@Ted S posted:If you can't live with the risk of motor failure, this design makes it easy to replace the motor. But Pittman motors have become expensive and a little hard-to-find themselves. @gunrunnerjohn could some type of fusing, or "safety circuit" be devised, to be placed between the motor and the board stack, preventing the cascade failure you describe?
If you don't want to stick the Pittman in, you could use a 3A trip PTC, that would be reasonable protection. I'd still rather have the Pittman.
@Ted S posted:Regarding the number of pickups, I agree that two is too few. However, historically, unlike MTH, Lionel has also installed pickups on its tender trucks. So they could be bridged to the loco with a tether if needed for reliable operation. I'm not really a fan of streamlined steam. But IMO the mechanical pedigree of this one seems to be above-average.
Well, actually, virtually all the Lionel TMCC and Legacy steam has pickups on the tender as most of them also have the IR link between the locomotive and tender and no physical wired connection. If you're gonna' have sound, you need electricity. 
