Some of the MTH engines were designed with the pick up rollers under the tender only and not under engine. I am told that this was so they could operate on 2 rail layouts. I use 3 rail and these rollers are to close together to crossover over some of my switches. How do you identify these engines in the product description so that I can avoid purchasing these engines in the future?
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I have one of these, a 2 rail 0-6-0. I had a MTH tech put another roller in the engine, there is a hole for it. Also tied all the grounds together, it is now my best, smoothest , stall free runner. I would buy another..I have large Ross switches.
Clem
I do what Clem does, I've seen a few that have only locomotive or tender pickups, I just add one to the other unit, problem solved. I do that on upgrades as well.
Also increased my smoke output out of that little smoke unit.
Clem
The benefits seem obvious, but I'm wondering - did some sort of tether already exist on these upgraded units? or did you add a tether? Or a simple jack n plug? Or even hard wire?
I have 3 0-8-0s and one 0-6-0. Two of them had rollers in the tender only. If I remember correctly, they were the PS2s with the drawbar. I am a Kadee guy so I was able to install a roller on the locomotive and use the coupler trace in the drawbar to take it back to the tender.
GunrunnerJohn
would you mind sending some pictures on how to do the pick up roller install?
what do you use for the teather between the engine and tender?
I normally use MTH 10-pin tethers, and there is power and ground in the tether. I just tie it into the roller with a series PTC to protect the wire if there is a derailment.
Here are a couple of shots of my added rollers. For many MTH products, there is already a place to just bolt in a roller, these were examples of where I had to build a mount to add the roller. These are brass locomotives with no roller on the tender.
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