Connecting two pw 2023 a units together

bdobson,

Sir, I think the two would look married together. You would need to eliminate one E-unit. This should not prove to be a problem. 

You could contact Jim Barrett off forum. He might recall when this project was covered in OGR magazine.

God Bless,

"Pappy"

Put one of the units on the track, sequence the e-unit for forward operation, and lock the e-unit in that direction. Do the same for the second unit and you're set.

Larry

If you want the locos to reverse, you need to disconnect one E unit and connect both motors to the same E unit.  You will need to run a tether between the two locos.  

You can figure out how to connect both motors to a single E unit by looking at how the motor you did not disconnect is wired.  Wire the 2nd motor the same except reverse the two wires from the brushes.  The 2nd motor has to run backwards from the other motor (the one you did not disconnect from the E unit).

If you wish to have both locomotives operate from 1 e-unit, scroll down for a sketch how to hook up 2 motors together to 1 e-unit. This is for a dual-motored locomotive, but the wiring remains the same for 2 separate locomotives.

Larry

FYI I did this with 2 identical older locos but both facing in the same direction. One was running stronger than the other and it ruined the gears on one of them.Nick

Hi, bdobson,  I did exactly what you describe.  I purchased 2023 A  missing e-unit and horn assembly to run with a powered 2023A I already had, ran a common power wire between the collector assemblies and a common wire between the field coil connections then ran wires between the brushes but reversed the brush wires on the loco running in reverse.  I installed a miniature 4 wire connector in the tether so the locos can be uncoupled.  The problem I noticed was that the loco without horn or e-unit was lacking weight on the unpowered truck.  I added lead weights over it to make it track better.  Your engines will track & pull better if you just disconnect the e-unit on one of them.  

There had to be some underlying issue - this is not a problem with motors set up this way from the factory as dual-motored, or with double-heading similar, and even not too similarly constructed locos.