An update on my Whistle Station! Last weekend, I took the time to completely disassemble and clean the station, and it's motor. I used some De-ox-it on it, which helped improve electrical connection. I also finally figured out what was up with the wiring: so whenever the old switch on the station itself broke off or was removed, the previous owner soldered a new wire to the chassis, which means that the station is now controlled by a separate button on a control panel. Which I was thinking of doing anyways as a repair, so that's one less thing to do! Now I just need to wire up a button between it and an accessory transformer.
I used some vice grips to reseat the rivets that seal up the plate on the one side of the whistle assembly, and that seems to gave gotten the seal on the gasket back to factory specs. I think I may have been a little too conservative with the power I was giving it earlier, because with it turned up to 3/4 power vs 1/2 power on the transformer, the whistle now sounds loud and clear! It really, really wants a full 12 volts, and excepts no substitutes!
I was nervous about bending the tinplate tabs, so this time I didn't bend them all the way back flat when I put the body back on. Hopefully that will make it easier to service later on. For the moment, I've placed it on the long back 8' as a kind of country whistle stop... let me know what you think of how it looks!
Ultimately, very happy with my first tinplate tune-up project. Somewhere I have a tinplate tunnel I need to fish out, so that hopefully you guys can take a look at it. I *think* it's a Lionel 118, but can't identify it and it has no external markings. It's been around for a while but sitting in storage.
