The Terrible Tender Tether - PS2
I have one PS2 Steam Engine I’ve owned for about 3 years. It’s a 4-6-4 Hiawatha Hudson Steam engine. The tether has a straight 10 pin connection inside the tender and a 90° 10 pin connection at the engine.
I’ve had to mess with the tether about a lot since I’ve owned it. I’ve just ordered 2 more so I’ll have a spare one on hand for the next time one goes bad at an inopportune time; like during the Holidays.
Since I can’t get the new ones shipped to me until after the New Year I desided to dissect one of the old ones. What I discovered is two different gauges of bounded inside the casing with one piece of cotton string. The problem with the cable seeams to be that this is all bound so tightly inside the casing that when the cable comes out of the Tender goes up in a 90° turn and then makes a 180° turn down to connect to the engine, theres no play or room to allow slack in the wires and the very fine wires break around the 90° and 180° turns in the cable.
My solution was to cut away that entire section of wires splice the remaining ones back together and wrap them all loosely together with electrical tape. It worked and all the PS2 functions are operable. Of course it’s an ugly looking thing and people who aren’t fond of tethers in the first place would absolutely hate my terrible tender tether.
I’m about to take the time to fabricate another of my bad tethers in somewhat the same manner only using better materials and including the cotton string this time.
When it comes to electronics, basically I’m functionally illiterate. So I’m wondering what I’m missing here and what I should be aware of before I try to make another Terrible Tender Tether. Any suggestions and warnings would be appreciated.
I'll only be buying PS-3 locomotives from now on because of the tethers.
