Well, some good and bad news to report.
The good: After 7 weeks in repair, I received my two engines back. One with a new motor; the other, I’m not sure what was done! They both seem to operate well. I used the Lionel LCS Sensor Track to load the correct engine information and control layout into the CAB2. The engines should be setup as “Electric”, not as “Acela”. Most important of all, the two engines should be set up with the same ID number and operated as a pair.
Even if you want to add the Café Car, I would avoid the use of the Train Build/Lash-up functions. (My set does some not-so-funny things when the TR button is used.) You can operate the Café Car without the TrainLink key. Simply double click the Engine select button and it will alternate control between the engines and the Café Car.
Over the past 2 months I spent considerable time ensuring that the O-72 track was in tip-top condition, with the track appropriately banked in a few places where previous derailments had occurred and scenery pushed back to allow clearance for the tilting passenger cars.
I also added a 7.5 Amp AIRPAX instant breaker to ensure power to the engines would be cutoff instantly if a derailment should occur. The objective was to avoid any undue stress on the engine during a derailment.
I finally got around to measure the drawbar pull on one of the engines as a decent 1.4 lbs. I previously measured the drawbar load of the passenger cars at approximately 0.5 lbs.
The good news is that I was able to take the Acela set, with its full complement of cars, around a large loop 10 times without incident. YIPPEE!
After achieving this success, I then set the train up in an opposite loop direction (not just reverse direction) to force all the wheel sets to turn in an opposite direction; e.g., having the lead engine and cars first rotate clockwise around a loop and then sending the lead engine on a different loop to turn in a counter clockwise direction.
And the result is….
The bad news. The train derailed almost immediately and quickly stopped thanks to the AIRPAX breaker. I traced the problem to a wheel set in car 3513. Turns out that one of the wheel sets does not have freedom of movement in one direction because the wheels hit the sides of the car. I further traced the problem to the frame floor which had been pushed into the cabin thus causing the truck wheels to be too close to the overall frame. On top of this, I noticed the sides of the car were warped above the defective truck.
Here is a good wheelset with sufficient turning clearance...
Here is the bad wheelset with insufficient turning clearance...
Oh well, back to Lionel for another 7 weeks. Fortunately, I have enough good passenger cars left to enjoy the set!!
