Having Problems With My Little Man

[Kooljock1]

Well, little MEN actually...

I have the LIONEL Operating Switchtower from 1997. It's the white and green repro of the Post War one, except it has a CAN motor, and the guy goes out on the balcony as the other guy goes down the stairs.

But I digress...

It seems that the little guys have no problem going out and coming down, but then they STAY there! They don't go back up or in!

Have any of you had this problem? I hate think I'd have to disassemble the whole thing to access the springs. And it really feels like they're getting stuck more than just a loose spring.

I don't know, maybe there's a third guy upstairs and he had mexican for dinner or something.

Jon [8D]

[Dr. John]

Jon,

Have you tried gently shaking it to see if anything is loose? If something is jamming the spring, that might jar it loose.

The can motor was SUPPOSED to make these accessories more reliable. I'm not so sure . . .

[pennsy_fan]

If you gently pu***hem, do they return to their "starting positions".
If so, It sounds like the gear that holds the string is binding ,or a piece of plastic or a screw might have jammed itself into just the right place to cause this.

[Anonymous]

You worried me. I thought it was a *ahem* male problem.

Yeah these little guys get stuck, same on the gateman. You need to adjust the spring.

[Kooljock1]

UPDATE!

Thanks for your replies.

I did a little surgery this evening, and disaasembled the base from the tower. Upon further inspection, it appears that the CAN motor has two geared drives.
One is a short arm that pushes the man out onto the balcony, and the other is attached to a longer arm that swivels and pushes the stairs-man's platform down the steps through a peg and slot assembly.

It appears to me like this arm presses against the wall of the building and has been binding. Certainly this is a spot in need of lubrication, so I went to the bench to choose a suitable lube. I decided that if I start with the least messy first, I could always clean it up and move on to a gooey-er formula.

So I went with my tube of good old graphite "vibrotor" motor lube. I put a little on the arm where it binds with the wall, and a little on the peg where it rides inside the slot on the arm, and....well it tests well on the bench. I ran out of time to re-wire it to the layout, as it's on the inside of the inside loop, and there are trees and an icing station to get around and over to get there! I'll re-re-update on this later.

I also tightened the spring on the guy upstairs, as I figured this would help the project along. I should mention that as this accessory is wired to an insulated track on the main line, it gets quite the daily work-out!

Jon [8D]