LionChief 0-8-0 Stalls on FasTrack Switch

I’m not familiar with your engine or Fastrack turnouts. On a couple of my engines with wireless tethers one being a early Legacy 0-8-0. I added a jumper wire between the engine and tender which gives the engine side 8 more wheels contacting the outer rails. If the tender has a axle wiper mounted on the truck. I’d go right there. I used just a wire with rings and used screws already in place. You end up handling the engine and tender as one. But it’s small enough in size it’s not an big issue. You could also just look for a single wire plug in connection.

Do you absolutely need the traction tires ?

If the layout is relatively flat, you could probably dispense with the taction tires all together and see if that solves the problem.

The layout is completely flat.  However, I don't know if any issues are created by having a wheel designed for a traction tire left empty.  That leaves a recess in tread.

Common traction tires are in the 4/100ths inch thick range. I can't imagine there would be any substantial issue in running the wheel w/o the traction tire. I do it on it a LionChief General with a similar issue with no problems. You have nothing to lose by trying it and see how she runs.

@Chuck K. posted:

This is on a museum layout that children operate...

I replaced the traction tire with a proper one for the 0-8-0 and still had the problem, although it was better.  The engine was dead for only about an inch of travel.  I then replaced the traction tire with one designed for the smaller diameter of a diesel so it would stretch to be thinner.  This made a slight further improvement, but it still stalled at slow speeds...

However, since this is for a museum layout, and I might not always be around to fuss with engines... ...to get things reliable.

So, any further ideas for track changes, or even more ideas for engine changes, would be appreciated.

The problem is that the wires in the tether to the tender are brittle and breaking. One of the wires through the tether is additional ground contact through the tender wheels, as Lionel knew about this problem, and that was their fix.

@ADCX Rob posted:

The problem is that the wires in the tether to the tender are brittle and breaking. One of the wires through the tether is additional ground contact through the tender wheels, as Lionel knew about this problem, and that was their fix.

That was exactly the problem.  I had already fixed it down at museum before I got home and saw your post.  Another suggestion had been to add a wire for tender pick up and that sort of rang a bell.  I had lost sound in one of these a couple years ago due to a broken wire the same way.  I noticed the third wire and even made a note of it, and then must have forgotten about it.  That prior post dislodged my memory and I drove down to the museum and, voila, that was it.  You can see the broken wire in the middle of this photo.  These engines get WAY more operating time (and entering and exiting curves) than probably any home layout.  So, the wires get a lot of flexing.  (Same for wires for passenger cars and we may think about upgrading their design a bit.)

For reference, if anybody wants to know.  The outer two wires are for the speaker.  The connection one position in from the fireman's side is the pick up from the front tender truck (they use the front truck only for power pick up).  The remaining contact is not used.  So, just three wires.

Of course, this makes tender truck wheel cleanliness important.  While the docents are fairly good about cleaning locomotive wheels, they tend to not bother with rolling stock including tenders.  (We will have to give them a little added training for this.)

This is what the wheels looked like before cleaning.  That shiny coating acts as a pretty good insulator and it takes a little work to remove it (we just use 70% alcohol and a microfiber rag).

After cleaning:

With the wire fixed AND the wheels clean, there is no stalling at all.

@Chuck K. posted:

That was exactly the problem.  I had already fixed it down at museum before I got home and saw your post

The wires will continue to break. I gave up on the drawbar connector for electrical connection and went with a more durable solution using a JST connector.

Thanks.  That's a good suggestion.  I had been thinking something more durable was needed.  The thing is, I have at least EIGHT of these engines to deal with as I have provided many spares to two children's layouts I have made - at the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum (CA) and at the Exploration Discovery Center in Grover Beach (CA).  I don't need yet another project right now, but I suspect it is a "pay me now or pay me later" situation.

@Chuck K. posted:

The layout is completely flat.  However, I don't know if any issues are created by having a wheel designed for a traction tire left empty.  That leaves a recess in tread.

Unless it is really convenient, I seldom replace traction tires when they die. For one reason, I really hate the things ("hey, an electrical circuit - let's throw an insulator into it...."), and for the other - I have never experienced any issues once they are gone.

My track is GarGraves, with switches. My equipment is all brands, and typically is scale/Hi-Rail. Lots of heavy steam.