It sounds like you have a 755A with the built in resistor. It was designed to stop, without cycling the reverse unit, Gilbert engines. It should work with any of the Gilbert steam engines or diesels. If you have an Americn Models engine or any of the AF by Lionel engines with can motors, they will run right through the stop section, barely slowing down. The reason is the old three pole open frame motors drew 1.5 to 2.0 amps and the resistor was sized to drop six to eight volts across it. Modern Can motors draw much less current so the voltage drop across the resistor is inadequate to stop the engine. Also modern can motors continue to run at lower voltages than the old Gilbert open frame motors.
With the Gilbert motors as long as the voltage was less than 5V the engine would stall. With a can motor it would need to be under 2V across the motor terminals. I think the 755A has a 5W, 10 ohm resistor. An AM engine draws about 1/4amp so to lower the motor voltage from 10V to 2V requires about a 35 ohm resistor. Some of my AM engines will still crawl along at 3V, so it would take some experimentation with different sized resistors. Of course then the reverse unit would cycle on a Gilbert engine.
I'm having a terrible time getting an old American Flyer talking train station (ca. 1950) to work. The recording starts and plays just fine, but the train doesn't stop; it just slows down and then speeds up again. It used to work just fine at my father-in-law's house, but with a different train engine. Is it possible the problem is it is designed just for certain train engines?
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