My lionel 0-8-0 gets these crazy power spikes where it lurches ahead but just for a second . Usually it scares the hell out of me because its going along nice and slow then BAM!!! 18 volt spike then back to nice and easy. it has a wire less drawbar..the wheels are clean..track is clean..can happen anywhere on the layout. loco has 2 pick up rollers and tender also has two. can happen in forward or reverse . ready for the scrap yard. HELP ! conrail john
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Is it being ran conventional ? TCCM or LionChief?
It is set and i use tmcc....can the electronic eye of the wireless get dirty ?
The electronics in the tender are strictly for sound; Lionel wireless tethers are for data/command transfer from loco to tender; the "go boards" are in the loco. These locos will run fine without the tender; think of it as Stealth Mode.
A TMCC loco can do a lurch if the power is momentarily interrupted (dirty track; gaps - as in switch crossing). If it happens to be brief enough to cause an interruption, but too brief for the flywheel to stop, the mechanicals keep going but the electronics do a restart - hence, a jerk/lurch.
This is especially noticeable on some early TMCC/Odyssey locos with the "Odyssey startup lurch". Some do, some don't, even within the same loco model (I have 2 TMCC/Odyssey 2-6-6-2's - one lurches once, upon startup, and one does not).
Check your track cleanliness, back-to-back switch dead areas and the like.
Thanks D500 for the reply you pretty much covered it. got some things to check now. conrail john
I have this same loco and had the same issue as you until I ran a jumper between the pickups on the loco and tender. Now it performs perfectly for slow speed switching. The early odyssey locomotives had an aggressive response to power dips and over shoots in its correction. The jumper eliminates the power dips and the locomotive runs very slow through switches and such.
As others have posted, add a jumper. On all of my TMCC locos I have added #22 stranded black wire from rear roller on loco to front roller on tender. On my older TMCC 2-roller diesels, I connected the A and B units and then stopped buying Lionel diesels until Lionel started putting 4 rollers on its diesels.
Allan
Jumper worked great ! The cure for everything. I doubled up some passenger cars to keep the lights on in similar fashion