need advice on wiring marx motor unit

Hi KMK,

I have a wiring diagram I drew to help you rewire the Marx engine. The drawing is in two parts.

The top part shows how a motor is wired in Marx and other trains, such as Americam Flyer, that use a universal motor. First the wiring to run the motor in one direction (lets's say forward for our purposes). The wiring is pretty simple.

The next motor is wired to go in reverse. Notice how the wire from the right hand brush now connects to the left field winding, not the right hand winding connection as in the motor above. And the pickup is connected to the right hand part of the field wiring.

The bottom half is a practical application. In fact it shows how an American Flyer 21160 Atlantic is wired. This model happens to use a DPDT switch instead of the usual reverse units found in most Flyer locos.

The switch is a sliding DPDT switch and the diagram shows the back end of the switch, and how the posts are wired. As you would expect the center posts are common and the slide either contacts the center two posts to the two posts on the right, or the center two posts the two posts on the left. Also note the two wires that are wired in an X configuration; that ties the far right upper to the far left lower posts, and the far right lower to the far left upper posts. The pickup wheels are in the tender for this loco and the plug on the engine goes into two jacks on the tender.

From these diagrams just find where the two AC pickups connect to your Marx engine's motor and then redo the wiring to put in a DPDT switch; the same as the 21160.

I hope this helps. I have tried to make this as clear as possible.

Rich

Rich

thanks very much for your explanation - have lots of DPDT switches on hand

Rich:

below is a photo of a Marx power unit that I successfully upgraded to manual forward/reverse using your advice.

thanks very much

KMK

KMK,

Thanks for the feedback, glad to have helped. Good job on the wiring.

Rich