It's the one on the right I'm working on. I put the one at the left through its paces a few weeks ago, after it had been extensively reworked. Each of these will be good for about nine cars, thus there's the potential for a pretty good freight train once the work is done. I've already fixed up the drive train, now it's time to put a Pittman motor, which means splines of different lengths, into the chassis. The Atlas splines are pieces of engineering plastic. Give me some solid brass.
The science-project Unimat is not the most precise machine tool in the world, with too much play in the slides to use it for your basic firearm components or a fuel pump on a rocket. On the other hand, it can only take a little bit of metal off on a pass, which means that if you stop and check after each pass of the cutting tool, you'll have a serviceable spline.
Once those are done, the splines get drilled out in order that the entire drive line is bolted together. There's enough free play in that universal joint at right and in the Atlas gear tower itself that a little flexing, particularly on my generous radius curves, is not harmful.
Next up, the onboard power control module for this unit. You did see two batteries in that B unit battery car last December, didn't you?
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