American Flyer 971 Lumber Unloading Car - Mo and Joe

Almost all of the original Flyer and now Flyonel "operating" or "action" cars have similar circuits and are based on a pickup "shoe" or "finger" that protrudes from the side of one truck that makes contact with a short, pickup section that is wired to the fixed voltage "accessory" post of the transformer (typically ~15 vAC).  Usually this part of the circuit has a button or rotary switch used to activate the operation.

The other truck will contain (again, typically) two metal wheels that make contact with one of the track rails.   This truck is usually insulated from the rest of the car.  Turn the car over and look to see which rail the metal wheels will contact - in some cases, its the rail closest to the pickup section mentioned above and in some cases, its the rail on the opposite side of the track.  This rail needs to be connected to the base post of the transformer.   Sometimes on a complicated layout - where the rail connected to the transformer base post is already defined and you want Mo and Joe to pitch the lumber in a specific direction (which, if I recall correctly, is the same side of the car as the pickup shoe) - you may need to switch the position of the two metal wheels so they are positioned correctly to sit on the rail wired to the base post.  You need to be careful in spreading apart the truck sideframes when doing this, as the side frames can break off (best to not mess with them if you don't have to).

So to recap -- the circuit should look something like this:

Transformer 15 VAC post --------- button/switch--------------- pickup section         |         the solenoid in the car is wired to the pickup shoe

Transformer Base post---------------- track rail in contact with metal wheels        |        and to the insulated truck with the metal wheels

hopefully this is clear -- if not I can dig around in my old AC Gilbert manuals and find and scan the right pages (presumably since Gilbert no longer exists, the scan won't run afoul of any copyright issue...)

Thank you for the information Rich.  I printed your instructions and will try and set everything up to see if the car works.  I am not an American Flyer guy, so the set up is a little foreign to me, but your instructions are clear so I should be successful.

Jack

Jack - if you want to simply test that the car is working without having to figure out how everything is wired up in a layout, I suggest you get a piece of Flyer track (by itself) and put the car on it, noting which rail is contacted by the metal wheels discussed in my earlier post.  Run a wire from the base post of the transformer to that rail.  You can make the connection with an alligator clip or strip about a half-inch of insulation from the wire and clamp it to the rail with a clothespin.  Connect another wire to the constant voltage (~15 VAC) post and use the other end to make contact with the 'finger' or 'pickup shoe' sticking out from one of the car's trucks.  Its probably easier to also have an alligator clip to make the connection so you can run the car through several cycles to make sure its working ok.

- Rich

Rich,

Thanks for the tip.  I tried it and it works.  It started out a little slow at first.  It probably hadn't been operated in decades, but then it began unloading the planks.  What a hoot!!

Thanks again.

Jack

Jack - cool!  I haven't had mine out of the box in a while either -- probably ought to fire it up.  It is a fun action car...