Hello,
Just writing to ask opinions on the Weaver Black Box QSI equipped E-8 AA sets. I have seen these around in various sale sites and wondered how good they were for normal operations. Can they be operated by MTH or Lionel handheld systems or conventional only? How do they compare in looks to other scale 3 rail E-8 models? Thinking about obtaining some for passenger operations. Thanks.
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Larry I have an AA pair of Weaver Southern RR E8s easy enough to add ERR TMCC control and sound. One small problem most if not all I have seen are 4 motors and require changing the Triacs in the motor driver board or installing two TMCC motor boards one in each unit. But they pull great as a four motor pair. I am running my pair on one TMCC DCDR motor driver and have not had any problems but I did make a larger heatsink for it and I never accelerate fast just ease away in a prototype manner. It is walking on the edge, stall it, and your likely to fry the driver board. I have a 3A polyfuse in line with the motors however and so far so good. Or you could wire the motors in serial pairs and then wire the two pair in parallel. That would keep the static resistance from dropping much below 2 ohms. You would loose a bit of top speed but these china drives are all about 10:1 which is WAY to high to begin with. If the china drives were all 15:1 you would not need four motors. Two TMCC motor driver boards and a pair of R2LC 08 is the proper way to do it though. j
Larry, I can’t answer your questions regarding appearance, but the QSI electronics support conventional operation only, similar to the MTH PS1 system (also by QSI). At the time, these were designed for sine wave output transformers such as the ZW, and may not be compatible with some triac controlled (“shark fin wave”) transformers.
Having said that, I’ve been happy with my Weaver U25B and RS11, using my postwar ZW. A handheld control which would work is an MTH Z-4000 with an MTH Z-4000 remote or a DCS remote; this provides a variable sine wave AC output.
Larry I have the Union Pacific and Canadian Pacific Weaver E-8's. Both of mine are still coventional. Also to note one other thing the motors do not have fly wheels so they will stop on a dime if stopped fast. They run and pull great.....Paul 2
Great equipment; built like tanks. they pound across switches like the real thing.
No flywheels, but that never seemed to be a problem; the metal grilles sometimes tend to bow out and come off. Fixable. Part of the fun of (good) old stuff.
Though I've never heard anybody else mention it, the body shell tooling has a small but important flaw: the die maker managed to forget the exhaust stacks. Had mine for a while before I noticed this. Admittedly, they have been on a shelf for a while. Easy fix.
Must get really smoky in that cab.
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