No sound or lights on my legacy tender

check to make sure the pick-up rollers do have good contact, I have had to spray contact cleaner inside the rollers.   this may or may not matter, make sure the tether does not have anything blocking the eye. 

Hi Jim,

Did you check the switch under the tender, maybe it's switched to signal sounds not rail rail sounds. But what throws me off is that the rear tender light isn't working. Also check the infrared sensors between the tender and engine, Make sure they are aligned

Alex

Still no sound.  I checked the switch and it is on RS.  There is no bell or whistle sound either when I blow the whistle form the cab 2.

I switched the tender from a known working legacy locomotive and put it on my 0-8-0 and it worked fine.  I put the tender from the 0-8-0 on the known working locomotive and no sound or lights.  The issue is definitely in the tender.  

I will try switching out railsounds boards tomorrow morning.  If that doesn't work I will have to take it up to Wild Bills and see if Elmer can figure it out.  

Tried another legacy RS board in the tender with no luck.

I think the tender is getting no juice.  I cleaned the wheels and rollers and again no luck.  Very frustrating since when I run trains this loco gets about 95% of the run time.

Jim

What's the item number of this engine

Alex

6-11276

It's pretty easy to see if it's getting power to the boards, take the shell off and grab a meter.

John

I do have a meter.  Where would the best place to check for power on the board be?

Just track back from the roller feeds.  The first thing I'd do is just measure between the two center-rail rollers and make sure they're at least connect together.  Then start tracing up from there.  Also, a close physical examination of all the connectors and wiring to see if there's something simple like a loose connector or broken wire.  Many times, these things are the simple ones.  Don't forget to make sure the wheels have continuity to the frame and to the connection to the board.

Bingo, do just what John said. I was looking on the Lionel parts diagram, and I was going to post the diagram here for you. But it only shows the shells and chassis. I don't know why.

Thanks,

Alex

I would try swapping the power board with a known good one.

Bill

That presumes he has a known good board.

He swapped tenders, so he should have one.

Are the boards interchangeable?

The working board I have is from a legacy ten wheeler.  I dont wanna put that in the tender and ruin it if they are not interchangeable.

I do know the sound boards are because I have switched them around in the past.     

I pulled the power board from the working tender and installed it in the 0-8-0 tender.  Still nothing.  I pulled all the boards from the tender to see if there was a broken wire or something from the rollers, nope everything looks good.  I am at a loss.  

Once the kids nap i will pull out my meter and see if I can find something else.  

Did you actually use the meter to measure continuity from the rollers and the wheels to the respective locations on the RS motherboard?

What I had done is unplugged the lead from the rollers/wheels and measured the continuity from the rollers to their respective ends on the plugs and the same from the wheels to the plug.  How would I measure it from the mother board to the rollers when I plug it back in.  Where on the mother board would I put the probe of the meter?

New development!

When I swapped power boards I only tried the known working board in the 0-8-0's tender with no luck.  When I went to put the tender back together that it came out of I just put the original 0-8-0's power board back into that tender thinking that it wasn't the issue. 

Put it on the layout and no sound.   Put it's original board back in and works normal.

So it can mean several things.

1) the power boards between the tenders are not interchangeable even thought they look identical.  

2) the power board and something else is wrong with the 0-8-0's tender since the known working board didn't fix the issue.  

Still stumped and want to fix this soon. The car ferry is waiting to be loaded and the union demands that a proper switcher be used to load it.  

Did you try moving the board set, PS and Audio to the failing tender?

No i havent.  I will give that a shot after dinner.  

Still no sound or lights with both the new PS and Audio in the bad tender.  

Check pins 1&2 on the power board to the rollers, pins 3&4 to ground. If you have continuity, I would suspect the IR Tether. If no continuity, check same pins to plug on motherboard.

Bill 

Hi

I am not sure where in Michigan you are but if you are close to Utica, I would check with Elmer at Wild Bills Trains. He is very knowledgeable and should help you with your problem.

Yeah if I can't figure it out tonight it will go to him this week.  

Well I am stumped.  I can not figure it out.  It seems that I get power to the board.  Off to Wild Bills this week it goes. I can have him fix the smoke unit while it is there also.

I have found that even though all the plugs look like they are in place, a single wire will not be making good contact. At your own risk , place the locomotive and tender (with the shell off) on the track, power it up, and check all the wires at the plugs. Just a thought...

Still no luck.  It is now boxed up and will be heading to wild bills on my lunch hour tomorrow.   Hopefully Elmer can fix it up good.