Omnicon Scale Models Gearbox

The Omnicon brass steam locomotives that were manufactured by Samhongsa out of Korea, have a gearbox that runs fantastic. The problem is, it doesn't last very long. Once the gearbox fails, that's it; you have a nice display model. Both companies are long out of business, so spare parts are not available.

Brian Jackson, via his company Jackson-Standard (see the bottom of this page for links), has created a replacement gearbox. Brian states that these each take at least 2-1/2 hours to machine for just the gearbox halves. Since these are very time-consuming to produce, Brian only made an initial run of 100 of these gearboxes, and they are getting close to selling out. He has indicated that when they are sold out, he will only consider doing another run if he can get at least 25 firm commitments.

The Omnicon models that are affected are the PRR K4 (4-6-2), PRR L1 (2-8-0), PRR I1 (2-10-0), and NYC Mohawk (4-8-2).

This first photo shows the original gearbox opened up to show its internals.

Here is a more complete picture of the motor and gearbox assembly. Please ignore the bolt in the gearbox, as that was Bill working on trying to prevent the free-rolling feature from working. The photo does, however, give you a good view of what the assembly looks like, should you decide to open your model up.

This is what the installation looks like using the Jackson-Standard replacement gearbox (painted).

This is the replacement gearbox by itself.

This photo shows the internals of the replacement gearbox. Truly a work of art.

References