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I can’t be the only one the has issues with this. Only on certain equipment like - k-line Plymouths/handcars and now an mth trolley. I’ve tried lubing with conductive oil, cleaning the wheels with wire brushes and soaking in contact cleaner and running dry. After awhile of forced running they get better but then stall in the worst possible spot. Any tips?

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Its just due to roller spacing. It happens on large locomotives as well like the Lionel Mohawk and Niagaras on large or double slip switches. To get around this on my Beeps and Plymouths I got a transfer caboose with a pickup roller on each truck and wired a tether to connect all four rollers. No stalling anywhere now.

Pete

Sounds like you may need a different track and roller cleaning procedure.  I run a lot of the little motorized units.  They are finicky about switches at times, but in general I don't have a lot of issues with pickups.  I have a number of the small K-Line based units, and for those I try to add rollers if possible. A typical example is this Porter TMCC upgrade.

I added a roller to the little coal car to solve the roller spacing issue, and did a copper strip to increase the outside rail connections as well.

I also have this clown car upgrade with TMCC & sound, I ganged the two together to benefit from four rollers and eight wheels for better track contact.

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A friend has a similar problem with his trollies. He runs on fastrack, and all runs fine for a few days after cleaning the track, but then problem starts again. Have cleaned contacts and wheels on the trollies, but the fastrack "quickly" getting dirty seems to be the bigger part of the problem. He had to take his layout down to replace the flooring in his train room, and is now rebuilding the layout. We were both anxious to try using contact cleaner (in place of Alcohol or Acetone) as was detailed in recent posts on track cleaning. Wish I could report right now that this made a big improvement, but can't till layout is up and running again in the future.

@MerCrewser posted:

They stall anywhere. When both rollers are firing, there are no stall points. The trolley has dual rollers on one bracket. A jumper to the bracket and it runs fine. Right now it won’t go more than a few feet even after letting the whole bracket assembly soak in contact cleaner. It’s really frustrating.

Let’s look at this from another approach, .....as others have mentioned, adding rollers and ground wipers is the best line of defense, I do the same as mentioned above on habitual offenders, however, ....tell us more about your cleansing techniques. So you soaked the the roller assembly in contact cleaner?....how did you soak it?...sprayed it down and let it air dry?...or actually give the parts a “bath” in a vessel full of contact cleaner?......here’s what I’m getting at, ....you might actually be leaving a film behind on your ( what you think is clean) parts......there’s no chemical left on this planet that’s worth it’s weight as to what it used to be,.....even the almighty CRC contact cleaner isn’t as good as it “used” to be,....I use these products every day of the week, and they keep taking the good stuff out of them it seems on a daily basis, ....I’d try a different approach at cleaning if you’re not having any success with the current plan,....clearly it’s not working,....

Pat

I figured it out. The trolly runs on an isolated siding that I can’t reach. After sitting all summer, there must have been enough dust on the track to foul the rollers. It would run fine on my regular loop and then show issues on the siding. I underestimated the small specks of fuzz id see when cleaning it.  The axle itself was getting fouled.  These little machines must be really sensitive.  It’s now back to normal, crawling at scale speed through my o72 turnouts with no issues. I let it run about 30 minutes and parked it back in it’s barn (that I also can’t reach).

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