Greetings OGR and question about Lionchief RTR Set

You didn't mention if you oiled all of the axles as well?

I did not.  Just the gears and motor shaft.  Also, should you be able to roll the engine across the tracks by hand?  With a little resistance, I assume? 

What is the catalog number of this set?  Makes answering questions a little easier.

6-82436

It stutters (good word for it) with the DC wallpack just the same.

I believe the GP-38's in these sets have horizontally mounted DC motors in the trucks driving a rudimentary spur-gear system to the wheels.  You may be hearing some "cogging" of the gears.  Can you shoot a quick video?

Jon

It took me a few attempts to get a worthwhile video under 100 MB, but I think this shows it properly. 

Everything works fine, once it give it a little more juice.  I just don't have anything to compare to and am wondering if this is just normal.  The gears appear to be fine.  They are not grinding or loose or anything.  I greased them lightly.

Pictures of gears under the trucks.

Yeah, I think that's pretty normal for that truck design.  What you're hearing is the cogging of the spur gears.  The next level up engines like the FT's have vertically mounted motors with worm gears so you don't get cogging.

Jon

Ok.  Do LC+ diesel engines have the worm gears?  I think my next engine will be an LC+. All the videos I see on YouTube show that they run pretty smooth.  Do I need to stay away from certain LC+ engines, or are they all vertical engines?

You should not apply too much grease, but In those pictures, the gears look awfully dry. Perhaps a little bit more grease might help a bit. Other than that pretty normal.

Yeah, that was before I greased them. 

I have quite a few Lion Chief Plus locos, steam and diesel, and I think they would fit the bill for you. The bonus is that many of these are 4-5 years from being cataloged and you should be able to find some good deals from train dealers (check the forum sponsors), the secondary market, or even the buy/sell board here.

And for someone starting out I was thinking that one of the LC+ NW2 Switchers would be a nice addition. These were fairly popular and performed well. Also, price range is a little lower on these. You may be more interested in something else but those Switchers immediately came to mind.

Also,  LionChief Plus locos have speed-control!

Jon

Thank you all for your help and advice. 

Johnstrains, are you willing to part with any?! 😁

FWIW, I don't see anything wrong.  The truck mounted motors in that particular design frequently do have more cogging than other motors.  Since this is a starter set with no cruise control, you can't expect it to take off consistently on the first speed step.  The speed steps on the plain LC stuff are just an application of a specific amount of incremental power for each speed step.  If the motor isn't able to run with whatever load it has on the first couple speed steps, it'll just do what you see, or sometimes just sit there and hum.

K-Line and RMT used those trucks on a lot of stuff, and in an interesting point, you couldn't use back-EMF cruise from ERR on many of them because of the strong magnetic cogging, they had lousy low speed performance.

Thanks John,

    Your thoughts are worth a good bit to me.  I feel a lot better about my purchase and can now be at ease while my son and I are running it.  Now I can devote my thoughts to improving our layout.

Thank you all.

Now, more importantly: what bay do you sail on?

Jon

Chesapeake.  I'm berthed in Middle River, MD.

Awesome.  Lake Champlain's Malletts Bay for me!

Jon

@Bay Tripper posted:

Thank you all for your help and advice.

Johnstrains, are you willing to part with any?! 😁

Sorry, none for sale at the moment. I actually did sell off a few a year or so ago.

Check some of the large dealers. The inventory on LC+ may be thinning out a little but you should still find some in stock and hopefully at decent prices.