Thomas the Tank Engine stalling

Ok, this is weird, but when Thomas is by itself on the track it only goes in reverse.  If there is a lighted car on the track it will change directions like it should and works a lot better.  Still stalls, but not as often.

not sure is it matters but didn't Thomas come with a cw40 doesn't have aux jacks on the back .

 

Thank you for the reply,  this set did come with a CW80.  Its Set 6-31956.  Its strange, the rollers are making contact, but when it stalls, its dead.  No buzzing or anything.  I have to pick it up and set it back down.  Tomorrow I'll probably have to open it up and look for loose wires.  

If I remember correctly, the early Thomas sets with fasttrack and a cw80 needed a lighted terminal track which is no longer available.   I think the cw80 didn't drop to zero volts without a load on it was the reason.

The cw80 has gone through many revisions since then and later Thomas sets with the cw80 didn't have the lighted terminal track.

On my conventional Thomas set, like yours, I had to gently bend the rollers downward slightly to make better contact with the center rail or if would stall out from weak contact.

I made a YouTube video a few years ago  demonstrating that not all fastback is equal, and without extra downward contact Thomas can stall out.

See if this is similar to what u are experiencing...

Bad piece of O36 Fastrack: https://youtu.be/K9bJzRUi5-s

A couple of things caused my LionChief Thomas to behave that way.

 

The first was dirty wheels. Cleaning solved it that time. Scrape the crud off and clean with alcohol.

 

The second time, from grandson activity(Thomas flew off the table),

The eye moving mechanism was knocked out of alignment. If you lift off the stack cover, you will be able to eyeball the eye mechanism for damage.

I had a problem with one stalling. When I opened it up, I found that only one axle had a ground wiper. The contact point on the axle had to be cleaned and tension increased on the brass wiper contact against the axle. Now it only occasionally stalls on switches. Mine was the model that was available before the one with moving eyes.

I can honestly say after fixing a few of these that you're better off buying a new or working one. To clean the axles and pickups you have to completely disassemble the loco and it really wasn't meant to be taken apart. Actually let me clarify, it will come apart fairly easy but getting it back together is the biggest PITA ever

there was that issue with very early Thomas that they had to have a lighted or other lighted car on the track to make to cause some slightly load on the unit because otherwise the voltage would not cycle low enough when "off" to trigger the e-unit.  I'm not saying definitively that it IS your problem, but it entirely explains exactly what you are saying happens.  If you leave a lighted caboose or something on the track  (on a connected but unused siding, or connected to Thomas, it might behave itself better.

I bought 2 of the early sets for grandsons. I found 2 major problems. 1 the pickup roller assembly kept coming loose. And 2 they required Very Clean track and Wheels. And as already mentioned it needs a light bulb in the circuit.

Thank you all so much for the replies!  I guess Thomas will just have to have a lighted caboose.  So strange that Lionel would make it that way, but I guess thats the way it goes.  Next time I'll try to do more research before buying a "problem child".  And it explains why this set only cost me $40.  Thanks again for the input, this forum is the best!!!

This quirk is probably one of those "Oh, goodness." moments when a product gets into production with something you just didn't think about.  Many small power supplies, particularly DC ones, put out more than rated voltage, or put out a voltage when set to "zero," when serving no load at all.  Lionel probably forgot about that in this case and let it slip by, but corrected it in subsequent versions. 

 

Looking at the glass as half full, it's sort of like having a rare coin that left the mint mismarked, in a way.  Quite rare and different . . . 

As stated the early Thomas engine needed a lighted track to cycle F-N-R. If you ran it with a PW transformer, it would cycle properly. The CW80 never went to zero volts when I tested with a volt meter.

 

One thing to check is use contact cleaner in the pins of the center contact rollers in case they are gummed up from oil. I also had a few engines in this era that I had to solder the center contact roller pins to the roller frame. For some reason they would not conduct properly including the Thomas engine. It would stall to until I did this.