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There's something to be said about "keep it simple stupid". Just spent the evening pulling apart the entire Xmas display's tube track to solve a voltage drop. Turned up to be dirty & corroded pins along with widened ends on the lose fitting rails from years of assembly & disassembly. I guess I had been noticing slowly developing performance problems getting worse every year, but was in denial about until the trains just about stopped running with the throttles pegged. Probably because I knew all too well what a finger chopping ordeal it is to take it all apart & fix the problems. Well, after pulling every pin, cleaning, & crimping, the ol' 2055 is romping around the rails like it was 1954 all over again. If dad was here now, he'd smile proudly & say "See, I told you it was YOUR crapped up old track & not MY engine".....

Last edited by Railroaded
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I knew it was coming. I avoided it until the bitter end (when the trains barely move). Can't expect 50 year old track to work perfect when it's been used & taken apart again every year since it was made. One thing I did notice that I didn't know - liquid track cleaners just make the grime run into the rail joints & gunk up the pins. Some of the bad connections weren't corroded, they were just gooped up with a thin film of old grease, dirt, & oil. I cut it with WD-40, cleaned everything shiny & dried it off with air & a cut down q-tip, re-crimped the ends of the rails, brass brushed the corroded pins, & jammed it all back together. One other dumb thing to remember, if the tie crimps are loose on the base of the rail, it hinders electrical transfer to the opposite side. They need to be tightened so they bite in good. After all that fooling around, that old engine responded with a roar, just about jumped right out of her stupor & flew the heck around that track. No more slow spots. I can picture Dad standing there, a frumpy look on his face, head tilted to the side, arms folded, "Uh huh, poor maintenance eh? Oh boy, you really did it good this time..."  

Yeah, 2 out of the 3 trains I pulled out for this year's display needed a good cleaning, oil, & grease, but those old meat grinders quieted right down & are currently whipping around the layout. They'l tell you when they need some attention, all you have to do is listen & watch how they go. Noticeable improvement all the way around once it was all done. I can't complain, they're old, they get rotated out for Xmas every few years so they don't run much inbetween times. Everything needs some TLC at 1st, & then you're good for a while. I'd rather work the bugs out now than on Xmas Eve...One quick tip, I wore a "gripper" style 3/4 dip glove on my left hand to hold the track sections without ripping apart my fingers on all that sharp metal while man handling the rail & ties & I did the fine work with the other hand & it helped keep me from getting all sliced up & it kept that goop I mentioned earlier from getting all over my hands. 

I thought so. Found out different. The voltage drop from just one or two bad pin connections was enough to make the train slow down noticeably. As soon as the loco crossed a bad section of track, it would lose speed to the point of having to throttle up to keep it from stalling. This was happening on multiple sections on a 12 x 4 foot loop layout with 3 power lock ons spread around. That's why at fisrt I figured it HAD to be something wrong with the engine, how could all that track be so bad? Well, it was. The loco needed a little tune up anyway, but that was coincidental. The main reason it ran so irratic was either corroded or dirty pins & tube. It brought me right back to square one in diagnosing problems. Gotta think by starting out with the most basic thing first & then get into it more & more complicated from there. I overthought the whole thing & it ended up being Lionel 101, gotta have clean tracks.

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