I purchased a bunch of FA junkers, and am having fun with custom paint, adding parts to upgrade (e.g. windshields, nose guards, marker lights on number boards, putting reversing switches in some, adding traction tires to others, putting port holes in all of them) and you get the drift..
When purchased the locomotives were not running. All but two had stripped shells (and that's why I bought them.) Three have been painted up in MoPac livery and match a set of MoPac plastic heavyweight cars I have.
The locomotives include an unpowered A and B to go with three powered A's.
My question is this: Can I wire two locomotives to share a reversing unit to get full advantage of two motorized A units for traction and pulling power, and run in tandem for forward and reverse operation?
Two of locomotives are Texas Special 1055's. I have already cut out the (already cracked) pilot for standard nose coupler operation (It looks and works real good) so I can run these A-A units cab forward and cab reversed in classic fashion.
My question concerns how to wire these up. I have wire plugs that can be run between the locomotives from the reversing unit. If anyone knows how to do this and would like to share the method, or, if you know that it cannot absolutely be done, I would appreciate that also.
As mentioned, I am experimenting by trial and error. It seems like this should work (logically) and holds the promise of lots of fun if I can pull this off.
It is certainly possible. I have done it with my 2023 set. You simply wire the field winding of one locomotive in parallel with the field winding of the other one, and the armature of one locomotive in parallel with the armature of the other one. This is the same arrangement used in two-motor locomotives. At a minimum, this requires three wires between the units, although I would strongly recommend using a fourth wire to connect the frames, which are the returns for the fields, to avoid currents through the couplers, and a fifth wire to connect pickups between the units, for better immunity to dirty track.
Rather than use connectors, I have simply routed the wires over the couplers, fastened with tie-wraps, so that the units are permanently attached.
The result is a real stump puller. I can pull a dozen or so modern 2400-type streamliners at unreasonably high speeds with no trouble.
Bob Nelson
The polarity for the wiring between the brushes should be left brush to left brush, right brush to right brush when the locos are coupled back to back. That is the way the dual motored units are wired.
BB
In any case, if the units go in opposite directions, just swap those two wires.
Thanks all,
I am completely inspired and committed to this project.
Where either one of the 1055's will only pull about four light units on level track, hooking the two together with with traction tires, or my other two with magnetraction has already produced impressive results. They easily pull 5-8 units up trestle grade inclines, and run at rediculously fast speads and strong like stump pullers like you have said.
When done (to satisfaction) I'll post pictures or a video.
Prairietype
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