Lionel Legacy engine's tender loses power when it rolls over 027 switch

Sal: How many pickup rollers does the tender have under it? If it indeed has two, one may not be hooked up or has a broken lead wire.

If it only has one roller, you may need to think about installing a second one on the truck assembly that doesn't have one to bridge whatever gap the tender is losing power while it traverses the turnout.

Sal,

 

You can install a 9 volt battery in the tender,and this won't happen anymore. Sal what's the six digit item number of this engine.

 

Thanks,

Alex

The engine is brand new and it has 2 pick up rollers on the tender, one on each truck. I've had this exact same problem happen with a conventional Lionel engine which also has 2 pick up rollers on it, one on each truck. The legacy engine is a K4 PRR #6-11338.

Your roller spacing is likely just right to fall simultaneoulsy on dead spots in the center rail in the switches.

You may be able to rotate one or both 180 degrees to slightly alter the spacing.

The only other answer is the 9 volt battery as was suggested, or a jumper wire to the engine connected to its roller hot leads.

 

Rod

Sal,

 

Thanks for the item number, I would install a 9 volt battery in the tender and that should solve the problem, but Like Rod said above you can try and rotate the rollers or install a jumper wire.

 

 

Alex

Okay thank you for your help

I too would suggest that you simply put a 9v battery in.  The battery is intended for exactly this situation. I fit batteries into all of my Legacy locomotives as soon as I receive them. 

Is it easy to install the 9 volt battery?

Yes, it's pretty easy. The instructions are on page 20 of your locomotive's manual. Just in case you don't have the manual at hand, here is the relevant page. 

 

 

Edit: The manual page shown above is for the 6-11338 that you specified earlier. But this isn't a K4. Just to be sure that I've given you the right instructions, can you confirm exactly which locomotive that you have? The battery installation process should be the same though.

I have the legacy prewar K4 #3667 I haven't looked through the manual completely yet just because I haven't had time. Thanks for the diagram I thinkit will help.

Thanks for the information. I've just looked at the on-line manual for 6-11327 (PRR K4) and strangely, this manual doesn't seem to mention the battery. But I'm pretty sure that it should have one, as every other Legacy locomotive I have encountered has one. The tender appears to have the same 4 screws needing to be removed to open it up, and you should then be able to see the battery holder and connector.

If anyone else here has a K4, perhaps they will be kind enough to confirm this?

Okay well I'll have look at the tender and see if it has the battery connecter, thanks.

Actually, the problem is much deeper than a battery - it's a Legacy problem, with at least some locos. I have a Legacy USRA 2-6-6-2 that will lose its sound, and it won't come back

without a restart. I also have 2 earlier TMCC USRA 2-6-6-2's that run over the same track and which NEVER have that problem - and have NO batteries.

 

Even when a TMCC loco tender momentarily loses power and blips a little silence - very rare - it comes right back of its own accord.

Not so with the Legacy Mallet. The loco has a problem, but hopefully not a design flaw.

 

There a NO batteries in any of my (overly) numerous TMCC steam (or otherwise) locos; I do not use batteries, and if one comes in a loco, I remove it. They are alkaline batteries and will eventually leak. Plus, the battery was designed for Conventional running below 

8 volts to preserve the sound.

 

Except for the Legacy Mallet, I have no RS-death problems. I'm not debating, but in my actual observation, the battery can be a Band-Aid in a Command loco, but it's not a fix.

 

 

 

There was a comment in a thread somewhere that stated this was a known issue and was addressed in newerLegacy stuff.  While the dropout will still occur, any action like throttle, whistle, etc. will restart the sound.

 

It doesn't matter what command you give it once it loses sound, it won't come back on until it is restarted

I guess I wasn't clear, that's being addressed in later product.

 

Fitting a battery is not intended to be a 'fix'. It is recommended practice to prevent the sound system shutting down if there is a power interruption. 

So I went to try and solve my problem and when I turned the engine in it was fine. As soon as it moved about two inches the legacy rail sounds stopped working and the tender would buzz a little bit here and there. I tried resetting it and shouting it off and restarting it but none of these have worked

This could be one of two things, your track might need to be cleaned, or the infrared senor's are misaligned between the engine and tender.

 

Alex

If you have not done so, try to eliminate the obvious: Clean track, check track power with a lighted car/caboose, clean wheels/pick ups on loco, if you can open the shell and check connectors and power harnesses, and so on, do it. If you have other Legacy locos that work well on the same track at the SAME time, then the loco has a problem...Good Luck!