Cattle loader not unloading

I have done some tuning of our 3656 stockyard with some limited success, but nothing to write home about yet.  They are tricky and each has a personality of its own.  It sounds like your stockyard bridge is not quite aligned with the stock car or the little tabs on the bottom of the bridge are not making contact with the platform (where the cows stand) to translate the vibration from the platform to the bridge.

The trick is to do some slight bending and twisting of the bridge to get the bridge as plumb as possible with the car runway and also maintain contact between the bridge tabs and the platform when power is applied.

Attached are the service manual pages associated with the 3656 stockyard and car which includes service hints.

Not one of Lionel's best for smooth operation

I see them on YouTube all the time and they seem to work great!!   Seriously, I’m starting to think this may be harder than I think.  I will verify my tabs are touching, make sure all metal parts move freely, and maybe grease the cows.  We will see.  Thanks for the pdf and suggestions.   

@chinatrain99 posted:

I bought a cattle loader on eBay.  It bounces great till it gets to the doors.   Then it kind of sticks and the next one knocks it over.   I found a manual online and it said to grease front of cows.   I have sewing machine grease which I’m sure will work.  Manual said front edge.

I would nominate this as one of Lionel's worst "operating" cars.  I had one from the LTI era.  After fiddling with, & trying to adjust, it for like 2 years (including one time sending it to the Lionel Service Dept.) I just sold it.   I've never heard of putting grease on their felt bottoms & don't see how that would help.. .only create more drag.

The one I had as a kid seemed to work fine. When I acquired one a number of years ago neither the car nor the corral worked well. After hours of tweaking the corral, ramps, and car platform it works OK, You will want to get a set of pads for the car and corral, then its a matter of small adjustments to optimize the vibrations. Because it was one of two operating accessories I grew up with as a kid I wanted it to work. It can be done, just takes a lot of trial and error.

Pete

Been there, done that. What a headache. I've got a PW style layout with lots of operating accessories and really wanted this one to work. As noted many times here on the forum, I spent hours trying to get it to work and finally took it off the layout. Ugh.

I've actually got two of them in storage and often think about giving it another go one of these days.

I wonder if part of the problem is the cattle? 70 year old cattle may be petrified by now and who knows what the repros are made of today. The fingers need some spring to make them move.

Pete

Mine has always worked great, never a problem. Guess I was lucky.

It's too bad they do not work more reliably as a whole, although I do enjoy the challenge of getting it to work properly.  If a guy could get a three or so working well, I think it would be a fun game to "brand" the cattle into thirds, mix them around the various stockyards, and then load, sort, and deliver the cattle to their appropriate "home" stockyard.