Rail sounds cutting out

The 9V battery slides in sideways ? Use alkaline.

I would like to, but the directions make me put the battery in like this.

On second thought, the holding mechanism doesn't seem to be the same as pictured in the manual. Perhaps there's a way to lay the battery in on its side and tape it down firmly so it doesn't move around.

If the battery is not too tall w/o the cap on, you could also cut the wires off and discard the battery cap and simply strip and solder the wires to the sides of the battery terminals. Every time you needed to change the battery you'd have to unsolder and re-solder  a new one in, but it shouldn't happen too often and it's not a lot of work.

It also looks like there's wires at the bottom of the holder that don't appear in the manual and prevent the battery from seating all the way down in the holder. Do you know what those are and why they are routed under the battery holder ?

Truthfully, I have no idea, but I did try and clean the pick up rollers again. This time with CR2 multi purpose lubricant. It makes things conduct electricity better and keep power within the locomotive. I originally used this to clean my track but it got my train to make sounds. I’ll definitely look into why Lionel designed my engine this way and why the wiring was placed in the tender like that. But for the mean time, I got the railsounds to work, I think my engine cut out at least once. I’m hoping when I get some type of command system on my layout, this train will run better.

You can also use Bachman EZ-Lube on the rollers. It is an electrically conductive lubricant.

GRJ makes a battery eliminator available through Hennings Trains. I think it’s smaller in size vs regular 9 volt battery.

Complaint of sounds cutting out and you only have 1 power feed on the loop?

#1 remove each section of track in the spot where the sound was cutting off, tighten the end joints, and

#2 strongly consider adding multiple power feed inputs 2-4 seems reasonable for that size of loop.

I'm not saying you don't have a pickup issue on the engine, but at at the same time, your track and power distribution is the root cause of the issue and dead spots- specially with nary a switch in sight to blame it on.

Oh the Transformer is going to be removed one day, I’m just running trains until I get more stuff to complete my layout.

@Vernon Barry posted:

Complaint of sounds cutting out and you only have 1 power feed on the loop?

#1 remove each section of track in the spot where the sound was cutting off, tighten the end joints, and

#2 strongly consider adding multiple power feed inputs 2-4 seems reasonable for that size of loop.

I'm not saying you don't have a pickup issue on the engine, but at at the same time, your track and power distribution is the root cause of the issue and dead spots- specially with nary a switch in sight to blame it on.

I will definitely consider doing this. I thought I would let you know that this isn’t permanent. But I have another train that runs on this exact same track with no issues at all, so that why I was leaning towards that it could be the something with the locomotive. Also what do you mean by power feed inputs, because I have another power source I can hook onto the layout if needed. But I think it might only work for tubular track and not fastrack.

You don't necessarily need another power source, you just need your current power source to have more connections ("power feeds" or "power drops") to your track. With only one power connection to the track from your transformer, the voltage may drop to a low level, for instance, at locations farthest away from the one track connection you have and the voltage may be insufficient at that location (or others) to keep the sound or your engine going.

You can arrange for multiple power feeds from your transformer to different parts of your layout by various means, such as using bus bars or a distribution panel, such as the one below made by MTH. Basically, you connect your transformer output to the red and black ports on the distribution panel and then run paired red/black wires from the output ports of the distribution panel to various points on your layout. That way, you insure that all the areas of your track are getting the required/same voltage. The panel shown has 12 output ports but, from the picture and size of your layout, it looks like you could get by with eight (8) connections - four evenly spaced around each loop. You can mount the panel underneath the layout and run your transformer wires to the red and black ports. Then run paired wires up to each connection point from 8 of the output ports. Since you're using Fastrack it should be easy to drill a small hole into the layout under the track sections where you want to make each connection and then run a pair of wires from the panel to the tabs under the Fastrack sections using these crimp connectors.

@TheRoyalHudson988 posted:

I also tried adding a battery to this locomotives tender to see if that would help but the 9v doesn’t fit in the engine properly. When I go to close the tender shell and screw everything down, It won’t let me due to the battery not fitting in its place. I have a picture of where the battery is supposed to be held.

Consider this, fits in a smaller space.  It's also the last time you'll ever have to open the tender to put a battery in.

YLB - RailSounds Battery Replacement