I recently acquired a Lionel Nickel Plate Road train set. I've experienced a couple of unusual minor problems.
All my other engines have e-units that initially start going forward. Not this one. It always starts in reverse first. What can I do to get it to start moving forward first?
The manual Sound of Steam is intermittent. It appears the big wheel the tender has appears to slip as it rides over the middle rail. I've never had a tender with this feature before. I noticed the wheel has a channel all the way around it. At first, I thought it was to keep it centered over the middle rail. Now I'm guessing that perhaps it used to have a rubber tire similar to what a lot of locomotives have for better traction. Is that it? Do I need to find a replacement tire for it? If so, does anyone know of a place that carries that part? If it doesn't need a new tire, then what could be the problem?
You will need to reverse the two wires going to the motor to get it to start in forward. the sound of steam wheel, you may have to replace the rubber band type thing that goes on the wheel.
Check with Jeff Kane at ttender.com or jeff@ttender.com if you goto www.ttender.com it will list his number and probably is a better way to communicate with him.
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So I was right about the tire (rubber band)?
Now all I have to do is figure out how to open the locomotive (#8617) and the NKP tender (after I get the part) to fix them!
I was going to send that guy a message, but then I remembered something. I bought a bag full of assorted rubber bands from Dollar Tree earlier this year. Perhaps I could find one that fit. As it turned out, the thickest rubber band only covered about a third of the big wheel's channel's surface. I had four of them! So....I fit two blue ones on either side of a brown one.
I put the tender back together, and I tested it. Success!!! The sound is actually very nice!
(It's nice for about 5-10 minutes........Now how do I shut it off??? LOL)
I took the locomotive apart. I thought I'd be able to just unscrew two wires and reverse them. Apart from one wire (that had a lug on the end) that was screwed to the body, all the other ones appeared to be soldered on the ends. I don't have a soldering iron, so I stopped at that point. I'll get a soldering iron soon and then try it again.
btw There were two globs of goo between the motor and the body. They appeared to be insulating the motor from the body. One of them came off on my finger. Should I replace it with a pad?
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