Very nice engine, nice work by Lionel #2031020
Thanks, Mr Muffin !
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Does the box say Made in Korea or China? Just curious. I've seen about 30-70% split so far this year in the items I've seen.
Thanks for the peek inside - one of the few motors I've ever seen put in the opposite direction. Probably a must from a engineering stand point. I seen a former K-Line of one of these from the TMCC modular days and it was a wiring mess inside.
Jim
Yeah, I’d be curious too.....beings this pup is just a hopped up Kline with Legacy goodies....looks like Bruk will be updating a bunch of Kline tank engines in the future.......no??....
Pat
Interesting. I have two and love them. Thanks for this.
That has to be the neatest wiring job I have seen in any engine, plus it runs well. Hopefully a sign that Lionel has turned a page. Thanks Alex for showing this off.
Pete
Very nice Alex. Enjoy.
@harmonyards posted:Yeah, I’d be curious too.....beings this pup is just a hopped up Kline with Legacy goodies....looks like Bruk will be updating a bunch of Kline tank engines in the future.......no??....
Pat
Id have to see the two side by side lol
Well that was definitely worth $12!
Thanks Alex. Always enjoy the looks inside!
alex this makes me want one now. I think dave is getting better at wiring management on the insides of things. the smoke unite looks easy enough to get to and work on when the wicks need replacing. also the whistle steam seems almost trouble free. glad I never sprung for the kline model. this is much better.
Thank you for your videos Alex, nicely done.
Alex,
Thanks for showing that little gem. Great little hauler.
Great little engine, thanks for sharing Alex. Didn't order one because I ordered a ton of stuff out of that catalog.
picked up mine yesterday, very nice loco except it will not go thru several of my ross switches even though I have powered up the point rails with a DZ-1008 relay. also noticed no place for a battery to hold up the sound. my last legacy engines both had battery terminals. very smooth runner and good sound.
Alex M., thank you for this nice video, my first thoughts of the looks of this locomotive was sort of bad looking idea, but, the more I look at the video, I’m thinking more about it. I’m getting used to the shape. It’s definitely an odd shape, as were the Camelbacks. I’m not impressed with the chassis and motor in the front, it seems backwards, is this a good design? I think the sounds, the smooth moving wheels, crew talk and tower com are great. This locomotive really smokes fantastic, both, the smoke stack as well as the whistle steam. Your videos of these various engines, such as the VL Big Boy, The Niagara, are all a big help. Thank You very much for all you do for our Hobby. Happy Railroading Everyone
Thanks for sharing. Nice looking piece!
Great video and info Alex. Falcon70
I wish they'd have used a better drive-line. That forward facing motor is leftover from K-Line, and that's also in the Legacy K-4. So far I've replaced three drive blocks on Legacy K-4's where the gears are stripped inside where you can't get to them. Lionel's solution is replace the whole frame!
The small motor in this engine is not as big of a handicap as it would be in. Hudson or Pacific. Maybe in its heyday on the B&A it may have pulled 6 or more cars but on the NYC with commuters moving to buses in the 40s I would be surprised if they ever pulled more than 3 cars and when finally replaced, a single RDC1 was all that was needed.
Pete
I don't think it's the fact the motor is small or facing forward.
Imo. It's the fragile gearbox with the intermediate gears on a shaft through bushings in the center of the chassis.
I owned one of the legacy k4s and happened to catch excessive wear on the intermediate shaft to the point bronze filings could be seen. The brunt of the load on the axle gear is taken on one side of this shaft.
Remove the bottom cover on the Legacy H10 and you will see this gearbox setup. My k4 had maybe a couple hrs runtime at most. Whether it was a burr on the shaft, defective bushing, or simply the fragile design. I suspect more of these failures will be occurring over time.
It's not simple, robust setup, like a worm running over a nice wide axle gear.
This gearbox style is also used in the heavy and light mikes, as well as rear facing motored Legacy mohawk, Legacy m1A, and first run Legacy class j. There may be others.
All one has to do is peek between the spokes above the driven axle to see if the intermediate shaft and bushings are in the chassis.
Check out the :20 mark on this video ( not mine) and you will see the shaft in the bushings above the third axle:
so I am confused. is this drive shaft mechanism ok? the small motor I can live with. if this engine is going to have problems down the road at the price tag of just a little over 1000 dollars maybe I wont get one. can some one confirm this issue. kline always made great looking models,but the electronics and mechanical insides were less than up to par. even for the the era they were made in.
The D-1a suburban type engines were powerful locomotives. A photograph in one of my Boston & Albany references states "the engine was designed to handle up to 20 suburban coaches." The B&A D-1a 4-6-6Ts had a tractive effort of 41,600 pounds. The most powerful Pacific 4-6-2 locomotive on the B&A (classes K-6a and K-6b) had a tractive effort of 42,900 pounds, and most had less. Another reference states that "they could produce a tractive force exceeding that of a (New York Central) K-14g Pacific (39,420 pounds) and closely matching that of a J-2 Hudson" - 44,800 pounds not including booster engine. By the time the D-1as were replaced by Budd RDCs (1951), people were driving their cars and rail traffic was not what it had been before World War II. I plan to run my model with only two or three cars, as shown in many pictures, but I do have concerns about the motor.
MELGAR
Interesting observation Rick. I just checked my K-Line Suburban and it has a free standing gearbox. No evidence of intermediate gear shafts in the frame. I would be surprised if the Lionel version is different.
Roger not sure what your experience with K-Line is but all of my scale steam has been trouble free and they all except for a couple of Cruise engines have Lionel electronics.
Pete
I see the secondary shaft behind the center driver on the new Legacy tank engine at 4:09-4:15 on this video ( Not Mine)
I think most of the K-Line steam that has the forward facing motor used the same design for the gearbox. That's my major reservation about this unit, having already encountered multiple failures with the Legacy K-4 with the same gearbox design.
Neither the K-Line 4-6-6T nor the scale Hudson uses a frame mounted intermediate gear. I will have to check the Mikados, B6, and A5s but it appears while Lionel uses the forward facing motor they are not using the K-Line gearbox which is pretty substantial.
Another example of the early 2000 engines, both Lionel and K-Line, being superior mechanically vs the newer remakes.
Pete
Interesting Pete, I didn't take my K-Line Tank Engine apart to see, I wonder if the Legacy 4-6-6T uses that crappy design?
John, No need to take it apart. You can see through the spokes and its not like the one in the video that Rick posted. My Hudson I have taken apart and it has the same rugged gearbox thats in the K-Line Suburban. I will check my K-Line Mikado against my Lionel Legacy engine tonight.
Pete
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Interesting Pete, I didn't take my K-Line Tank Engine apart to see, I wonder if the Legacy 4-6-6T uses that crappy design?
It does . See the video 3posts up.
That's a bummer, I was going to look for one of these. Based on my experience with the Legacy K-4, I think I'll pass on this one.
The first image is a snapshot from Alex M's first video (top) taken with about 1:22 remaining. Second image is an enlargement. There appears to be a bushing just behind the middle driver. The bushing seems to have a flat at the top. Could that flat be what prevents the bushing from rotating in the frame rather than a press fit?
MELGAR
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I think we'd need a much better view to actually see what is in there.
@Norton posted:Neither the K-Line 4-6-6T nor the scale Hudson uses a frame mounted intermediate gear. I will have to check the Mikados, B6, and A5s but it appears while Lionel uses the forward facing motor they are not using the K-Line gearbox which is pretty substantial.
Another example of the early 2000 engines, both Lionel and K-Line, being superior mechanically vs the newer remakes.
Pete
The intermediate gear is probably how Lionel gets the gear train to be backdriveable. The old K-Line gearbox setup is not backdriveable at all.
@Lou1985 posted:The intermediate gear is probably how Lionel gets the gear train to be backdriveable. The old K-Line gearbox setup is not backdriveable at all.
There are plenty of Legacy locos with back drivable gearboxes with the traditional worm and axle gear setup. I suspect the extra gears are to allow better low speed performance or get the best performance out of the motor/speed control being used in a particular loco.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I think we'd need a much better view to actually see what is in there.
Heres the gearbox setup from my Legacy h10, which has the intermediate gearshaft and gears. There is lateral slop in the intermediate gearshaft that looks like it could present a half a gear( or less) mesh not unlike what is seen on diesel locomotive trucks. At the same time, the brass gear is meshing on one side of the worm
The brass colored gear is driven by the worm. The smaller gear next to it turns the larger axle gear. This is where I say all of the torque is on one side of the intermediate shaft.
This photo shows the intermediate gearset pushed all the way to one side of the gearbox about.
In this photo I pushed it up towards the axle gear. I guess the question is. Which way does the worm shove the gear when the loco is in the forward direction, so it meshes more completely or only partially?
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@RickO posted:There are plenty of Legacy locos with back drivable gearboxes with the traditional worm and axle gear setup. I suspect the extra gears are to allow better low speed performance or get the best performance out of the motor/speed control being used in a particular loco.
Bingo....the tiny ( and horrible Mubachi 385) needs all the help it can get to get good low rpm performance out of it...why in the world they went around their butts and back again to keep that sorry motor in these types of locomotives is a mystery to me.......besides they’re just trying to be cheap.....
Pat
@harmonyards posted:Bingo....the tiny ( and horrible Mubachi 385) needs all the help it can get to get good low rpm performance out of it...why in the world they went around their butts and back again to keep that sorry motor in these types of locomotives is a mystery to me.......besides they’re just trying to be cheap.....
Pat
But.... that doesn't explain why this gearbox design was used on the Legacy mohawks , M1As and J's a few years ago. Granted they have large Canon motors instead of Pittmans.
Oh well sorry for the thread drift Alex. i always enjoy the "new loco dissection" videos.
I can't see the gears fully but the intermediate gear may be there to increase the overall gear ratio and torque multiplication to improve low-speed running, especially if the motor is smaller and produces less torque than usual. Can you put an arrow on the picture to point to the front of the engine or show the motor shaft or worm gear?
MELGAR
@RickO posted:But.... that doesn't explain why this gearbox design was used on the Legacy mohawks , M1As and J's a few years ago. Granted they have large Canon motors instead of Pittmans.
Oh well sorry for the thread drift Alex. i always enjoy the "new loco dissection" videos.
Yeah, sorry Alex, for trampling on your thread....I’m just so anti-Mubachi, I can’t help myself....and Cannons aren’t much better....landfill quality....
Pat
@RickO posted:There are plenty of Legacy locos with back drivable gearboxes with the traditional worm and axle gear setup. I suspect the extra gears are to allow better low speed performance or get the best performance out of the motor/speed control being used in a particular loco.
I'm not familiar with Lionel's latest gearboxes, so I assumed that all the Legacy backdriveable gearboxes were the same. All of my steam except one locomotive is MTH Premier with the large worm/wormshaft gearbox that's pretty bullet proof. Any of the Legacy stuff I've seen first hand has had that little intermediate gear setup.
