The Lionel 397 - now a newbie ? on moving the coal

[laz 57]

I use the fake coal that comes with the rotart tipple, Lionel 6-24148, looks like rat turds.  It works fairly well but sometimes tends to run down the conveyor belt.  But it will work and not jam up the belt.

laz57

[msacco]

I got frustrated with the cut up sprue stuff both from Lionel and trains shows. Get yourself a bag of vintage coal in the lionel sack and you won't have a problem. I t think it was bakelite Mike S.

[TimTRH]

 I have 'new coal' came with a new Lionel Dumper car. Yeah -looks like cut up black plastic sprues. The 397 works it up to the conveyor, but only 1 to 3 or 4 pieces travel up at a time, with a lot of dead space in between. If I turn the throttle up a little, then more of it falls back down to the start point, then travels up. This is operating totally SOLO, wired up to the Z1000 throttle, just for a trial run.

Is MTH Coal usable, or is that a No-No - I had bought a bag of that because the LHS was outta Lionel, and at that time I also bought the Lionel Coal Dump car, and didnt realize there was a bag of Lionel Coal in there under the discharge tray.

 

[arkady]

Is the "old" Lionel coal crushed bakelite? It always looks to me like crushed scrap left over from molding transformer housings.

[msacco]

You're not saying exactly what's happening but these do load slowly even at 15 volts or so. I will tell you that modern coal, the cut up plastic stuff that doesn't really look like coal, doesn't work as well as original coal that is plastic I think but looks more like coal. Mike S.

[ben10ben]

First of all make sure you're running it with enough voltage. I find that mine needs about 15 volts to move the coal effectively and fast enough, but every loader is a little bit different. It's a good idea to have it on variable voltage so that you can tweak the voltage for optimum operation. 

 

Often, the old belts are stretched to the point where they no longer grip the pulleys correctly. With the loader off, grab one of the flaps on the belt, and tug it gently. The belt shouldn't move at all when you do this. If it does, you need a new belt. They're about $10 from the parts dealers, and really easy to change.

[TimTRH]

 Hello - so - i got my 397, it was in nice condition, no complaint with its looks, and it runs fine - BUT - as I tried it out with my bag of Lionel Coal, I figured that it would take - oh maybe 3 or 4 hours for it to move the bag of coal back into the coal car. Is this normal? Or do the conveyer belts have issues that I dont know about?

Thanks - Tim