I have several locomotives that are diesels. They were very inexpensive. Two of them are Athearn "Hustlers" made in the 1950's-60's...
The Infamous Athearn Hustler
My Hustlers are painted exactly the same so they get called the twins. I bought them back when our twin daughters were little..
The Twins
Each girl pickes out a car to go with them. One picked out a tuscan Pennsy passenger car. The other chose a stainless New Haven coach. Obviously, the idea of a Hustler hauling a passenger train wouldn't cut it on the "pro" style layout. Kids...Who'd a thought they would ignore the sacred precepts of model railroading. Anyway, the two Hustlers run like all Hustlers. Their top end is about.400 MPH. The high torque motor coupled with a rubber band drive (what Athearn referred to as High F drive) is a major factor in this outlandish behavior
The other locomotive is an old AHM Electro Motive SW1. It sort of runs. The driven wheels have traction tires. That would be okay, but the wheels also have that groove for the tires. Makes it impossible to run without the tires. The SW1 wobbles down the track. It also runs too fast. Not 400 MPH, but still too fast for a switch engine...
AHM SW1
I found very little info on repowereing thes diesels. What I dfid find was disappointing. Apparently, other model rails think nothing of spending a rediculous amount of money on these little critters. The cheapest alternative was a out of production gear set by Ernst. I remember buying back in the day. Like everyone else I found them EXTREMELYdifficult to set up properly. That Hustler never ran. The other options were a Northwest Short Line PDT or SPUD or whatever. The one for the Hustler is out of production now, but it was way to expensive. The Hustler originally sold for $15. Spending close to $100 to get it running seems ridiculous...
North West Short Lline PDT
Fortunately for me I have hundreds of old Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman magazines in my library. The March 1959 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman has an article called "Unhustling The Hustler" by Cliff Travis. Mr Travis and I think a lot alike in some ways. He's thrifty. In 1959 the Hustler was a new product. It was cheap and popular. Yet. as Mr Travis, states in the article, they were (and still are) crazy fast. Since the repowering kits didn't appear for another few years, Travis made one. Rather than resort to gears he kept the rubber band drive...
RMC March 1959 Page 18
RMC March 1959 Page 19
The Hustler comes out of the box with a 10 mm "axle" and a 1 mm or so drive shaft. Travis added a secondary shaft with a 7/16" diameter pulley, roughly 11 mm. I have no idea what that means in terms of ratio's but I do know that it works. I fabricated my own version of the "Travis Drive". I used readily available parts. The pulley came from a $5 science kit. I replaced the motor with a smaller motor from an N scale Mini-Trix locomotive. The rest of the drive is fashioned from plastic and a length of steel rod in my scrap box..
Widget
The Trix motor worked, but only just long enough to prove Mr. Travis was right. Before it became toast I made a video...
This is how a Hustler normally performs...
Hustler Hustling
As I mentioned above, the other diesel is an AHM SW1. The typical response to 'How do I repower this locomotive" is "Buy a Walthers SW1". Nice thought but said model costs about 80$ on EBay. We are being frugal here. For about $10 I was able to create a decent running locomotive. Not as nice or to scale as the Walthers, but definitlely more affordable. The conversion on this one was much simpler. First I got rid of the truck mount couplers by cutting the mounts off the trucks. I then filled in the ends and added knuckle couplers...
SW1 Modified End
I removed the wheels with the traction tire grooves and replaced them with "normal" wheel sets. You could just replace the grooved wheels with normal wheels. Just pop the old ones off the axle and press the new ones on. This took care of the wobble but the locomotive slipped. To combat that I used my version of "Bullfrog Snot" ($25 oer once). A can of Plasti-Dip is available at Lowes or Home Depot for about $8. Comes in spray can (used here) or quart can....
Plasti-Dip "Traction Aid"
Locomotive was masked off and the wheels were sprayed while turning...
Spray-on Traction Tires
Another video...This one of the Sw1 after the modifications...
Modified AHM SW1
The pulley drive on the Hustler needs some tweaking and something other than an N scale motor. I ordered two Canon motors off EBay. I'm also building a boxcab body for the little critter. I want to give it a kind of pre-'40s "oil electric" look. At one time Cary made a cast metal boxcab body for the Hustler, but they are pretty rare nowadays.
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