Polar Express Behavior w/CW80

Smoke on or smoke off? I'm betting smoke on. Our Great Western set did this too until I re-routed the smoke unit power to come right off the track instead of through the reverse unit.

Try it with smoke off and see what happens.

quote:

Originally posted by ADCX Rob:
Smoke on or smoke off? I'm betting smoke on. Our Great Western set did this too until I re-routed the smoke unit power to come right off the track instead of through the reverse unit.

Try it with smoke off and see what happens.

Never thought of that... I'll run it with the smoke off and see what it does.

Thanks, Rob!

Update: I ran the train from the CW80, with the smoke off, for about 40 minutes tonight. It ran normally, with no abnormal slowing/bogging down. So, I'll look at wiring the smoke unit through track power and see how it works out. Thanks again for the info, Rob.

Update again... I took the boiler off to wire the unit to track power- and it's already wired that way. So, back to square one. Now I'm wondering if the smoke unit is pulling too much current through the small-gauge wire from the track-power lug. This small wire feeds the smoke unit, headlight, and reverse board/motor. I might try re-wiring it with a slightly larger-diameter wire at some point.

I'm beginning to wish I had become an electrician!

Mike;
You got the problem on the first try.
Add a second wire the same size as the first. Run the smoke off the new wire, smoke eats lots of juice.
Don't forget to re-route the return wire as well, unless the smoke unit is bolted right to the frame.
You don't want the return current running through the board.

Mike, I don't think your smoke unit is wired to the pickup roller unless Lio modified the newest ones. Look closely at the wiring. The light is wired directly to the pickup roller, but the smoke element can be traced back to the switch at the rear of the engine. Follow the red wire from the switch and it leads back to the reverse board. Easy to confuse since both the light and the smoke element have dark white striped wires. One is black other is dark blue.

Having said this, I also think the CW-80 contributes to this. I am using it to run an older 4-4-2 starter set, with smoke and lights to the center pick up, and it requires minor adjustments over time. G

Well, I rewired the smoke unit with its own wire from track power and... no luck. Ran the train for 40 minutes and it slowed to a crawl. Shut off the smoke and it started picking up speed again. I had a voltmeter hooked up to the CW and the voltage never varied more than a tenth of a volt. So, I'm stumped on this one. Guess I'll just run without smoke for now. I've been thinking about buying the C&O Berk Jr that I saw at my LHS for everyday running, now I'm wondering if it will have this issue as well.

Thanks anyway for the info, guys.

Check around the wiring leading into the smoke unit. May need to remove the cover. Sounds like a short on the resistor to ground. Do you have an amp meter setting to measure current.

By the way these are 30 ohm resistors and at 12-14 volts should only pull 0.5 amps, not the heavy loads some imply. G

It appears that I'm down to the last resort of taking apart the smoke unit as suggested, which I'll get to one of these days. For now I'll just live with it or run without smoke. I swapped transformers tonight and the CW80 ran my Williams GP38, pulling 13 cars, with no hesitation at all. So, the CW is totally ruled out on this one.

Roughly how much do these smoke units cost?

Around $15, but the resistor is under $2 I think. If it smokes, the issue may only be ensuring it is properly insulated from the smoke unit metal on the input side to the smoke resistor. G

How many cars are you pulling and when did you get your PE set? Reason for asking is a little known fact that Lionel has never readily publicly acknowledged. When the first sets came out Lionel had no idea how successful it would be and created an engine with a small motor just large enough to be capable of pulling the original set of cars. As they began marketing additional cars, they had to redesign the engine with a larger more powerful engine to pull the load of the additional add-on cars. If you try pulling too many of the additional cars with a first generation engine, the engine will begin to overheat and progressively slow down as it continues overheating. Unfortunately there is no way to retrofit a first generation locomotive with the current, larger motor. You can tell if your loco has a 1st or 2nd gen motor by noting the position of the circuit board. On 1st gen locos the boards were mounted vertically while 2nd gen locos have the circuit board mounted horizontally. Hope this helps you.