Recommended Repair for Lionel North Pole Central 6-26874 Car

Is the gear spinning free on the axle?  Moving back and forth?  More details and, if possible, photos, please.   

Mitch

I recently had a car like this that didn't work well.  Looking at it notice the driven/vertical gearing was too low to engage the drive gear on the axel well.  In examining it I pushed it, fairly hard, and moved up and snapped on the shaft.   Then it worked perfectly.   It had not been fully assembled.   

Hi M. Mitchell and Val,

Attached are 2 pictures of the gears where they engage on trucks under the car. All gears are tight on their axles. If I tip the truck at the coupler, the 2 gears engage. But most of the time the angle of the truck has the 2 gears away from each other by 1/16” or more where they are not engaged. I think I am going to put one of those bread bag plastic clips that others have used to prevent truck/ car wobble as the car is moving and see if that might keep the 2 gears together. I used some white-out on the one gear to make the teeth easier to see in the photos.

Other ideas here?

Carl J

Everyone-

FYI—

I tried the bread bag plastic clip between the top of the wheel truck and the gondola bottom, and it seems to help the 2 gears mesh better. I am still not completely sure of the reason for the truck being so loose on the gondola; I will need to look at that next Christmas as I am putting away the train set today.

Carl J