Skip to main content

Hello,

I have a Lionel Scout, which is a 2-4-2 engine.  The rear two wheels seem to bounce around alot when the engine runs, and when you try to back it up over a switch or any other device that doesn't have totally smooth continuous rails, those rear wheels want to bounce up and derail.  This is true whether it is hooked to the tender or not.

In seeing this, I thought:  "Well, there must be a spring on that coupler arm that forces the truck down onto the rails, which has grown weak and has worn out."

WRONG.

To my surprise, a there is a flat spring on the bottom of the coupler arm, that pushes down onto a little flat bar, and forces the rear truck Upward instead of downward. No wonder those wheel want to jump up and derail whenever the engine crosses uneven surfaces.

Why in the world did they put this flat spring in like this?  It seems to serve no useful purpose?

I am thinking of drilling out the rivet that holds that flat spring to the underside of the arm, and trying to install it on top of the arms, so the rear wheels are forced downward.

Any insight or analysis is welcome.

Mannyrock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Lionel changed the design of the trailing wheel and drawbar a couple of times over the years.  Can you post a pic?  Maybe a previous owner messed with yours, or you have the wrong parts for your loco.

That being said, on O27 especially the 5121 and 5122 switches, all bets are off.  Backing through the curved leg of a switch, especially when pushing a load might well result in a derailment.

Last edited by Ted S

Thanks.  It's a 1949 Lionel Scout 1110.      I'll try to post a picture tomorrow.

The locomotive has a horizontal flat bar, mounted at the very rear, underneath the draw bar..  The drawbar can swing back and forth perpendicularly over this flat bar.   But, mounted on the bottom of the draw bar is a flat spring, which runs underneath the drawbar for the length of the drawbar.   This  flat spring is open, and pushes down on the horizontal flat bar underneath the draw bar.  (It rides on the  flat bar and crosses over it  perpendicularly.)    It exerts spring pressure upward, keeping the draw bar from touching the horizontal flat bar.

Unfortunately,  the rear axle of the engine, which has one wheel on each side,  is also mounted to the underside of the draw bar, further back underneath the engine.  As a matter of fact, the axle is held in place by two tabs of sheet metal, that are actually part of the drawbar itself,  which are bent downward from the drawbar and have a hole through them for the axel to pass through.       As a result, the upward spring pressure on the drawbar also "lifts' the axle and wheels upward as well. 

 So, the rear axle  is kinda "floating" upward, and away from the tracks underneath it.  Although the wheels still touch the tracks, there is no downward pressure pushing them down onto the tracks.  Accordingly, the wheels  often derail  easily when they roll over choppy parts of the track, like when the engine goes over a switch.  The wheels also frequently derail when the engine is backing up. 

It all looks original and untouched to me.  

Thanks,

Mannyrock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll still try to post a picture.

Strange, but I see no evidence of any modifications to the underside.  The drawbar/truck and spring are all held in place with a single rivet.  The rivet looks totally original.

Maybe I got an abberation in production?  Often, in the firearms world, especially in the years after WWII, when a new model of a gun was brought out, they often blended spare parts from the old model, until those spare parts were all gone, and then they switched over to the newly designed parts.

Thanks,

Mannyrock

 

 

 

 

Thanks for that great information.

I am going to drill the rivet out and remove the flat spring from the underside.

Do you think it would be wise for me to re-install the flat spring, on the top of the draw bar, pushing against the upper tail end of the engine, so that the spring is pushing the truck down?    Do most locomotives have a spring pushing the rear truck down?  Have just a single axle and two wheels, the truck seems awfully light and fluttery.

Thanks,

Mannyrock

I would leave it alone. The spring is for electrical contact. If you are truly opposed to the spring, you can easily obtain the proper 1110-11 part (say from forum sponsor @S AND W). Understand that your locomotive was probably upgraded for the enhanced electrical contact, or it was all that was on hand after the toy suffered an accident damaging the trailing truck.

As for backing up and such over your complex track - I would suggest you are expecting too much from the budget scout line.

It's YOUR loco, and parts aren't expensive.  I would start by ordering the correct part.  Then you can modify the one you have as much as you want.  If it doesn't work out you can use the correct part put it back to stock.  This loco isn't a rare collectible, so anything you do to make it run better is fair game.

I had a 2-4-2 growing up, and as Mr. Moran said, they can be derailment-prone when backing through Lionel O27 switches.  In "real life" sometimes train crews included an extra freight car as a "handle" to reach in, and avoid backing a locomotive into a siding to pick up a car.  If you can find a Marx switch, the type where the whole assembly swivels, it might work better with this particular loco.  My $.02.

 

He means prewar marx turnouts not the later plastic ones; those are junk imo, for any brand locos.

They need a few pins added to short rails to narrow some gaps as marx used shoes that floated over them vs rollers that drop and bump up. Not hard at all, slip in, eyeball the gap away, crimp, run.

The point style is unusual; actually moves both point ends (vs one) on a center pivot. They are "raw" boxy undecorated covers(often not even a light), and you have to do your own antiderail triggers on plain track. They work well though. There are a few prototypes if that's as, or more important, than running well. (These also work on fat driver trains, few other do)

You might look for a drawbar/truck option where the wheels float free of the drawbar for better tracking as push is applied to the bar.  Also, some tender receivers use a thin slot.  These bind early when "jackknifed".  When backing this keeps the two shafts at less of a jackknifed angle; it compliments pushing.

 

Bmoran,

I am not sure how the presence of this flat spring could aid at all in electrical contact, since it pushes the wheels upwards and away from the rails carrying the current, not down onto them.  Unless of course the cast iron body can carry an electrical charge up through the body and into the engine, in which case the spring, which is in contact with both the metal truck which houses the wheels touching the track, and the cast iron body of the engine, acts as a separate source for carrying a current to the engine.

But, , , what do I know???

 

Mannyrock

 

I believe I would conduct a small test to see if removing the spring would cause a grounding issue to show itself. Try running just the loco through your switches at the slowest speed it can manage. If the engine does in fact have poor grounding, it will likely stall. Then try the same experiment with the tender hooked on - I would even hook a couple more cars to the tender, just to keep tension on the drawbar. The idea, I believe, was that the tender wheels provided additional outside rail contact that could be conducted through the drawbar to keep things moving over switches. No expense to try it and see if there's any effect on your engine! 

George

After a little research...I'm always learning sompin' There were 2 issues of the 1110. The early version ('49) did not have the grounding spring on the drawbar. The later version (51' 52') Did have the ground strap. So I guess the spring is correct as issued. So the rear wheels are going to be 'floppy'. If this is derailing too often, like I said in my earlier post, that truck can be replaced with an improved version.

BTW: that side rod in the picture doesn't look correct. Shouldn't have the bend in it.

Last edited by Chuck Sartor

No, it is correctly installed. The tang that is inside the motor case there is a ground strap. So the spring that slides on the drawbar transfers the ground through the metal body to the front truck assembly which then grounds the pilot truck wheels. Much better current path than just the trailing truck wheels. If you want to improve the trailing truck reliability to track, replace with a 1130  trailing truck. This has a different suspension system that works better. You can probably find on one Ebay sooner or later.

All the examples that I have seen and believe to be of good provenance have the spring between the drawbar and crossbar. There is no real other way to install the 1120-6 trailing truck. The spring is installed at the factory, and the the service documents depicts it as your part is shown:

mceclip0

 Here is the 1130-20 that @Chuck Sartor mentioned. It is derived from the 2034 locomotive as noted. The motor is of a differing setup and am unsure if the 1130-20 will mount where the 1120-6 is without modification.

Attachments

Images (2)
  • mceclip0
  • mceclip0
Last edited by bmoran4

Heck No.  I just bought it because I needed a cheap 027 engine to run as I built and tested my layout. 

This Scout runs fine, very fast,  in forward and reverse.  

It is just that often, traveling over manual switches, that wheels on that rear truck seem to bounce up and off the rails.

I thought about just cutting the axle and taking those wheels off, and going without a rear truck.  But now,  folks are telling me that those two rear wheels need to be there for grounding.  Sheesh.

I kind of like the idea of changing the location of the flat spring, so it is under the draw bar and on top of the horizontal support.  But, all of this stuff is held together with a single rivet, and I hate to take the shell off to drill that rivet out, flip the spring, and put a new rivet in.  (The engine has two very tiny screws on the sides of the boiler, that look like they might be trouble.

Ideas?

Mannyrock

 

 

@Mannyrock posted:

 

I kind of like the idea of changing the location of the flat spring, so it is under the draw bar and on top of the horizontal support.  But, all of this stuff is held together with a single rivet, and I hate to take the shell off to drill that rivet out, flip the spring, and put a new rivet in.  (The engine has two very tiny screws on the sides of the boiler, that look like they might be trouble.

Ideas?

Mannyrock 

No way I would go through the trouble of drilling that rivet out over replacing the truck. As for disassembly, take a look at the service documents Olsen's kindly hosts for your locomotive:

http://www.olsenstoy.com/searchcd2a.htm

Last edited by bmoran4

Well.  What a crummy design.

If the flat spring were on top of the draw bar, the top section of the flat spring would definitely be in contact at all times with the bottom flat edge of the rear of the cab itself.  So, why wouldn't that work?

I mean, the horizontal bar underneath the cab is screwed right to the underside of the cab.  Wouldn't direct contact by the spring with the cab itself be better?

Mannyrock

@GVDobler posted:

Is there a chance that the spring should be on the bottom of that crossbar? It would still make contact and it would push the truck down instead of up.

Doing that could lead to the spring making contact with the middle rail, causing a short.

Could you use a pair of pliers to squeeze the flat spring enough to maintain contact but not raise the wheels too much?

Balidas,  Yes, I could probably do that.  But, it would be tricky to bend the spring down just enough so that it always maintains contact with the cross bar.  Especially since the rear truck is so flightly

Here's what I am thinking of doing.   

Run a wire from the draw bar, in a place underneath the cab, to the cab.  This will carry current from the draw bar straight to the cab.  No need for a flat spring, attached to the flat bar, to rub up against the flat horizontal cross bar that is screwed to the bottom of the cab.

Close the flat spring, and keep it closed with a little bit of black electrical tape.  This will let the the truck swing by itself, free of the effect of the rubbing flat spring.

Add a weight to the top of the draw bar, to hold the rear truck down.

To try this, I have some questions:

I have several drills and titanium bits of every size.   I know I can drill a hole in the sheet metal draw bar.  But, can you drill a hole in cast iron???   I have never tried this.  Would I be able to thread a hole in the cast iron with a tap?  Cast iron is super brittle.

If I can't drill the holes, will solder bond to sheet metal, and will it bond to cast iron?  Instead of fastening each end of the wire with a screw, a spot of solder would hold them.

Thanks for information.

Mannyrock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With you educated on all the options presented thus far, I do support your most recent experiment idea.

You can drill and tap the cast shell, but it can be unforgiving at times. I would suggest instead that you tape up the spring as you desire, and then solder SW-22 Super Flex wire to the rivet. The other end of the wire should be terminated with a ring terminal and routed to one of the conveniently already tapped 6-32 x 5/16 screws holding the front bracket to the shell.

While scouring the service documents, I did find this note that shows that your 1120-6 trailing truck may actually be factory as the later 1951-52 models had these upgrades applied from the earlier 1120 release.

Attachments

Images (1)
  • mceclip0

Add Reply

Post

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

×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×