I have a AF diesel sound billboard, it has a plastic frame and base. When energised it makes a humming noise but no horn sounds. Is there a way to clean, oil or adjust these items? Also what year would it have been made?
EngineBoss -
The diesel billboard horn was cataloged from 1955 - 1956 as number 561 and from 1957 - 1959 as number 23561. Prior to that, from 1951 - 1955 it was cataloged as number 566. There were many variations to them with the base color and display image but the plastic bases started in 1957 - 1959.
I only have the steam whistling billboard and if it's anything like that, the motor inside can be serviced by oiling some parts and cleaning the brushes and armature.
Hope this help,
Ray
Bayville, NJ
Life is what happens to youWhile you're busy making other plans - John Lennon
The diesel billboard sound accessory has no moving parts. It's just an electronic device that when energized reproduces a sound which is more like a buzzer than a horn from a diesel locomotive. It should be more than a hum but I'm not sure what you mean by a hum. If it's a load hum, than it's probably working as manufactured. You might remove any dust but other than that there's nothing to clean or adjust. If it's a low level hum, it could be shot.
Facing the unit, on the left side there is a collar with a shaft protruding. The collar has a setscrew in it to lock the shaft in place. Loosen the setscrew and move the shaft in or out a little to adjust the sound. The shaft is part of a coil. The billboard is just a coil that vibrates a diaphragm and uses a cylinder for an amplifier. The diaphragm may be bad after all these years; you may have to disassemble the unit to check it. The billboard needs 15 volts to operate.
Larry
Thank you all for the help, I found that if you adjusted the distance of the motor from the disc/speaker it worked. It had been too close to the disc. Now it works and y whistle works after some cleaning, oiling and new rubber grommets. Thanks to all.
Does that thing use AC or DC? Someone elsewhere asked me, and I don't see any information on it.
The service manual shows it hooked to the 15 volt and base posts of the transformer, so it would be AC powered.
I would think that all accessories were designed to be powered by AC, as most transformers had only AC outputs. Newer accessories may ultimately be powered at the component level by DC, but the input is still AC.
I told him AC, but I figured if I was wrong, I'd quickly correct it. I saw the same diagram, and AFAIK, the AF transformers were indeed all AC.
What about the "rectiformers"?
Bob Nelson
What about them? Since this accessory doesn't specify them, I don't think it applies. Most of the AF stuff was AC, not sure what they powered with those.
All Flyer accessories use AC power! The Diesel horn sounds like a door buzzer in my opinion but I have two of them for my American Fl;yer S-scale layout
John, I was responding to your statement, "the AF transformers were indeed all AC." And the American Flyer power supplies that weren't AC, the "rectiformers", put out DC. So, while the accessory in question probably does want AC, you can't get there by looking at the waveforms out of the power supplies.
What American Flyer did power with rectiformers were trains. They built locomotives with DC motors and powered them with rectiformers or with transformers driving "directronic" rectifiers.
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