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Hi All,

I have been driving myself crazy (but that's OK--my wife says it's a short drive ) trying to get the horn on my 2344 NYC F3 to work. It's been on my layout for quite some time (after years of storage) but I never put a battery in it to blow the horn until now. We've (my father and I) had it since it was new so I know it did work before storage; there is no battery damage.

Of course, the horn didn't blow. I took the D cell out, jumped from a 9 volt battery to the appropriate places to "break the horn loose" and it blew. Jumped from the D cell to the appropriate places and it blew. Put the battery back in and it wouldn't blow using either my test track (1033 transformer) or my layout (rebuilt ZW transformer). Both transformers do activate horns/whistles on other engines.

I've cleaned both the sliding bottom plate (negative) and the receiver (positive) on/in the engine and jumped from them to the D cell; the horn blows with the jumpers but not when the battery is properly inserted. I've also removed the horn and cleaned both the frame and the horn brackets so the horn is getting a good ground from the frame.

I'd appreciate any ideas you may have to solve my problem. The engine runs fine so I don't really need the horn but you know how it is:  now that I've tried to make it work it bugs me that it doesn't.

Thanks for your help.

Bob

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If directly powering the horn works, then I suggest you look at the horn relay. When you activate the horn from the transformer it trips a relay that allows the battery to power the horn.  Try tracking the wires coming from the track to the relay and also the wire from the batter to the relay and the one to the horn. If the relay is working, make sure the 'fingers' are making contact and clean.

You potentially could replace the relay, pretty sure parts places have it, might be easier than trying to debug it.

I assume you know just how these DC horns get triggered on AC track.

The horn button separate or on your transformer when pressed sends a short DC signal to  the engine's relay. Thus, triggering the relay to send the battery DC voltage to the horn.

This cockamamie, pre-transistors, system, love the Lionel engineers who thunk it, is prone to many issues, the biggest are contacts and sticking relays as well as how well the path is for the signal to get from your transformer to the engine.

The cure?  A newer engine and place the old one in a nice display case.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I think I'll look into replacing the relay as bigkid suggested.

Joe Krasko:  I don't think I'd have room to add the battery pack but I'll keep it in mind.

AlanHN:  as much as I do enjoy running my command control engines (my layout is wired for both Legacy and DCS), this engine has too much sentimental value to me to let it be a shelf queen. It runs fine other than the horn problem and, if I have to, I can live with that.

Regards,

Bob

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