Squeaky experienced Legacy Polar Express, 6-11451

Mine does the same.  Try popping the boiler and oiling the top motor bearing; that seems to help.  

Mitch 

Arent squeaks fun to find!  NOT!  I will assume you oiled every side rod bolt, every driver bearing on each side, thicker oil or grease for the worm gear, lower motor bearing, upper motor bearing, inspect motor shaft or excessive side to side play(wear) in the lower bearing near the worm gear where sideways thrust forces are the greatest.  Remove pilot and trailing trucks and run with just the drivers on the track.  Its a process of elimination to track them down.   I have gone as far as taking side rods off and running on just the rear axle on my rolling road or layout.  Also oil all the tender truck bearings if you pulling it along when testing, cant remember if the PE has to have its tender connected to run.   

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try it. 

Lube the rollers under the engine and the squeeking will go away.

We've cleaned and lubed every thing that moves from the outside. 

Gonna try removing the front pilot to see if one of the axles may be canted a bit, thinking that may cause the wheel flanges to be scraping the rail. (The journals were broken when it arrived new, were replaced, and one broke again last year. Might have gotten it cocked just a tad).

Then I'm going to open 'er up and check that motor shaft. Be not afraid!

Tonight is the last night for our church train show so I have a Santa Fe F-E-F to pull the Polar Express if necessary. Not orthodox, but it'll do.

Keep us posted.  My money is on the upper motor bearing.   

Sounds like the smoke lever to me.  

Finally have time to get back to y'all. Work keeps getting in the way.

We took the loco apart and used a toothpick to put a wee bit of oil on the upper bearing; no change. After reassembly the engine still squeaked (both with and without a consist and tender).

Before reassembly we ran leads to the engine and powered it up; while it was possible to hear the smoke generator run, it was minimal and not the source of the squeak.

Next, Just to be sure we left nothing undone, we removed the front truck; the engine still squeaked.

To see if load on the locomotive made a difference we added 4 NYC heavyweight cars to the Polar Express consist. At first it didn't seem to make much difference, but after a few minutes of running at the 3rd level in Legacy it began to squeak a little stronger.

The plot thickens.

So far, we are a team of two IT specialists, a carpenter, a Catholic priest, and a Lockheed-Martin engineer.

The IT guys said, "Turn it off and then back on again to reboot it."

The priest prayed.

The carpenter tapped it with a screwdriver.

The engineer said to "always engineer for design, and then customize to fit", whatever that means. Then he said he was going back to something less challenging, like a F-35 jet fighter.

Finally, another friend, who has never owned or operated an electric train, asked if it could be the track. We scoffed.

Then I set about cleaning the track with electrical tuner cleaner. Hmm! It made a noticeable difference. Still squeaking but nowhere near as much. So I moved it to another loop of track (we have 3 racetracks of Fastrack, about 24' x 15'). The noise almost completely disappeared. If you weren't listening for it, you might not notice it over the noise of the train and cars running.

I put a scale Berkshire on the first track to see if another locomotive would have the same issue, but it behaved itself admirably.

So now we wonder if there be some minuscule gauge inaccuracy in the drive wheel flanges that made them wear enough to begin rubbing on the inner edge of the rail. It doesn't seem logical because the noise doesn't change while the engine is going around a curve. I am going to order a gauge to check that, but for now am just about ready to let her run till something breaks. As I write this it occurs to me to test once more while holding it upside down and see if one or more drivers are wobbling. I didn't notice anything of that sort earlier, but it might be very slight and only having an effect after a couple hundred hours of operation.

Now we wait for the gauge.

Happy New Year everyone!

Could the engineer be a church mouse?

I believe it!  The other night I was running a new NW2 and hmmm what is that noise?  Every single time it passed the transformers in would squeak two or three times.   Drove me nuts.   I had been fooling with buildings and moving them around.   Had put my hand on the track for balance..   I guess that changed the tracks relationship with the foam beneath it.   SQUEAK     SQUEAK.  

Nairb Rekab posted:

Could the engineer be a church mouse?

"Kerplunk?" 

"Kerplooey!"

  The mice are experimenting on us again; "know where your towel is, and remain calm; don't panic" 

  I'm going to pull an ho trick out of a hat here. It seems counter intuative, but isn't as bad as it sounds. You might want to try Wahl hair clipper oil on the wheels and track.

  It isnt a very slick oil, almost more of a protectant that goes on very thin. Wipe the excess, possibly wipe the tread clean with alcohol, etc., leaving a light coating on the railhead's inside edge and the flanges. 

  After a good cleaning, I had the same issue with one lone engine squeeking like nails on a chalkboad, and doing this stopped it. It didn't have a noticable impact on traction after a spot or two had the railhead (top) cleaned a touch more. I tried the Whal because I had just ran it before cleaning and knew the rails and wheels were bone dry; it had to be the issue.

If I recall right that cartoon was the last decent thing Rankin &Bass produced, kinda marking the end of stop motion figures for them....Kerplooey!

Gee; It would have taken me an hour to spell kerplooey alone 

How you do dat? 

If it reoccurs, try cleaning the locomotive wheels in addition to the track and pay special attention to the traction tires. Odd experience indeed.