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A friend recently noticed an issue with one of his Z4000 transformers. While running two postwar Trainmaster engines in tandem, and pulling a rather heavy string of postwar coal hoppers, he noticed what sounds like a "buzzing" noise. He was running at 11 volts and pulling about 6 amps. The noise seems to increase/decrease with corresponding changes of throttle. The noise occurs only on the Track1 side (tried same engine set on Track2 throttle with no noise).

Does not sound like cooling fan noise to me, more like what you might hear from a postwar ZW with a loose coil stack maybe. The transformer is at least 10 years old (original owner) with no other issues and, at least for now, the noise doesn't seem to affect performance.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue with a Z4000 and, if so, is there a fix? I did try a forum search before posting with no luck. Thanks! 

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nay transformer can develop a noise from the  transformer metal plates if there even a little loose, the looseness causes the plates to vibrate to the ac 60 hz rate of the ac input power, that won't hurt anything, sometime you can stop the vibration but is not a issue and not to be concerned about! you could take the top of the transformer off and use an insulted probe and push the  metal brackets to find the noise might come and go away, but I would not recommend it if you don't know what your doing you could get shocked or damage your transformer.

Alan 

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
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