Update …
First, a shout out to Mr Muffin’s Trains. Because the unit was less than 30 days old, they swapped it as a defective unit and exchanged for a new one. Quick, excellent customer service.
The new unit arrived while we were away last week (someone was at the house to sign for it) and I finally got to check everything out this morning. Overall, everything is a cautiously optimistic OK. The engine and dummy look and sound amazing, run beautifully and were easy to program and lash together. I was running them for close to an hour when the sparks started. :-\
After some troubleshooting, I figured out the sparks only happened at higher speeds, on the outside rail, going around curves. On closer inspection, the pilots were almost touching the track. So going around curves, just a little bit of lean was enough to make contact. The pilot is part of the newer design for the kinematic couplers where coupler and pilot articulate separately but work together.
Specifically the trouble was the pilots connecting the engine and the dummy. My theory is that insufficiently tightened screws (see the picture) began to work their way loose as I was running around the layout. I didn’t have rolling stock connected to them so I can’t confirm offhand if the rear coupler on the dummy would’ve done the same thing with the additional weight, but when I inspected all of the screws, they were loose also.
In the picture where the screwdriver is pointing, there are two screws on each side of the engine and dummy that hold that larger plate in the place. That entire plate was about to drop off between the engine and the dummy on each. Those screws on the opposite ends of the units needed to be tightened. I went along the bottom of the units and tightened up other screws as well.
Hopefully I’ll get time to run them again this weekend and see if they loosen up. I’m hoping that they just were not tightened properly to begin with. I’ll be disappointed if they keep working their way loose.
Anyone else with the new SD45s seeing similar issues?
