MTH Imperial Triplex - Middle Locomotive Drivers are not moving

I know you connected the drive shaft to the rear drivers.

Not sure if I understand Marty, and maybe I should clarify this is the Imperial Triplex so there is no shaft going to the drivers under the tender unlike the Premier model. ( I also changed the wording in my original post as I should have said middle drivers not rear)

I had something similar happen to an older PS2 Railking GP7 recently. The solder that connected one of the wires on one motor broke and the other motor just dragged the engine along.  Made for some nice excitement as the engine was moving at 35 SMPH at the time.

I fixed the solder and I was good to go. Your case is different, you still have warranty. If you bought it through a local dealer, take it back and get them to handle the warranty for you. Otherwise you can always send it back to MTH.

If it were me, I wouldn't mind pulling the boiler off and seeing if it something simple I can fix to avoid the hassle of downtime with my new purchase.

H1000

I think I figured it out after taking the boiler off. The flywheel turned fine, but as I was turning it part of the valvegear is not allowing the large nut on the main linkage to pass through cleanly and it's getting stuck.

So either I bend that rod a bit out, or see if I can tighten that nut. After examining the other ones they really don't allow for much clearance.

Sorry, I did not look at Imperial.

No problem Marty, in the end the issue ended up being the valvegear on one side causing binding, not the issue I noted above. I had to loosen the nut and move the rods as I slowly moved the engine forward and then locked it into place. One of the pieces still moves a bit more out of place then it should, but it's working and a few laps around the track were fine. I'm going to add the coal cars today and run it a bit more to confirm that it's good to go.

Thank you to everyone for the assistance.

good luck with you new engine I bought the same one and it runs great really nice engine!

Alan

Thank you, pulled a few coal cars this morning and it ran fine.

I really love this engine and the whistle is outstanding! (just don't tell my Bigboy I said that)

Yeah a loose nut will cause all sorts of issues, especially in this hobby...I speak from personal experience and behavior.

I've had that happen every so often on a steamer over the years; always nice to find a simple problem and simple solution; at first I thought that a lead to your second motor had gone adrift.

These are great locos; I have one. Though RK, they are compressed in a way that leaves the cab, cylinders, boiler front, pilot and other areas in a 1:48 or near-1:48 size, so it looks like a scale model of a smaller (imaginary) Triplex rather than a shrunken model of a larger one.