Another Lionel Christmas gift not working...no whistle....

[Anonymous]

I bought the Lionel Pennsylvania Flyer set. Everything works except theres no whistle. Any ideas before I open the transformer?

[Anonymous]

Try reversing the wires going to the track.

[Anonymous]

Still nothing. I did notice that the lights glow a little brighter though when I press the whistle button.

[overall]

That would tell me that the problem is in the whistle tender. Try calling the Lionel tech center for help.

George

[Anonymous]

Is that in the locomotive?

[overall]

No, the whistle motor and sound chamber are in the tender. This is the car directly behind the engine sometimes called a "coal car" although, on the real steam engines, this car carried both coal and water,it tends the engine, thus the name "tender".

The fact that you can see the lights on the train brighten up when you hit the whistle button on the transformer means that it is putting the DC signal out to the track as it is supposed to. The DC signal pulls in a relay located in the whistle tender that connects an AC motor to the track power. The motor turns a small impeller in a sound chamber that makes the whistle noise that you hear if everything is functioning as it should. For some reason, either the relay is not pulling in or the motor is not working.

Hope this helps,

George

[lionelsoni]

Actually, the voltage increase is due to a 5-volt winding that the transformer puts into the circuit to compensate for the voltage lost in the rectifier and from the load of the whistle motor. So the brightening of the lights does not mean that the rectifier in the transformer has not gone bad.

Does this locomotive even have a whistle relay and motor?

[dwiemer]

xray,'
You may want to check the pickup on the underside of the tender. make sure that it has the wire connected to it. I have seen these with a poor solder job fail. If it is not attached, just solder it as a quick fix. If it is attached, call Lionel.
Dennis

[dougdagrump]

Did the Penn Flyer set come with a transformer?
If not what type of transformer are you using?
If you are using an older transformer you more than likely will need to invest in a "sound activation switch".

[Anonymous]

Here is an excerpt from a post on another forum:

Instructions for hooking up the 6-5906 Sound Activation Button or buttons.

In my experience one cannot easily find the instructions by using the more obvious search parameters on the Lionel website, apparently because they are included as sub-instructions for other devices. This should work, however, if you have the Adobe Acrobat reader on your computer:

Go to http://www.Lionel.com ----> Customer Service ----> Owner's Manuals, and then type in the word "Railsounds," (without the quotation marks) and hit "Search." This should generate a lengthy list of clickable links to Owner's Manuals for various products (locos, tenders, box cars, etc.) that employ Railsounds.

Within many of these manuals, often at about page 4 or 5, can be found the specific diagram for wiring up two 6-5906 Sound Activation Buttons to blow both horn (whistle) and bell.

You can print out these manuals.

Note that there are also several informative cautionary instructions at this site, such as a warning about an error in one of the papers, "addenda," and "important notes" about RailSounds.

xray328: Like others above I suspect a problem with the tender, but if you get the tender to where you know it is working, this might help you or somebody else. Before doing anything else you you might take your locomotive and tender to a friend, club or dealer, and determine exactly what you've got and whether it is working. Some tenders have a whistle and/or a bell; others have no sound. Some kind of sound system is required, but it doesn't necessarily have to be "Railsounds." Clearly if the whistle is not in good working order all the Sound Activation Buttons in the world will not help. Also note, eventually you may need two of the buttons, but for starters you can use just one for test purposes, and rig it to blow either the whistle or bell simply be reversing the wires.

wolverine