During these stay at home times I’m trying to catch up on some incomplete and long delayed projects.? One of them is to get a Mantua Reading Atlantic running well.? I bought it a couple years back because it was nicely built.? These locos had a factory assembled idler gear box and I had high hopes for it as a runner, but unfortunately it’s pretty bad.? It’s very noisy and rough running.? When I run it upside down in a cradle I can see the gearbox shaking and feel it vibrating.
The Mantua kit instructions include this admonition, “The gear box unit is factory-built because its accurate assembly is essential to proper operation.? Not that we don’t trust you!? But do us a favor and DON’T take it apart.”?
Well, the statute of limitations on that has long expired and, in any case, I’m pretty fearless about these kinds of things so I figured I’d dig into it and see if I could improve it.? But, in the meantime I bought a bunch of old Mantua parts including one of these gearboxes apart.? My plan was to work on this spare and if I got it running well that would be an improvement for the loco and if I couldn’t, then I wouldn’t be any worse off.? Unfortunately this gearbox is missing an essential part, one of the brass worm shaft bearings.
This bearing is spherical with flat ends.? The diameter is 0.250”, length over flats 0.189” and the bore fits a 3/32” shaft.? P/N is 6303.? A P/N that I think is pre-war is X-086-e.? It is not the same as the similar, but smaller, M0293 used in the logger and 90s era power drive locos.? P/N 6388, used on the General in the late 50s, is dimensionally about the same and might work in a pinch.
If anyone has a spare of these, not worn out, that they would be willing to part with, please contact me off list at jbopp007 “at” gmail dotcom.
And, if anyone has any sage advice on getting this loco to run well, I’d be glad to hear it!
John Bopp
