Fitting pickups has never been my favourite part of locomotive building, so when I spotted a method different method than my slighly random attachment of wires in the latest Model Railway Journal, I thought that it was worth a go.
Roy Jackson, a very pragmatic model oocmotive builder in my opinion, fixes copper clad boards under the chassis and then fits simple U shaped phosphor-bronze wires that bear in the flange edge. To date I've always attempted to grab my electricity from the back of the wheel but his method is pretty well hidden, you only see the crosss section of the wire by the wheel, so worth a go.
My attempt on the Bulldog isn't quite as neet as Roy's, due to the boards being below the bottom of the frames, the wires have to point down (up on the photo of the inverted chassis) but otherwise things are the same.
And it works. Normally I spend ages fiddling around trying to get all wheels picking up. The first pickup (which covers two wheels) took two goes but the second went straight in. I reckon I halved the time I'd normally spend fiddling and reduced the frustration a lot more than this !
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