O gauge engines

[Anonymous]

[:)][:)][:)] [?] Do the major CO's like lionel, Mth, ect. use the same type motors in their engines. One of my engines is lionel and its free wheeling if I push it. The others can not be pushed. What different types of motors are made for engines when they refer them as dual motors or twin cam. Are the premier engines that they make have better quality motors in them or is that you are paying for well made scale work. I am comparing Mth's Hiawatha engines,one of which came out in 2002.This is premier .engine that costs $1100. The other is a 2005 railking cost $ 350. The premier engine has a pittman motor,the railking has an unnamed motor,both have flywheels. How big of a difference does that pittman motor make in running quality

[Anonymous]

Drive train determines whether a loco can be pushed by hand or not. The only correlation you can derive from this is that loco's that can be hand pushed usually are poor pullers. A vertical can motored Williams loco can not be easily pushed and doesn't cost a fortune.

The electric can motors used in modern engines come is several flavors. Top of the line units have ball bearings and have seven armature poles that are "skew" wound. Next drop is to use only 5 poles. The older open frame motors used in the PostWar trains were three pole.

[brianel027]

To add to what chuckn said, the DC can motors in the Williams locos along with the better more scale flavored K-Line locos and all MTH locos are a larger can motor that is verticallly mounted inside the shell. Some of the better versions of these locos have flywheels on top of the motor, which permit better coasting. Some of the locos with sensor speed control have special flywheels which work with an optical laser beam.

The lesser expensive Lionel and K-Line locos have a truck mounted DC can motor. These motors are the bottom end ones mentioned above. The truly cheaper locos like most newer Lionel ones have only one single motor. The K-Line locos all had dual DC can motors. The dual motors make for better pulling power - but also create some more noise due to the truck mounting of the motor and gear growl. It is unlikely that 2 can motors on the same loco will run at the same precise speed.

The Lionel steamers like the starter set 4-4-2 variety also have a single motor, but with the traction tire and die cast shell, this helps with pulling power. Selectively adding some weight to the smaller can motored locos will help with pulling power.

[pbjwilson]

On a related front - I have three MTH steamers with PS-1. All run nice but the oldest one a UP 49er doesnt run as smoothly as the other two. Did MTH use a different motor in the 49er or change the motor manufacturer?

[fwright]

The gear train determines whether a loco can be pushed by hand or not. Any gear train EXCEPT single thread worms can be reverse driven (which is what happens when you push by hand). Single thread worms are used particularly in HO and smaller scales to get the necessary gear reduction in a small space. A 3 thread worm has only 1/3 the gear reduction of a single thread, but can be pushed by hand.

The older Lionel Pullmor motors generally ran at lower RPM than the more modern can motors, so didn't need as much gear reduction. Also, Lionel knew that many kids (as I did) liked to pu***heir trains as much by hand as control them remotely. In the PW era, most engines used a spur gear drive, with a few (the early Berkshire is an example) using a 3 threaded worm.

Hope this answers your first question.

Fred W