Upgrading the electrical pick-up assembly

Last weekend, among the birds, I received the ordered Merkur third rail pick-ups for coaches (9885). So, I had to place one of them on the coach with lightening.

So, I removed the assembly with the temporary third rail pick-up and swapped it for the nicely sprung Merkur pick-up. I was a bit worried that this black painted metal would be difficult to solder a contact on, but a bit of sanding and solder flux worked great.
This time I managed to pay attention and let the wires run under the axle. The pick-up is now positioned directly over the axle, but the clearance is sufficient to prevent any shorts from occuring. This assembly is much better and the coach also rides the rails smoothly again.

There are also three new additions, a Lionel 654 tank car which is complete and perfect. a Lionel 655 box car which is missing a door and brake wheels and a Lionel 1682 caboose.

Toy trains among birds

Last weekend was the Dutch scale zero gathering in Zutphen. Normally, I would have visited it, but this year it happened to be a 2-rail only gathering. The coarse scale tin-plate show was located a village further in Almen in the middle of a bird show. Here Blik & Speelgoed had laid quiet a substantial L-shaped layout with some interesting toy trains, well on 3-rails obviously.

This colourful layout had modern Merkur trains, Lehnhardt trams and some pre-war Spanish toy trains partially constructed from wood and metal named Manamo (see the picture above, in front of the Darstead engine shed). I had never saw those before and it was nice to touch and feel these rare toy trains for once.

 The silver Merkur Mikado was present as well.

Above you can see two engine sheds. To the left the Darstead engine shed and to the right the Merkur engine shed. The Darstead one is thinner, lighter and lithographed on both sides of the tin-plate. The Merkur one is substantially heavier, with nuts and bolts and much more affordable. So all the prejudices were confirmed again.

Here a really nice green Merkur tank engine and a few goods wagons. The birds were luckily in cages on the other side of the room, so I just focused on the more important and more pleasant aspects of life.

Lighting up a Merkur passenger coach

Two weeks ago, I purchased 6 LED strips of Hufing Tronic with 10 LED's and suitable for both AC and DC operation on the MSCV swap meeting at Herwen. A friendly German grand-father taught me how to connect these strips. Anyway, since then I was busy to scratch-build the electrical pick-ups for the Merkur passenger coach. I used a small piece of aluminium sheet (4.6 x 2.8 x 0.2 cm) on which I glued to piece of Plexiglas (4.8 x 2.0 cm) on which I attached bent brass sheets to connect to the wheels and as third rail pick-up.

Well, the lighting in the passenger coach is now much better with 2 strips of 9 LED's each.

Now it is time to finish this assembly, by allowing the wires to run under the axle and to replace the third rail pick-up by a Merkur one. Then I will also have to apply some tape on the inside of the coach between the roof and the side panels, to block light.