lionchief PE performance questions

Hello,

I believe I have the same PE set as yours. 

I have had it for a couple of years now and I run it on 036 curves and it does fine.  In my opinion I think it would do well on 031 also.

Mine does not have any issues having sounds coming on when going over turnouts and pulls very well because of the traction tire assistance.  I have very small inclines so I can't help you with that question.

The grandkids love using the remote too!  You will have a blast.

Have fun, Ron.

I cannot comment on inclines, but in general it is a very good puller. This is my second, the first was the original issue with the small motor. More than a 100% improvement with this locomotive. The RTR set comes with 036 curves. Not to throw rocks as the guys who like 031, but I went bigger not smaller. At home the layout includes 036, 048 and 060. On the club modular layout it sees 072 and 081.

Thanks for the replies. I'm planning a day in early november with my kids. We're going to watch and read the polar express, and then get out the rtr set. Then we'll set up the tree and run the train around the tree, etc. Maybe even make some chocolate milk. Until then, the rtr will remain in the box. After Christmas, the train will wind up on my permanent layout and I'm hoping it will be a good puller. I'm also brainstorming a new layout and I want to incorporate inclines. I'm hoping to keep it an all lionchief layout to keep things simple for the kids. 

The LionChief PE will pull the cars that came with the set plus all of the add-ons with no problem. One track plan to consider is the "Twice around the Tree". I am so looking forward to sharing the movie with my granddaughter. She turns 3 in December, and loves the model trains.

Not to discourage you, but when you throw inclines into the mix you really want to have speed control. You get that with MTH PS-2 & 3 locomotives, plus a lot of Lionel. Speed control is not a component of LionChief.

I have the 10th anniversary version, but I believe it is the same as earlier versions of the LionChief engine except for some additional sounds.  I hope I'm not mis-speaking but I think all of the PE engines with the smaller motor were conventional only.  That said, here's my experience:  

How well does it do on 31 curves?   O31 curves are a problem for my engine.  On O36 the drivers bind just slightly but with O31 they bind up quite a bit.  At moderate speed the engine often derails on O31 tubular track, and at lower speeds it tends to stall as it does not have cruise to keep moving at the same speed as the wheels bind.  I would not recommend anything less than O36 for this engine.  

Does going over turnouts cause the sound effects to come on?  Any sort of brief cut out of power should not cause any odd sounds from the engine.  They are controlled by a digitally encoded signal from the remote, and any sort of noise on the incoming power or over the radio is not remotely likely to trigger the sounds.  I've heard one report I can remember of sounds triggering randomly and I believe the engine in question was found to have a damaged sound board that was replaced.  (Edit:  Also worth noting, the LionChief PE has only the pick-up rollers on the engine, so it may stall on back to back switches.  I've not run mine yet with back to back switches, so I do not know for sure one way or the other.  I've not had any issues on single O42 switches, but have had some trouble with O27 as the curve is a bit too sharp for the engine, see above.)

How well does the locomotive pull, particularly up inclines?  This one is in two parts.. pulling power and a special problem with inclines unique to the polar express.  First, I've found the LC Polar Express to have much more power than I would have expected.  I ran my engine routinely with 15-20 modern needle point cars and it had very little trouble at all on O42 curves.  I had to set the speed a click or two above what it would stall at on the straight aways to get it to not stall on the curves but this was still plenty slow.  With the O36 curves I had to run several steps higher speed, but it didn't matter if pulling 4 cars or 20 as the slow down wasn't caused by what was being pulled, but by the drivers binding on the curve, once the engine passed the curve it quickly regained speed even with the cars still on the curve.  Over all with 8-12 cars you shouldn't see any problems with pulling power, even on inclines.  That leads to the second part.  the HUGE pilot (cow catcher) on the polar express is a nightmare for grade transitions.  Even with the slightly uneven level of my basement floor where I had a nice 30 foot oval set up there were problems with the tip of the pilot touching the center rail.  Because the tip sticks out so far and is so low to the track even a slight rise of track level will cause the engine's frame to short with the center rail.  I solved the problem on simple uneven track by painting the tip of the pilot with nail polish, but I don't think this will solve it for actual grades.  You will need a very gradual easement into the grade not to have problems, so that the tip of the pilot won't touch the center rail.  There may be a better fix for this that I'm not aware of.  

Now, I'm only trying to answer the specific questions asked here.  Over all I LOVE my polar express engine, and LOVE LionChief, but there are the above issues I've run into.  Worth noting, however, again, is how impressed I am with the pulling power.  This inexpensive engine is, with out a doubt, the best starter level engine I've ever owned, it is almost as good of a puller as my TMCC Berkshire, which seems to weigh twice as much, and despite having half the number of speed steps, gets similar speed control.  The LC Polar express is the single engine that pulled me back into O gauge after a 10 year break.  

JGL

To echo what John Galt said, be careful of that long pilot causing shorts on grade transitions.   My son LC PE experienced the same issue on a temp set up of modular track. One the module joint wasn't great and he the pilot was touching the center rail. Problem solved with a little piece on tape on the pilot that day.  Long term some other modification or much better track would be required. 

Overall great engine, lots of fun. (Silence the chuff however - it could drive you insane!)

coltm16a2556 posted:

Thanks for the replies. I'm planning a day in early november with my kids. We're going to watch and read the polar express, and then get out the rtr set. Then we'll set up the tree and run the train around the tree, etc. Maybe even make some chocolate milk. Until then, the rtr will remain in the box. After Christmas, the train will wind up on my permanent layout and I'm hoping it will be a good puller. I'm also brainstorming a new layout and I want to incorporate inclines. I'm hoping to keep it an all lionchief layout to keep things simple for the kids. 

I would suggest that you find some private time to test the engine. It will be really disappointing and ruin the day if the engine won't run. Lionel's percentage of items with problems is low. Right now, you still have time to have the engine repaired or replaced under warranty if something is wrong.

This happened to me with a birthday gift for my grandson on his 3rd birthday. he still remembers 2 years later. Forum member Far West lives in Japan and purchased a set here when visiting family last year. On Christmas Day, the engine wouldn't run for his daughter on Christmas Day.

Even though the engine smaller than true O scale, I concur with the recommendations to run the minimum curve of O36. It really likes 048 or O60. The eight wheel driver needs some room in the curve.

if your family can be exposed to the smoke, get some JT's in a flavor. My fave is Hot Chocolate. Many like the Pine. The included smoke fluid is not as effective as Lionel premium or JT's at making smoke.

Everyone will enjoy the train as we all do! Have fun!

JohnGaltLine posted:

(Edit:  Also worth noting, the LionChief PE has only the pick-up rollers on the engine, so it may stall on back to back switches.  I've not run mine yet with back to back switches, so I do not know for sure one way or the other. )

I have had issues with it stalling on back to back switches. Other than that, its been great 

Thanks for all the input. I took a little time to try it out when the kids were away and everything worked like it should. I've got some mega steam gingerbread ready to go too. (my wife loves gingerbread). I'm getting excited. I'll be sure to avoid inclines, which I'm glad I was warned about. I was planning some inclines on my next layout. I've got some more thinking and planning to do now.

The reason I asked about the sounds going off over switches is because I also have a lionchief penn flyer. Its recommend O31 or greater. I had a O27 temporary layout set up with 42" curves on the outside loop and a couple O27 switches to go into the middle. I wanted to the just run the loco on the outside loop but when the loco would go across the brown O27 switch straight through it would often make random sound effects come on. It would also obviously derail trying to got through the O27 turnout but that was expected.   

For my next layout I'm hoping to get away from O27 altogether and at least be O31 or more. I'm also hoping that both the penn flyer and the PE can go across O31 switches without trouble. 

I've also been thinking about doing the lighted drumhead and red led tail modification fron Dan's L.E.Depot. I think those mods should be simple enough. I also looked into the flickering firebox he offers but it says its for the conventional PE engine. I emailed Dan and asked if it would work for the lionchief PE and he said there is some electronics inside where the flickering firebox light would go. Has anyone tried moving the electronics and been able to install the light on the lionchief version? 

Good to hear the test run went well.

Stay with O track (rail height) and switches and you won't have any problems.

I don't believe the flickering firebox is worth the effort. There are only a few scale steamers I have seen in dimmed lighting where the effect lights up around the ashpan and is actually in view while the loco is running.

It may be worth testing, on the penn flyer and/or PE if the sound issue persists with additional pick-up rollers added to the tender and tethered to the engine's pick-ups.  It may be a bit ugly and take a little work, but might be a fix.  This would also help with stalling on those back to back switches.  

I'm only guessing, but my thought is the unwanted sounds are caused when the engine repeatedly and briefly loses power going over the switches, sort of scrambling the brains of the sound board.  I've not experienced this problem, but if I do, I'll look into a solution a bit more.  

JGL