Milwaukee Road K-Line passenger cars shorting out

Hello Jeff B Haertlein

I would start with cleaning the center pick up rollers, all the way around with, Isppropyl 91% Alcohol. Use a soft rack or a Q-tip

Good Luck

Some of these cars were assembled with insufficient length of wire going to the pickup roller which inhibited free  truck swivel on curves. The thin metal floor of the car would then cut into the wire, causing your symptom. This could be fixed on some by a little re-routing of the wire inside the car, but would require a longer wire on others. If this is the case with your cars, I’d fix them sooner than later as I have seen several cars that went from intermittent to dead short. The latter will melt some or all of the wire inside the car, and produce  some copious and odorous smoke! It’s a spectacular and realistic onetime event, however, if the car happens to be a diner.  

Jeff,

Were these run before you bought them? If so, also check the wheel surfaces for crud. A small straight-blade screwdriver will revel any, even if you cannot see it.

 

Dave

The sparking could be caused by dirty wheels and rollers, as others are suggesting, but if there is an actual intermittent short you need to find it NOW before running the cars again. The procedure is simple enough, examine every inch of wiring for contact with a metal surface, a break in the insulation, or a loose connection. Also check that the couplers aren't sagging. The mushroom on a droopy coupler can contact the center rail, causing a shower of sparks and a potential short that would trip the circuit breaker on the transformer. 

 

K-Line cars are notorious for flickering lights. The internal connections on the rollers aren't very good. I've given up on my cabooses - I just let them flicker away. I could splice a capacitor into each one to buffer out the erratic contact, but that's a fair amount of work for all the K-Line cars I have. 

 

 

 

 

 

This was a known problem with the K-line heavyweights...especially the early runs.  Richard is probably spot on with his assessment above....

 

Alan

I own the same set and had the same problems.  As described previously, the red wire going to the roller through the metal floor of the car does not have enough slop, and over time cuts the insulation shorting on the frame.  It seemed to only be an issue on one end of each  car.

I ended up drilling the hole bigger through the frame and putting a rubber grommet in the frame, after replacing the wire.  Worked great. 

I bought these cars 2 years ago on a whim to put behind my 261, what a sleeper set.  They look fabulous and prefer their black roofs to grey roofs of lionel. Those looking for a passenger set for behind your 261, should really check them out.

Mike

I just noticed a typo in my previous post - where I meant to say "breaks in the insulation" it said "insertion." I suspect I hit two keys at once and spell check opted for insertion. My fault for inadequate proofreading. The original has been corrected. 

I have the exact same set with the exact same problem. I ran them once and put them away until I had a chance to look at them. Now I know what to look for. Thanks, everyone.

One other issue was very weak springs on the trucks that failed when being operated in a command environment. When K-Line was in business they were replacing the trucks under warranty.

 

Some of the cars actually caught fire due to the weakened springs. 

The set I have worked fine until I connected the observation car, the coupler was shorted out once it made contact with the connecting car, look for a shorted wire in the coupler or car body.

Do'h, my above post is in error. with my observation car the wires for the pickup and ground (wheels) where reversed. That explains why the couplers are sparking when it was connected to another car.

 

Milwrd

 

Just a note -  the Lionel Milw. Rd. scale passenger cars (cataloged with the 261) have black roofs as well.

It was the earlier set of cars marketed with the Milwaukee Hiawatha steam engine that had the grey roofs (which of course looked great matching the grey-topped steam engine and tender).

Breezinup brings up a good point. My set is the original issue by K-line from 1999. I do know of another set that also had it's observation car wired in reverse. The test that I mentioned above would however apply to any passenger car if indeed it was wired backwards.

 

Milwrd

 

If the problem is a power wire that is too short, it will often be OK on the straight and the problem will only show up on a curve. Check and see if all your trucks move freely, or if they feel like there is something getting tighter as they get farther toward one side or the other.