How do you change startup direction on a Lionel RS-3

The easiest way would be to swap the wires around at the motors, or follow the motor leads back to the circuit board and reverse the plugs if possible.

Rusty

Thanks Rusty, I'll open it up and see what it looks like.

I opened up the engine and there are three wires going to the truck two are black and probably the common lead and one black wire with a white stripe. there are wires and plugs to a  circuit board. At this point I am concerned about messing with it unless I can get a wire diagram or more advise on switching wires. The wires to the motor are not easy to get to unfortunately. I thought working on this would be fairly easy. Once inside it looks a lot more complicated than I thought.

Well a search for your item # shows this set.

Under Service documents it shows this wiring diagram.

That should help you identify what goes where.

Looks like the motor leads attach to the reverse unit board at location J3.

Perhaps all you need to do is reverse the (+) and (-) at that plug.

Good luck!

Mark

Don't forget to also change the headlight connections, or you'll have the wrong headlight on for the direction of travel.

Stuart

Great diagram, and it's easy to pull the wires out of that plug and swap them, that's a very easy solution!

Thanks so much Mark! I will check that out.

Check to be sure that the railroad you are modelling AND the era you are modelling does call for the long hood forward.  Different railroads had different ideas of which way should be forward.  Generally the earlier years called for the long hood forward.  But during the long production span of the RS-1, the engines were built, to order, with either option and some roads ordered them with controls on both sides so the engineer could sit facing either end.  Some railroads that had ordered RS-1's with the long hood forward, actually rebuilt them to reflect the short hood forward version.  The engineer actually has better vision when running short hood forward.

Paul Fischer

Paul, from the photos I saw on the internet the RS-3 for the LIRR seemed to have the long hood going forward. Maybe someone here with some knowledge on this particular engine can chime in. Personally I like the long hood leading as it just looks right to me. The color Lionel used was orange and dark gray which should give a clue as to the time period.

As I pointed out in another Reply, the Diesel Spotter's Guide stated that most of the

RS2s and RS3s were designed to operate long hood first.

Lew Schneider