I have a Lionel TMCC Mikado from the NYC Hotbox Reefer set which the Railsounds has developed intermittent chuffing. When I first got it, it would chuff twice per revolution with a labored sounding chuff while accelerating. Now it skips a chuff ever two or three revolutions and bounces between the labored chuff and regular chuff.
What is it that triggers the chuff? Is this the type of thing that requires cleaning, lubrication, and adjusting?
Any help would be appreciated.
jt,
mpzpw3 makes a good point.
Do you have a battery installed?
Regards, Roy
Most often it's the micro switch thats mounted on the engines chassis. Removing the boiler you should be able to see it near the drive wheels. It should have 2 black wires attached to it. There is no adjustment. It is triggered by a lever that moves the switches trigger up and down. Rotate the motors flywheel and you should see the switches lever move up and down. You may be able to bend the arm slightly that moves it to get an adjustment. But most times the switch is bad. If your engine has a puffer type smoke unit. Make sure the piston moves freely with no binding. The arm that triggers the chuff switch comes off the smoke unit in some engines. If the piston gets hung up it may stop the chuffing momentarily till it frees up. If it's a fan driven type then chances are it's the switch. One of the switches wires goes to ground. Basically the switch does nothing more than close a ground circuit to the chassis to trigger the chuffing. Trace the wire back and it should be fastened to the chassis with a screw. Make sure it's snug. If you have an ohmeter you can verify everything. But with an intermittent problem like yours it may be had to verify or duplicate at the workbench.
Dirty track, wheels or pickup rollers can cause sounds to cut out as well. This occurs in the tender. The Railsounds gets it's power from the tenders pickup rollers. The tether containing the wires or wireless tether simply tells the Railsounds when to chuff. Often times travelling through long switches the spacing on the tenders rollers may cause the chuff to stop. Usually for a brief second. Not really a skip. When this happens though the Railsounds will come back on at full volume. Try turning the volume down with Cab 1 and notice when the sounds come back on if the volume is now full. If cleaning the rollers doesn't work and it's only occuring going through turnouts. A battery to keep the Railsounds powered through brief interuptions in power may solve your problem.
Had the same problem on an Atlantic....It was the cherry switch (chuff switch)
PN 0401-162 ...about 2.00 available HERE
Pain in the butt to install, operates off of the lever mentioned above, in the front of the engine I believe.
Tim
Thanks everyone.
I had already cleaned the track and rollers, when I first started having problems I installed the battery in the tender but it made no difference.
The volume stays at what ever level it is set at. My next step is to open it up to check the switch and smoke unit piston (I have the puffing smoke unit).
I had a similar problem with my Lionmaster Challenger a couple of years ago. The problem ended up being a faulty TMCC motherboard.
So not speculating what the issue is here for you, but since the loco is new and should be under warranty, you might be better off sending it in for warranty repair before taking it all apart. As PETim says - replacing the microswitch is non-trivial.
You might try isolating the microswitch wires before removing it and use an ohmmeter to check the microswitch operation with the cam. This would allow you to determine if the problem is the microswitch or the TMCC boards in the loco.
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