Glad that fixed your problem. Enjoy your trains.
Larry
Cleaned the pickup wheels, axles, etc and that seems to have fixed the problem. I hadn't thought of that, thanks.
ok thanks larry
The topic is about an American Flyer locomotive, and postwar American Flyer steam locomotives have the reverse unit in the tender, unlike Lionel steam locomotives.
What postwar units have the e unit in the tender?
Is this a steam or diesel locomotive? If this is a postwar steam locomotive with the reverse unit in the tender, then the problem is with the tender pickups and wheels, and not the locomotive.
Perhaps you need to clean harder?
Not kidding. I prefer to use silicone cement to plant trees on my layout. Sometimes the process results in an almost invisible amount of the glue falling across the rails. Not only is the stuff a great insulator, usually guaranteed to stop a locomotive in it's tracks, it is also very difficult to remove using track cleaning solvents. .
It may be that you have a similar area where an accumulation of some material that isn't removed by ordinary cleaning methods is causing an electrical dead spot. If you can narrow down the section of track, you may have to use an abrasive track cleaner to get it right.
I have figured out what is wrong with my brain! On the left side nothing works right, and on the right side there is nothing left!
The rails are not fully continuous through a turnout; so there are times when one wheel or another is briefly disconnected from its rail. This, and the possibility of dirt on the rail or wheels, is why multiple wheels wired together are used to make contact. If you have cleaned both rails and wheels and still have trouble, try to catch the problem by running as slowly as possible through the turnout, so that the locomotive stops fully when it loses contact, rather than coasting through the trouble and then reversing. You may then be able to see which wheels are on insulated parts of a rail, and therefore which wheels or rail sections that should be connected are not. You may also be unlucky enough to discover that all the pick-up wheels on one side are simultaneously on insulated parts of the rail, in which case your locomotive and turnout are incompatible.
Bob Nelson
when running at slow speed, my locomotive will sometimes stop and want to reverse when it hits a particular turnout. it doesn't happen every time, but often enough that it's a problem. I have plenty of power terminals around this particular circuit and there's one right next to the problem turnout. I've tried cleaning the track, but it still happens. Can't figure out why.
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