Lionel 1872 …The General

Thanks for the advice. I made all the changes that you mentioned and still I get no power to the engine. It’s got to be something basic and I am not seeing it… any thoughts would be appreciated…. Joe

Joe: it looks like the E unit fingers are replacements. Are they all connecting with the drum? Does the drum advance each time you reverse your General?

The black wire should feed power into the eunit drum. If you have a meter see if there is power to the black wire. The power from the black wire should alternate to the yellow wire and blue wire every two cycles of the eunit. Remove the brushes from the motor and check with your meter to verify that the yellow and blue wires are getting power alternately every second cycle of the eunit. Use the ohm setting on your meter to check that when the yellow wire is getting power, the blue wire is connected to the green wire. Then the reverse, when the blue wire is getting power the yellow wire is connected to the green wire. If this all checks out, your eunit is good.  If not, you have eunit problems.

Thank you everyone I will give these suggestions a try and let you know how it turns out. Thanks as always for your help.