Adding pickup rollers to an MTH Railking UP Water Tender

Not needed if being used with MTH engine and it should already have them unless this is modified or the plastic tender from the early Gas Turbine.

IF cast trucks the slot for pickups should be there, just need the insulator, nut screws and pickups.  Yes Premier are different than RK, though a pickup could be the same.  Do a search on MTH Web under service, some models with tender pickups can be found with parts list.  Try the 0-8-0, B6 and such.

Pictures and model # would help. G

I thought most Auxiliary Tenders come with coil couplers???

Chuck,

Coincidentally, I just completed adding a ProtoCoupler to a RK N&W Water Tender. However, there's no need to add a pickup roller to the tender. (The following was done with the expert advice of Marty Fitzhenry and the ProtoCoupler I used was contributed by Engineer Joe.)

I swapped out the Water Tender's rear coupler for an appropriately-sized ProtoCoupler and ran a wire pair through the Water Tender to the standard tender of my RK Imperial N&W Y6b steamer.

Since my steamer lacks a front coupler, I connected the wire pair to the 12-pin connector on the tender's PS2 board at pins 2 and 12. I spliced into the purple wire at pin #2 and inserted the other wire into pin #9 on the header, which was empty, as yours should also be if your steamer lacks a front ProtoCoupler. Also, I used a Dalee connector between the two tenders so that the tether could be disconnected if desired.

Now, I can activate the Water Tender's rear coupler by using the Front Coupler button on the DCS Remote.

If you're a conventional operator, you would use the Whistle/Bell combination for the engine's front coupler, to operate the Water Tender's rear coupler.

Great idea Barry. I'm using a Railking UP water tender on a Lionel Lionmaster UP Challanger. But the idea of using the front coupler option for the rear tender is a plan. I can save the issue of antenna, electronics, etc. in this die cast tender.

Thanks again, 

Chuck

Thanks G. I'll look the truck over, but it looked pretty plain. It's kind of spring loaded to the tender it seems. I think I'll go with Barry's advice but it would be good to know how to add a pickup.

I like this idea. I have two imerial steamers the norfolk and western j  and the sp gs daylight both have ps3. Were would one hook up the wires in the tender for a ps3 board set up. If a pic could be taken or drawn of the connections it may help me in doing this. One of the matching water tenders I got to go with them already had a electrocoupler on one end. Thanks cjack for starting this thread. It was very timley.

Where would one hook up the wires in the tender for a ps3 board set up?

You'd need a description off the pinouts on the PS3 tender board. Unfortunately, I don't have the description.

 Where would one hook up the wires in the tender for a ps3 board set up?"

You might be able to decipher which pins from this PS3 update manual.

http://mthtrains.com/sites/def...ction/50as10709i.pdf

Thanks thats a big help cjack.

Chuck,

You might be able to decipher which pins from this PS3 update manual.

Unfortunately, that won't be of much help. The board in the manual is the PS32 board which has pinouts like the PS2 board. You need pinouts for the PS3 tender board, with the 40npin connector.

Well the trucks and the bottom of the tender looks like it could support pickup rollers if I went that way. The most difficult part of going in that direction is finding part numbers for the necessary MTH parts. Most of the support parts on the MTH website do not function at all. I did find some rollers on a 6 wheel truck, but they don't look exactly compatible. The pictures are drawings and not photographs, so I don't know how closely they represent the actual parts.

The Railking tenders look great with Lionmaster steam.  I was glad to see them in the new MTH catalog.

Chuck, I used Lionel rollers when I converted this Railking engine to TMCC.

Pete

Interesting...

Here:  Go to the last 2 pages,  This is from the MTH web under 0-8-0. G

http://mthtrains.com/sites/def...loded/30st16000e.pdf

Read the manual of your engine.  Many later versions of MTH trains meant to run with Aux tenders have a 4 pin tether in the engine.  You take shell off and route tether through frame and out back of truck.  2 methods are used for control.  A switch to select which coupler fires, Tender or Aux tender.  Obviously this I a safer method as you do not want to accidently fire the tender coupler if the tether is connected.

Other models, MTH wired the forward coupler to act as the trigger for the AUX tender, which means you can fire either one.  The other consideration is AUX tender back up light.  PS-1 tenders are 1.5V, PS-2 are 6V and PS-3 are LEDs.  They are typically wired so that both tender lights come on.   G

My engine is a Lionel Lionmaster Challenger. The MTH water tender looks good behind it and I haven't found a Lionel conventional sized water tender to run with it.

Here is a picture of my MTH water tender trucks. They don't look like anything I've found in MTH parts so far.

I don't have any pictures currently, but I've done 2 of these upgrades.  The first (Premier N&W Aux Tender) used Lionel Pickups I installed using styrene as an insulator and plastic screws, and the second (Premier UP Aux Tender) used pickups from Williams Passenger Cars (look similar to the Lionel one a few posts up).  The best thing about upgrading these to TMCC is that you can give them the same ID as the engine, and then wire the electro-coupler to the Front position, so you can use the F on the controller for the Aux Tender, and B for the Engine's Tender.

If stock rollers won't fit, I just build mounts out of fiberglass board and put them in anyway.   Here's a couple of examples from two different installations.  In the top pictures, I colored the fiberglass with a marker so it didn't stand out.

cjack posted:

My engine is a Lionel Lionmaster Challenger. The MTH water tender looks good behind it and I haven't found a Lionel conventional sized water tender to run with it.

Here is a picture of my MTH water tender trucks. They don't look like anything I've found in MTH parts so far.

Looks like you will have to do a custom install,  G

Yes, could be more fun. I was thinking that running a four wire tether to the Lionel tender to parallel the backup light and a coupler might be best though.

I'd be tempted to drill and tap a hole here to secure a custom roller mount.