Hey all,
This is just a heads up for whoever else has one of these locomotives. I've been running my Lionel Legacy PRR E6 Atlantic #68 (6-84943) since it was delivered and everything has seemed fine. The only issue that I noticed within the past month or so was that the headlight would intermittently turn on/off as it was running, flickering even at some points. Last night, however, I heard like a clicking noise coming from the engine, particularly when I ran it in reverse. It then stalled on a switch and tripped the PowerMaster, and it took a couple of attempts of repositioning it before the PowerMaster wouldn't trip upon powering up.
When I opened up the shell I saw I think the culprit for both accounts: in the bundle of wires running along the roof of shell there was a black and red wire that were rubbing up against the flywheel. The black wire, where it was in contact with the flywheel, had its insulation completely shredded off, exposing the copper wire, while the red wire had a dark spot on it (a burn mark?). Seems reasonable to me that this was the source of the short and clicking noise. I wrapped the damaged black wire with some electrical tape and then used more tape to tape the bundle of wires to the roof of the shell. That solved both the shorting issue and the clicking noise, as I ran it extensively afterwards to test. However, now my headlight won't light....
If you've been running your model, you might want to take a peak underneath to make sure that no wires are rubbing against the flywheel.
On a related note, has anyone successfully dealt with these units wobbling? I imagine adding some weight to the front of shell would reduce that.
Stephen
