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Engine Issues

lehighlinelehighlineOGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

I have 2 MTH steam engines, both PS2, that are giving me trouble in DCS mode.

First is a RK NYO&W Hudson, 30-1462-1. I picked up this engine used off the bay. It has seen a lot of running time. The current symptoms are as follows:

When the engine is in reverse, it will not stop. Dialing the speed down with the thumb wheel, hitting the brake, hitting the direction button all slow it down to 1-2 mph, but it does not stop. If you grab it and physically restrain it, or allow it to hit a bumper, it will stop, and the headlight will come on, indicating it is now in forward. Put it in forward motion, and it will reliably stop every time.

The second issue is the smoke. It does not smoke in reverse. It was smoking well in forward, but when reversed, puffs a bit and rapidly dies off. And now while in forward, the unit will generate smoke, but not puff it out the stack. It just kind of lays there.

I did a factory reset on it (twice) to no avail.  Any ideas?

 

The second engine is a Premier Reading T-1, 20-3130-1. I bought this engine new. Since I had not run it in a while, I put it on the MTH charger for an hour. It came up silent (as it should) when I applied power to the track. When I started it up, I could barely hear it. All the sounds are there, just extremely soft. I checked the settings on the remote, and bell, “horn”, and engine sounds are all set at max. The pots in the tender are also set at max. I did a factory reset, but that did not help. There was a second or 2 when the sounds were suddenly at normal volume, but that was it.

The second issue with this engine is that after running for an hour and a bit more it suddenly quits responding to DCS. No amount of fiddling, restarting, etc. gets it to work. What does work is taking it off the track and letting it stand for an hour. My gut feeling is the heat from the electronics is getting too much and causing problems with the board.  Any ideas on this one?

 

Chris

LVHR

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G GGGOGR Forum Member

For the Hudson, you may have shorted motor lead wire causing automatic running when in reverse.  Otherwise you may have a bad processor board.

 

Does the T-1 have the 2.4V AA battery.  I have a feeling the battery is dead and it is a drain on the processor power supply.  It needs to be changed and that should push volume back up.  If it starts loud than goes low volume that can be the issue.  Or, check the speaker to see if it is flaking around the magnet.  While this was not a big issue with 3V systems, there were some 4 ohm speakers that had this issue.  G

lehighlinelehighlineOGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

GGG,

 

Both engines have 3v boards, so 2.4v batteries. The charging ports are 2 pin, not round.

 

I will pull the shell on the Hudson and check the motor wiring. If it is a bad processor board, are they available? Or are they repairable?

 

For the T-1, the sound starts soft and stays that way. It is so soft that at first I thought it had not gone through the startup sequence. I had to pay close attention to hear it. It jumped briefly to normal volume once, without me doing anything, but that was it.

 

I do have another engine with a bad speaker (flaking)as you describe. This engine does not sound like that one at all. BTW, I bought a replacement from MTH  a while back. Now I just have to remember where I put it for safe keeping...

 

Chris

LVHR

G GGGOGR Forum Member

Bad speakers can degrade from static to no output, so it can be a speaker.

 

But battery that is dead and acts like a drain on the Power Supply does the same thing.  So swap batteries on the T1.  The age of that engine is about right for battery failure if it hasn't been changed recently.

 

I would reload the sound file on the Hudson and see if that fixes it, if no motor lead issue.  Just rereading the post so you actually have speed control in revers just can't get full stop?   Still can be a wire though.  In reverse the White will have full DC voltage and the yellow becomes ground control.  If there is  low resistance short between yellow and chassis ground it might cause this.

 

3V processor are becoming hard to come by now.  It may be repairable, but since the fet works in fwd, why it doesn't in reverse leads to the main processor which is not repairable.

 

It can be tested out of the engine, but I would do a reload of the Sound file first.  G

lehighlinelehighlineOGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this post. I decided to run postwar conventional for my church open house. That meant a lot of wheel cleaning and lubing of cars and engines that had not seen rails in over 30 years! (Amazing how well they ran, once each received a little TLC...)

But back to command control.

I made some additional tests on the RK Hudson to see if I had missed anything. In fact, I had. The problem with not stopping in reverse only occurs when the smoke unit is turned ON. As soon as the smoke unit is turned OFF, the engine reverses reliably every time.  I also verified the smoke issue is still present. Anemic fan in forward, no fan and smoke dies off in reverse. Lastly, I noticed the firebox glow works in forward, but not in reverse. I suspect that is not normal either.

I followed your suggestions and checked the wiring to the motor. Everything seems in order: Nothing broken, nothing pinched, nothing loose.

Next was the T-1. I swapped the T-1 battery out for the Hudson's, as per your suggestion. Eureka! We have sound!!! Everything functions as it should! Thank you very much!  At this point I left the battery in the T-1, and buttoned it up. So I now have one functional, and one nonfunctional.

So back to the Hudson: Is it worth trying a sound file reload on it? I know with the bad battery it will have poor sound. I'll have to stop off at my LHS and see if they have any 2.4v NiCds. Is it worth installing a 2.4v BCR instead?

 

Chris

LVHR

 

Alan MancusAlan MancusOGR Forum Member DIGITAL SUBSCRIBER

yes it is worth installing ,as long as you don't mind waiting a minute or so on power up to give the BCR time to fully charge , otherwise you could have issues, as long as you give the BCR time to fully charge it will always function correctly, I have switched many over to 2.4 volt BCR's especially a challenger I own and love it.

Alan

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