4-4-0 American Locomotive

The 4-4-0 is pretty simple inside. The control board is typical of Bachmann's basic control board. I did the same retrofits I did to other locomotives, including replace the smoke unit and substitute the smoke unit power supply with a high efficiency power converter.

The tender, out of the box, only serves one purpose: Provide additional track power pickups.

Converting from track power to battery power requires isolating the track power pickups from motor power, or just remove the track pickups if possible. I add wires where necessary to power the motor from my controller rather than from the track.

This tender is pretty small, no room for a battery pack. I added a speaker for sound. There already was a place for a speaker in the tender. I put the Crest receiver in the tender, and a battery connector out the back of the tender for hookup to a following battery car. This loco also had a mechanical chuff sensor on the rear axle, and I wired that through to the controller in the tender.

It's pretty, but I don't think all the gold trim is realistic. I'll fix that some winter. This one needs more than light weathering, it needs a whole new paint job.