I have a working Cattle Corall where the cattle move around when you flip the switch. However
the car doesn't open its doors or vibrate. I tried replacing the blades that contact the shoes
of the cattle car but that doesn't help.
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Bob,
Have you checked the connections of the connecting wires, from the electrical contact shoes, to the solenoid of the vibrating motor?
There may be some other problem, but I have mostly found that there is a break in the wire at the solder joint.
Ralph
Do you have or know of any videos that show how to do that? It sounds difficult. I actually bought another 3656 car on Ebay advertised as working but couldn't get that to run either. Luckily I returned it for a full refund including postage. I'm thinking that if the platform works and the car doesn't, the car must be faulty. But what's the likelihood of 2 cars being faulty.
Did you at least look and follow the instruction sheet for the 3656 ?
Absolutely.
The car itself is a very simply mechanism. I would test the car at your workbench to see if it works. All you need to do, is hook up one wire to the slide shoe and the other wire to the one of the wheels. Apply power. The doors should open and the car vibrate. Power flows from the contact in the slide shoe, to the coil in the car and then frame (ground). If that works, then you have it wired wrong on your layout.
I know that on our's, the car requires much more voltage than the cattle pen. If the voltage is set too low, the car doors just never open at all.
Sometimes the shoe's contact buttons are so worn or dirty that they don't make a good connection with the control rails. The first step would be to examine the contact buttons. Do they look worn or dirty? If so, first clean them. I would probably use a Qtip moistened with pure mineral spirits. If they don't look appreciably better, I'd polish them with a fiberglass burnishing tool, and use another moistened Qtip to clean away the debris. The buttons should look much cleaner now. They will be either silver or if worn, brass colored.
Next step: connect a pair of leads to a power supply. Simultaneously touch one lead to each contact button. Hopefully the car will operate.
If so, then you could try your car on the platform.
The problem can also be caused by a poor power or ground connection on the platform base.
You can also try to operate the car using a standard control track, and pressing the unload button. It should not work with uncouple button pressed.
You can hook up a test light or meter to the control blades of the platform and see if they are getting power when you operate the platform.
Thanks to all for your comments. I tried hooking leads to the two shoes and got response. Then I placed the car on a standard control track and pressed the unload button and got response. I must now see what went wrong in my setup that it works for the corall but not the car.
