hobby store runs or train set runs just with different paint. (remove the paint with a 10+ hr soaking in 91% isopropyl alcohol )  Your mileage may vary...

I do think that the newer production runs are slightly better... more later...