adding a roller pickup to an engine?

I add the roller to the tender of steamers, that's usually fairly easy to do.  Many times there is provisions for factory hardware, other times I use some fiberglass board to make a mount.

On the engine under which you have room the simplest way to add a roller is to replace one of the single rollers with a double roller.  I did this on a couple of my MTH engines.

Dennis

WHo makes it and what is its part number?

Thanks

Mark

I added a 3rd roller to the trailing truck of my Lionel Atlantic. Worked out great.

It's kinda' hard to photograph it after it's in place, but here's one I put on the Original Lionel Reading T1 tender.  With the two on the locomotive, this totally solves the issue of stopping on any switch.  The black base is three pieces of .062 fiberglass board that I used to build up the insulated mount.  Having multiple layers, I was able to make it the correct height to mount the roller.

I used to do that with my Lionel steamers, used the whistle pickups. Allowed them to go through 45 degree crossings

To answer the original question, all of mine had existing tethers that had power between the tender and the locomotive.  I just add a 1.1A trip PTC to the circuit to protect the tether wire in the event of a derailment that puts the tender roller on the outside rail

I've done a lot of my smaller steamers, or even larger ones that only have two pickups.  It's really night and day having the extra roller some distance from the factory supplied ones.

Touched on above, but when the pertinent electronics are in the tender - once the rule; still common - the easiest place to add a roller is often (not always) on a tender truck, rather than the loco itself. The AC track power is going to be routed to the tender board anyway, so just trace the tether (AC) leads and add the new wires.

Here's another way - and it's relative easy; it's not actually visible at all when the tender is on the track - the toolboxes - and black paint - partly hide it, but even without them this location can be pretty out-of-the-way. It's a WBB 4-6-0 that I upgraded to ERR Commander using an old (1940's) die-cast tender and trucks (you can see the boards above the pickup). The standard pickups didn't like a couple of GG switches on my layout.

I added one in the center like that with a longer tender, and it tended to short on switches and sometimes would fall off the rail on curves.  I stick to them on the trucks now.

Mark,

I couldn't find the part number on the MTH website but you can get it by calling the parts department and tell them what it is you want.  That is what I did to get mine a few years back.

Dennis

THank you Dennis and GunrunnerJohn. I will call MTH tomorrow about the double pickup for the one with room and look into making a mount for the other. Any difference in the longer arms vs shorter arms to the rollers, or is determined by mounting height from the center rail.

Mark

I determine the type of roller to use based on the room available.  For most tender jobs, I end up using a short roller because that's all that will fit.

I'm away from my home so can't look at mine but as I recall there is no adjustment for the distance from engine to track for the double roller.  I think the double roller has a longer base with two screw holes, but you can mount it OK where the single roller was held with one screw.

Dennis

As long as the rollers are between the wheels as they are on virtually all the trucks I see, there should be no adjustment necessary to use them.

Here's one I just got in, it had a couple of wrinkles, but it came out fine.

As you can see, the truck mount has a big screw that sticks up and blocks any possibility of installing a roller.  I first replaced that with some shims and a screw that fits flush below the line between the truck sideplate mounts.  I put small spacers around the screw to prevent the truck from moving side to side, it's secured the same as with the original screw.

Since the sideplates have screws securing them, I just lengthened the inside two so I could bolt on my .062 fiberglass mount.  The roller is mounted on that plate as well, and the wire snaked inside the tender.

If I don't have a convenient screw, I typically bond the fiberglass mount to the truck with Loctite 380 BlackMax adhesive.