I have a K-Line K612-1891 Caboose that I just purchased. It looks like it had very little use, but I noticed that the interior lights and smoke unit did not appear to be operating on my outer loop. The outer loop runs a train at a good speed at about 5.2 volts. At that voltage the lights are dim and the smoke unit doesn't operate. I hooked it up to a train on one of my inner loops runs a train at a good speed at about 10.7 volts. The lights were noticeably brighter and the smoke unit seemed to work a bit better.
I relocated the caboose to another track and applied full voltage from my transformer. The lights were very bright and the smoke unit operated as expected. When I was moving the caboose back and forth between the loops, I flipped it over and noticed that one of the pickups, there are two, was just flopping around. The spring seemed to be intact; however it had no tension against the track and must be making minimal contact. The other pickup has good tension and seems to be making good contact. I suspect that the two pickups are intended to span frogs and other dead track sections.
I realize that varying the voltage to a lamp will vary the brightness, however, I would have thought that the designers of this unit, back in 1999, would have installed a voltage regulator so that it could be run in conventional mode, and the light would be bright and the smoke unit would work accordingly. My unit has an on/off switch, which I believe is only for the smoke unit. I understand that they did modify the design at a later date and had a CC/CM switch for either command control or conventional mode.
Does anybody have any thoughts on this. Is there a retrofit that i can purchase to update my unit?
thanks