Mick Moignard's Blog

My RGS Goose #2 was acquired years ago, slightly damaged - it looked as though it had been dropped nose down, and was missing the pilot and one set of front wheels - which also meant that I got it for a very decent price.  I don't actually know whether it was a Lambert or a Balboa - but it does - did - have a Sugiyama makers plate attached to the chassis.  I'd tidied it up with some new N-scale spoked wheels in the front truck - they looked OK but nothing special, and a new pilot and snowplow, and so on.  Over the years I'd had several attempts to make it run properly.  Early on I had the split gear issue on one of the drive axles - which lead to a new motor truck.  Then that had its motor replaced with a 5-pole Mashima, but it was still very noisy, and with the brass wheels, prone to pickup issues if it hadn't been used for a while.  It moved from a Digitrax DZ121  decoder to a DZ123, and then to a Lenz Mini-Gold and Power-1 combo - which neither made much difference to the poor pickup,  nor any change at all to the noise.

But in an idle conversation with Mark Kasprowicz, repowering brass Geese with Con-Cor chassis was mentioned.  I wondered if I one could be squeezed into my #2 - and follow it up with some proper sound, given that the mechanical issues would then be solved.  I figured that it would fit nicely, with the flywheel in the rear box extension of the body, and powered truck in exactly the same place as the original.  And I found that this isn't a difficult conversion either - the frame modifications and adding new mountings inside the rear box is a one-evening project.  

First, take the donor goose frame apart.  Pull it out from the box body, unscrew the little PCB at the front and unclip the wires from that from the circuit board.    Then unclip all the rest of the wires from the circuit board, take out the two screws, and remove it.  Unscrew and remove the rear truck, then unclip the motor and the powered truck - you'll need to assist the clips on the top of the powered tuck a little. Unscrew the plastic motor clip, and carefully pull off the two steps and the brake gear rods from the underside - and you should now have the bare frame.    Your modifications are limited to the Con-Cor frame, and to the #2 goose body.  

First, cut off the lug from the front of the Con-Cor frame and file that smooth.  Then file off all the body attachment lugs from the sides of the frame, and make that smooth too - take a little care here, because firstly you'll need to put a square against the frame side, and secondly without doing this, the frame won't fit the #2 body.   Next, mark a line exactly 32mm from the rear end of the frame - and then cut off the rear of the frame and file carefully and squarely back to that line.   Clip the motor back into the mounting bracket, and place that on the frame. You should have around 1mm of frame behind the flywheel.  

Next, cut the two rear corners out of the frame.  My cutouts were 9mm front to back and 5.5mm width, leaving a tongue at the rear just under 14mm wide, that slotted nicely into the rear box of the #2 goose body.   Finally, file off the two frame member castings that run down the underside of the frame flush with the flat floor area under the motor area.  Don't file off the dome in the middle of that area where the motor clip screws in - otherwise you'll have to glue the motor clip back on to the frame.  

Now is the time to strip the #2 goose - you need to get everything off the box body including any weights.   You should find that the cut-down frame will fit into the box body, but it will stick out too far downwards.  We now need to get it further up into the box, so that the flat floor of the underside of the motor area is around 0.5mm further into the box than the bottom of the box.  

I had hoped that just filing off the top of the rear tongue would work, so I set onto that, and filed that rear tongue down till it was about 1mm think.  But that wasn't enough, so I still had to move the interior mounting plate in the rear box bumpout.   I found that if I grabbed it with pliers and twisted it, it came out easily.   You need to file around 2mm off the front face of this piece, so that the new frame and motor clip can fit into the body properly.   Now,  you need to get the rear plate back into the body. If you don't file the rear platform area off the frame, it needs to be about 2mm further up inside the body.  Put it into the space, and gently push the frame into place until it's just inside flush with the bottom of the body.  You say you can't get the frame in that far? - you'll need to file off the interior projections of the bottom side door hinges to get it in.  Once you can get the frame in place and can see where the rear retaining plate goes, solder it back in its new location and check that it is level.  I guess you could also Araldite it in place if you wanted.    Just ensure that there are no solder or Araldite fillets around the edge stopping the frame from sitting on it properly.   Now drill a #61 hole through the frame rear tongue to match the screw hole that's in the rear mounting plate, and you'll be able to attach the frame to the body at the rear with the original screw.   This hole will be about 1.5mm behind the rear of the two holes that originally held the brake mechanism.  

Here's a picture of the revised frame from the underside.  You can see where it's been shortened, and the screw holding the rear.


Now you need to make up a front frame bracket.  I bent mine up from 15-thou nickel silver, about 5mm wide.  I drilled a hole (#67, if I remember) in the middle of this strip, close to one edge, and tapped it to take one of the old Goose mounting screws.  The hole needs to be close to one edge so that the frame, when the motor is attached, can be got past the bracket.   Then I bent up the ends so that the final U-shaped bracket fitted closely inside the body - with the two vertical horns of the U being about 5mm long.  I then screwed it to the existing ready-tapped front hole on the frame, but with the screw in from the underside.    I removed a little of the frame crosspiece by the screw hole so that the screw would nestle down to the frame properly.  

Now, with that front bracket attached to the frame,  shove the whole lot into the body, add the rear screw, and level the frame inside the body so that it all fits straight and level.  Carefully remove the two screws and the frame, leaving the front bracket in place. Did I tell you to tin the two upturned ends of the front bracket first?  Well, I should have done.  Solder it in place.  Chances are, that like me, you'll have to take two or three goes at this to get it all in place properly.  Put the frame back in and check it's all OK.  Now put the motor clip back on the frame and check that it still fits OK. If not, you'll need to remove a bit more metal from the front edge of the rear mounting plate in the body.   Here's an inside picture that shows this internal bracket:

You can also see the front weight, the speaker and the MicroTsunami's capacitor.


That's the difficult bits done.   What I did next was wash the frame and the body, dried them, and then reassembled the frame - screw on the motor clip, clip in the motor, put the power truck back in, threading the pickup wires carefully through the holes in the frame.    For DC, then just connect the motor and pickup wires together, though I added plugs and sockets on mine so that I can remove the truck and decoder without unsoldering.    Put the frame back in the box - flywheel first, and noting that it will be a close fit against the front bracket you added, and give it a test - and basically, that's it.  Except that you'll need a spacer of about 2mm between the front frame mounting in the rear box and the rear of the front frame,  

What I then did to finish it off was this.    I dismantled the new frame again, and painted it.   While that dried,  I took the original box body weight and filed a corner off so that it would fit onto the front wall of the box, over the original front mount bracket - and attached it with double-sided tape.  I put a 3/4 inch round speaker into a Soundtraxx speaker box, and added that to the end of 2-inches of speaker leads off the Goose MicroTsunami.  I shortened the red and black leads and added mini-sockets to them to plug into the mini-plugs I'd added to the truck leads, and I added the orange and grey to the motor.   A small piece of double-side tape went on the back of the speaker box, then, once I'd reassembled the frame again,  I wriggled the whole lot into the box, with the speaker stuck to the weight - check the photo above.   I didn't add lights to my goose, so I cut the white and yellow light wires off short.   Here's a picture of the revised mechanism, showing the plugs in the pickup leads.  


I decided that I would also add the Con-Cor front truck to replace the original, given that it had those nasty N-scale wheels in it - not that overly-wide the Con-Cor wheels aren't also rather nasty,   If yours still has the original wheels you'll probably stick with it - but what I did was file about 1mm off the bottom of the centre piece of the Con-Cor truck, and then mounted it on the original peg, with the spring above it and a washer and the spring washer below it.  And here's a pic of the assembled goose showing the Con-cor truck.   All I then needed to do was program the decoder, and that was it.  


Since taking the photos above I've turned the wheels down a bit.  The Con-Cor flanges are to RP25, but for standard gauge - which is also why the wheel treads are so wide.  I found that turning the flanges down so that they drop into the HOn3 NMRA gauge not only makes the wheels look better but it also stops issues with the flanges bottoming on spikes on small rail sections - 55 and 40 particularly, and that reduces further any chances of dropouts.  Here's a photo of the whole thing, after doing the wheels - compate the front truck to the photo above:

And here's a closeup of the rear truck after doing the wheels.  I blackened the front truck wheels, but I polished the rear truck treads and then left then clean do as not to affect the pickup.  


And how goes it go now?    Mechanically, like all Con-Cor geese, it's practically silent - above about step 60 you can hear the motor whine, but at more normal speeds, nothing.  

Programming-wise, what I've done is this.  I set CV3 to 25 for slow acceleration. CV61 set to 255 (-127 with DecoderPro), coupled with CV4 at 135, means that it coasts nicely with the throttle closed, and stops on the brakes when F11 is pressed.  I set the engine to start on step 1, and then set up a custom speed table that actually prevents the thing moving on step 1 - so I tweak the throttle onto to step 1 to start the engine - but the goose doesn't yet move.  On my Digitrax system, I have the emergency stop set to local, and pressing that stops the engine.  CV212 is set to 80 to calm the back-emf down a bit, and then I played with volume levels, the equalizer and the reverb until I was happy.  Finally I set the master volume to 50 which is about right for a home layout.    Though of course over the coming weeks I may play around with these settings a bit.