This loco is about 30+ years old! It is tender driven. Pickup is from the loco wheels as well as the tender wheels. I had to remove the two center wheels from the tender so that I could modify the pickup from the tender wheels. It has a three pole pancake motor. What I noticed is that it tends to slow down on irregular areas of the track unlike the diesels which are long and therefore they have better pickups.
Enjoy!
Ananda
Nice work getting a 30+ year old tender drive running. It was a great idea to use both the loco and tender pickups for better reliability. From the video, it looks more like the slowdown is happening on curves. Possibly traction, tight radius, wheel gauge, or some mechanical friction coming into play.
Great to see these older locos brought back to life.
If you get a chance, please share some installation details, tips/tricks and pictures that would be helpful for others as well.
I think the issue of slowing down is due to the level of the track at the two ends where it has the curves. My board is on pink faom but it does not have a full length wood backing underneath! I did that to keep it light. This again is due to the way I have the whole thing supported only on two Aluminum angles screwed to the walls on either sideof the room. There are a couple of places in the middle i have supported so that it does not have a sag. Otherthan that, it has no rigid support. I can olny try to put shims under the tracks to see if I can somehow level it. After almost all the ladnscape done, that will be a big nightmare!
