Recently picked up the MTH Penn Central Turbo Train! This thing is fantastic!
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Make sure to lubricate the gears. Mine were early releases and zinc pest hit one of the idler gears. Also, don't add more than one of the extra cars. The prototype had three intermediate cars on Amtrak, but the resistance of the wire causes issues sometimes when you add the extra car. One of my many projects is to re-wire the cars with heavier gauge wire. The sound and operation of these trains is very impressive.
Best of wishes. I own 3 of these things. Beautiful pieces of junk. Matt's points are true. I would like to find a way to rework these trains so you can run more cars without failures. In my experience, enjoy the train while it runs. Take videos so you can revisit what it was like when it worked.
My story with these:
A neat piece of bullet-train history, or pre-bullet-train. I remember Marty Fitzhenry working on his Turbo train years ago. It appears Chris' train is the 2021 release, whereas the first release was 2014 or so. Did MTH correct any of the design deficiencies between the two releases? It's a shame about the idler gears in Matt's train.
@Paul Kallus posted:A neat piece of bullet-train history, or pre-bullet-train. I remember Marty Fitzhenry working on his Turbo train years ago. It appears Chris' train is the 2021 release, whereas the first release was 2014 or so. Did MTH correct any of the design deficiencies between the two releases? It's a shame about the idler gears in Matt's train.
No. I have a later issue TurboTrain which had no design changes. It does have better fit on the forks positioning which did not need the Marty Fitzhenry fix for that one issue on the earlier versions. Not a design change, just better installation. Early ones arrived with bent forks causing them to couple to closely or not same level. The frail ten pin wiring which circumnavigates the cars and is often crimped down still exists in the newer versions.
I have the latest Amtrac version including the extra car and have found the tether between the cars gradually works its way loose, causing the trailing unit to stop functioning. This happens on a track that has a minimum of 072 curves. I have taken the offending car apart and have loosened the tether, hoping to give it some freedom in the curves. This has helped somewhat, but the problem still occurs. I missed the previous thread on this topic, so I appreciate it being discussed once again as well as the fix.
