Pullmor motors. Are newer ones quieter than post war???

I say yes. I have a 1996 GP9 that has Railsounds. If you turn the sounds off it purrs along very quietly. Especially the ones with the Liontech e-unit. My MPC gg1 is very noisy.

I had quite a few pullmor driven engines that were made post 2000 and none of them were noisy.  In fact they all ran great.  So I will say yes without having a postwar to compare it to.

William 1 posted:

I had quite a few pullmor driven engines that were made post 2000 and none of them were noisy.  In fact they all ran great.  So I will say yes without having a postwar to compare it to.

OK, I'll send you mine, you send me yours and we can both see how it is on the other side!! I run mine 15-20 minutes before I have to stop!

I suspect some of the noise is due to worn bearings, shims, and gears. Parts to rebuild them are readily available.

Also The E units can be pretty obnoxious.

Pete

The type of motor also makes a difference,  The small vertical motors used in some small motorized units are quite loud when compared to the AC motors in many of the larger steamers. 

My Phantom dual motor upgrade is actually pretty quiet for a dual Pullmor motor unit.  Controlled using the ERR AC Commander, it has surprisingly good low speed performance as well.  The added motor was from an old MPC chassis, obviously the front motor was the stock motor.

Norton posted:

I suspect some of the noise is due to worn bearings, shims, and gears. Parts to rebuild them are readily available.

Also The E units can be pretty obnoxious.

Pete

Mine is a 2018 from the mid to late 50's. It was a complete basket case when I got it and just getting it to run was a major accomplishment for me!!

Jeff, E unit buzz, ozone, are all part of the Post War experience. Now all you need is a steam engine with smoke unit and get some smoke pellets.

Add to that, run the train under the tree and use aluminum tinsel and watch the sparks fly.

Pete

Hmm, time to get some smoke pellets. I have some original ones packed up somewhere and yes, I miss the tinsel!!

My pre-war are noisy but I have a 736, 726 and 646 now that I run and they just purr. The Fs are growlers, for sure, and my M-1000 is quiet. If you have a lot of noise, I would suspect wear on the parts.

Noise ?  What noise ? I just take my hearing aids out and enjoy the show and smells.  

Noise eh? I don't hear much of a difference, with all the kids around, Hey Uncle john can you put this one on? What's this? Can you make it go faster? What happens if it move this lever? Can you switch it? Hey Uncle John this is a heavy train, but it doesn't want to move when I push it on the floor. Why is that train under the glass cover? Can you get more trains from your room? Why are all these trains in the closet? Noise??? What Noise? LOL!

jim pastorius posted:

...The Fs are growlers, for sure,...

They don't have to be. If thy are lubed right, you just hear the whir of the spur gears.

My opinion of various Pullmor designs:

In my experience, the noise characteristics, and low-speed operation of Pullmor motors depends more on bearing tolerances than any other factor apart from proper lubrication.

Motors with plastic brushplate bearings have more slop and make more noise than those with decent bronze bearings. They can be quieted with set screws as MPC did on some engines. 

Chinese produced motors use 3mm metric (0.118") armature rod instead of 1/8" (0.125"), yet use the same tooling for the plastic brush plates, resulting in more slop and far more noise.

All motors lacking brush plate bearings (for example postwar F3's, 736/746, and their modern counterparts) are noisier for structural reasons. On these engines, the lateral magnetic forces on the armature are acting on a cantilevered portion of the armature rod, so you get more cyclical vibration and noise. I have installed a third bearing on the brush plate for some of these engines and quieted them right down.

Also, having a slightly off center armature or having armature laminations which are too close to field laminations also increases noise. Grinding down the armature laminations a few mils helps with this issue.

The postwar motors are the good ones.   

My F units are packed away but when I get them out I will look at he lubrication.  My layout is small and on carpet but I was amazed how quiet the 736 was and the 726 which had a good rebuild. Of course, real trains make a lot of noise too but you don't want the gear grinding kind.

jim pastorius posted:

...you don't want the gear grinding kind.

Whirring:

IMO, over half the noise is created by the motion of the train on the tracks. Fully enclosed DC can motors seem to be the quietest. Some of the well made HD P/W Pullmores can be somewhat quiet.

Dennis LaGrua posted:

IMO, over half the noise is created by the motion of the train on the tracks. Fully enclosed DC can motors seem to be the quietest. Some of the well made HD P/W Pullmores can be somewhat quiet.

HD = WHAT ?

As in my trade, Master Carpenter, noise I hear from machinery or a certain task aides me in knowing how the machine or task is going.  For instance, when I was installing drywall, if the screw gun tip was spinning in the screw head, I knew in an instant to back off.  If I was cutting a piece of wood with a circular saw and didn't hear the same smooth sound thought, it told me something was amiss.  

Same holds true for our trains.  

GregR posted:

In my experience, the noise characteristics, and low-speed operation of Pullmor motors depends more on bearing tolerances than any other factor apart from proper lubrication.

All motors lacking brush plate bearings (for example postwar F3's, 736/746, and their modern counterparts) are noisier for structural reasons. On these engines, the lateral magnetic forces on the armature are acting on a cantilevered portion of the armature rod, so you get more cyclical vibration and noise. I have installed a third bearing on the brush plate for some of these engines and quieted them right down.

Also, having a slightly off center armature or having armature laminations which are too close to field laminations also increases noise. Grinding down the armature laminations a few mils helps with this issue.

 

Thanks Greg!  I would love to see detailed photos, or even better a video showing some of these mods!!

Also- Rob shows some modern-era transformers which produce a "chopped" sine wave.  This adds a harmonic which contributes to the buzz or electrical hum of your old AC motors.  They might run quieter with a good-old 1033 or ZW.  Also, use tubular instead of FasTrack (but that's a meaty subject covered in many other threads!)

Some great comments in this thread!! Should I chose to do a proper rebuild of this old pullmor, is there a guideline to follow?

If you are going to do a rebuild, do a good one.

Imho,  the MPC/LTI remakes of the postwar units are quieter.   I only have F3s, 736, 681, Nw-2 and 2055 engines to compare to.  My favorites are the UP F3 set and the Chessie 736.  For me they are flawless and quieter.

Of course it helps that they always run, postwar or MPC 

"Are newer ones quieter than Post War?"

No.*

*Obviously this can vary; but my "new" (early 2000's) TMCC "Santa Fe" scale Hudson with a Pullmor is the noisiest thing I have ever heard. Really. My mechanically identical 5344 is rather quiet. You never know. FWIW, my brass Williams 4-6-6-4 with a DC can motor is very noisy also; the brass is a sounding board/resonator (gee, is that why they make bells out of brass...?) 

Jeff T posted:

Some great comments in this thread!! Should I chose to do a proper rebuild of this old pullmor, is there a guideline to follow?

Get it clean; bearing clearance should be less than 0.0015";  and the commutator should be smooth, flat, and square to the shaft.   For best operation, replacement parts should be postwar, not reproductions or modern Lionel. Replacement bearings should be oilite, not 360 brass.   Brush diameter should be 0.180" max and 0.178" min.  Do not strip the oil out of the oilite bearings with volatile solvents. Soak bearings in 0 or 10 weight synthic motor oil for several days prior to reassembly. If replacement bearings are installed, they will probably need to be reamed to size. Use no WD-40 or lithium based grease.  

Here's a video of mine after I serviced it. Whisper quiet.

https://youtu.be/3aY33wT1lgI

Excellent 

Nicely done Jared! Mine was a complete basket case when I got it. I pretty did what you did. Maybe it's time to open it up again!! Thanks!!!

My experience with the pullmor varied, I have a pullmor engined modern version of the old fire car, and the burro crane, and they are pretty much as noisy as the ones I had as a kid that were postwar origin. My old Santa Fe f3 was as noisy as a blender, my 671 was pretty quiet. I suspect some of the noise might be the gearing, and if there is any kind of bearing slop or the like in the engine, it is going to be noisy as heck......

I have a few burro cranes, the newer models are actually louder than my original postwar version, so yes it might depend on some factors. I don't mind the noise, they come with that wonderful scent of ozone which I will never grow tired of. There's something to be said about the Pullmor, engines that are 65 plus years old, still run great, you can fix 'em yourself and parts are still readily available!

The Pullmor is very easy to work on.  No special skills are needed and they usually run better with some TLC.  I have two locomotives with AC motors.  First is my Southern F-3 AA set I got for Christmas in 1954.  The second is an E. Welz Metroliner set with the Dallee # 400 electronic reverse unit.    If anyone wants to give an AC motor a treat, hook up a Dallee #400 reverse unit.  Those babies put DC current through your AC motor and they run very smooth.

I loved the bearing race on the postwar output drive.  Lionel made them cheaper after that and replaced the bearing race with a bushing.  I have found some of the recent AC motored locomotives to run decent.   That is due to the electronics powering them and not the old mechanical E unit.  I demand excellent operation and that only gets delivered by can motored locomotives with modern electronics.  

Stinky1 posted:

Here's a video of mine after I serviced it. Whisper quiet.

https://youtu.be/3aY33wT1lgI

Off subject, but your video reminded me about what great sound systems those TMCC/RailSounds Geeps have. As many have commented in the past, they're hard to beat even by the newer Legacy and MTH stuff.

I have a number of these Geeps from the late 90s and 2000s, as well as some PWC F-3s and EP-5s, all with TMCC and RailSounds. They all run fine; the ones that have been run the most run the best, true to normal Pullmor operaton, and they're just kind of bulletproof and fun to run. Are they noisier than can-motored engines with cruise? Yes, but I don't find the sound that loud, and the differences in overall sound when running at any speed between a can-motored engine pulling a train and a Pullmor-motored engine pulling a train gets to be pretty small. Some of the less expensive MPC-era Geeps could make quite a racket, but the engines from the later 90s and beyond I've found to be a good deal quieter. Running them with Legacy makes them perform even better.