Sunset/3rd Rail Rio Grande L-131 problem

Look at all the rods and links. Looking to see if anything got bent or distorted, causing a hang up…..loose fasteners, missing fasteners, etc,….. Other than that, you’re gonna have to pull the shell to see what’s going on,…lots of stuff happening inside that engine. Any number of things could cause this issue.

Pat

This probably isn’t entirely relevant to your specific issue but I recently bought a 3 rail L-131 that was mint and it had an issue with the front engine chassis. The front support bearing/guide assembly was bent and prevented the front engine from tracking properly. The L bracket on the chassis was bent and wasn’t aligning properly with the mating part on the boiler which caused a bind.

It was a little odd for a brand new engine to have an assembly issue like this. Took an hour or two to fix this and the engine runs great now. Makes me wonder what other issues could have happened during production on these models.

Word of Caution! If you remove the bottom plate on either of the engine chassis’, be very careful with how much the drivers can shift. The driver axle bearings are spring loaded and it is a PITA to get the springs back into position once they become unseated.
Removing the boiler from the chassis is actually pretty easy and will give you good access to the drive train. Further disassembly can get a bit tricky.

Ryan and Pat -- thank you for your comments and suggestions. Everything in the visible running gear appears to be OK, so I guess I will take the next step and remove the boiler to check on the motor and drive belt. I have one Sunset steam engine in which the flywheel was rubbing against a motor lead, but that caused a constant, rather than intermittent, drag on operation. That was an easy fix.