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Is there an electrical issue with the Bachmann Spectrum Vanderbilt tender?

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  • Member since
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  • From: Maryland
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Posted by ATLANTIC CENTRAL on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 10:15 PM

NevinW

As it turns out, further reseach on the TCS website indicates that there is a known problem with Bachmann tenders where the tab that connects the wire to the rear truck of the tender gets bent upward just enough to make intermittant contact with the lightboard leading to shorts and problems.  Good to know.  I wish I had known this before I lowered the lightboard! So far there is no problem though. 

 

Interesting - I have over thirty Bachmann steamers and a dozen more of their tenders behind other locos - never had that problem yet.

Sheldon

    

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Posted by NevinW on Wednesday, December 23, 2015 6:00 PM

As it turns out, further reseach on the TCS website indicates that there is a known problem with Bachmann tenders where the tab that connects the wire to the rear truck of the tender gets bent upward just enough to make intermittant contact with the lightboard leading to shorts and problems.  Good to know.  I wish I had known this before I lowered the lightboard! So far there is no problem though. 

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Posted by ATLANTIC CENTRAL on Tuesday, December 22, 2015 5:56 PM

wjstix

If you're doing any more conversions in the future, don't disconnect the lightboard in the original tender from the engine. Remove the lightboard from the vanderbilt tender. Then disconnect the wires going from the lightboard to the tender trucks on the old tender, and then move the whole thing over into the vanderbilt tender.  Hook up the old tender's lightboard to the tender truck pickups.

Lot easier than rewiring everything.

 

That is one approach, but I never cared for that because the boards are different sizes and mount differently, requiring you to "rig" the mounting of the swapped board.

It is actually easy to release the wires from the connectors and simply move them around to the correct position for the loco you are attaching to - done it many times now.

Sheldon

    

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Posted by wjstix on Tuesday, December 22, 2015 4:31 PM

If you're doing any more conversions in the future, don't disconnect the lightboard in the original tender from the engine. Remove the lightboard from the vanderbilt tender. Then disconnect the wires going from the lightboard to the tender trucks on the old tender, and then move the whole thing over into the vanderbilt tender.  Hook up the old tender's lightboard to the tender truck pickups.

Lot easier than rewiring everything.

Stix
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Posted by ATLANTIC CENTRAL on Tuesday, December 22, 2015 2:49 PM

DigitalGriffin

From what I can tell the connections are the stanard bachmann 4 + 2 combination

The 4 wire is left pickup, left motor, right motor, right pickup.

The 2 wire is the headlights.

There should have been no need to rewire it and I'm a bit baffled why you did.

 

The pin positions on Bachmann steam locos have been purposely made different from loco to loco over the years.

Some locos share the same pin positions, others do not.

It relates to a number of factors including type of headlight (LED or incandecent), sound or no sound, size/type of tender. 

The following is some info I posted on here and the Bachmann board years ago:

Tender Swap – Bachmann medium Vanderbilt oil tender (Item #89905) with 63” driver 10 wheeler (Item #82307)
 
Initial test using jumpers provided with the tender – dead short, no operation.
 
Original plan – move 10 wheeler circuit board into new tender. This proved unworkable for several reasons, 10 wheeler circuit board too large and wires too short to fit into Vanderbilt tender without major modifications to both the tender and the circuit board.
 
New plan – can existing circuit board from Vanderbilt tender be rewired to work with 10 wheeler. A simple examination of both circuit boards revealed that while different, they both have the same basic connections, so the problem must lie in pin assignments in the connectors.
 
Tracing wires and a few simple checks revealed that the two wire connector simply brings the loco pickups to the circuit board. Reversing the wires on one end of the two wire jumper corrected this. Now the loco runs but in the wrong direction.
 
Two of the wires on the four wire plug are the motor leads. Reversing them gave us correct operational direction.
 
This only left the front headlight. The circuit board in the Vanderbilt tender is for the 2-8-0 which has 12 volt lamps for lighting. The 10 wheeler uses LED’s, this is the main reason the circuit board is different. Rather than trying to modify the circuit, I simply replaced the loco headlight LED with a 12 volt lamp.
 
Additionally I added weight to the Vanderbilt tender bringing it weight to about 5 oz. and replaced all couplers with genuine Kadee #148 on both the loco front and tender.
 
Result – loco now converted, runs well with original 10 wheeler draw bar and looks great.  
 
 This issue seems to be tied to what tender came with what loco in the first place. I do not have all of the Bachmann spectrum locos, but from what I have seen, read and experienced, the following may be a good beginning of a compatibility chart:
 
Light Mountain & Consolidation will work with all of the "medium" tenders.
 
Heavy Mountain and 2-6-6-2 will work with the long coal tender, hicken tender and long vandy tender
 
Russian shares same tender with some 10 wheelers, so I am guessing they share the same circuit board.
 
The 10 wheeler is really a wild card here because it comes with three different tenders, depending on roadname. Some have the low, small "pre 1900" looking tender, some have the small tender from the Russian and one has the same tender as the consolidation, but obviously with a different circuit board.

 

But again, I think most of these differences are just the pin assignments and the type of headlight. 
 
I have done a number of Bachmann tender swaps, and I have used a number of Bachmann tenders behind other brands of locos. But again, none of my swaps involve DCC as I run strictly DC.
 
Personally, if I was running DCC, I would do away with factory lighing boards and wire the decoders directly.
 
My tender swaps include:
 
Spectrum 4-6-0 with vandy oil tender from 2-8-0
 
Spectrum 2-8-0, converted to 0-8-0 with clear vision long haul tender from 2-10-2
 
Spectrum 2-6-6-2 with long vandy tender (no changes required)
 
Bachmann 2-8-4, converted to 2-8-2 with Bachmann long vandy tender
 
BLI heavy 2-8-2 with Bachmann long haul tender
 
BLI heavy 4-6-2 with Bachmann long haul oil tender from 2-10-2
 
BLI 2-6-6-4 (N&W class A) with Bachmann C&O 2-8-4 tender
 
Mantua 4-4-2 with Bachmann short vandy oil tender
 
Various brass USRA 4-6-2's, now with Bachmann long haul oil tenders from the 2-10-2
 
Tender swaps are an easy way to give a loco a different look and create a "family" loook to a freelanced steam fleet.
 
Sheldon

    

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Posted by DigitalGriffin on Tuesday, December 22, 2015 9:33 AM

congrats and I learned something new

 

Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions

Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!

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Posted by NevinW on Tuesday, December 22, 2015 9:01 AM

The good news is that I was able to shoehorn a TCS Wow decoder with a Keep-Alive capacitor into the Vanderbilt tender without too much modification other than lowering the motherboard.  Connected it to the 2-8-0 and it works great. Hoefully it won't explode as it is pretty tight in there.  Love the sound, The TCS is really great.  Now I'm going to try again with the 4-6-0.

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Posted by richg1998 on Monday, December 21, 2015 6:25 PM

If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.

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Posted by richg1998 on Monday, December 21, 2015 6:12 PM

[quote user="NevinW"]

The wiring on my tender was "almost" the same. The two adapters that came with the tender reversed all three functions requiring me to re-wire the tender.

 

I had to cut a trace on the PC board and install a 1k resistor for the loco headlight.

There was a 120 ohm resistor along with three diodes for the dimming of the headlight when the loco is in reverse when the locos had light bulbs, not LED's. The headlight would have blown after re-wiring and no 1k resistor. I traced out the complete circuit.

The tender I had was the older Bachmann DCC ready USRA tender probaly for the 2-8-0 that use to have real light bulbs, not LED's. I was mating it up with the small driver 4-6-0 which has connectors under the loco cab. The tender has connectors on the front which requires to two adapters.

Rich

 

If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.

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Posted by NevinW on Monday, December 21, 2015 4:43 PM

The problem is that the wiring of the mother board is different for the 4-6-0 than the 2-8-0.  Hooking the vanderbilt up to the 4-6-0 without rewiring it leads to a dead short. This is well known.   Hooking up the 2-8-0 should work fine but doesn't. 

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Posted by richg1998 on Monday, December 21, 2015 1:36 PM

DigitalGriffin

From what I can tell the connections are the stanard bachmann 4 + 2 combination

The 4 wire is left pickup, left motor, right motor, right pickup.

The 2 wire is the headlights.

There should have been no need to rewire it and I'm a bit baffled why you did.

 

My four Bachmann locos have the driver pickups on the two pin connector. The four wire is headlight and motor. I just check my locos with an ohm meter.

I have seen tender wiring issues a number of times at the Bachmann forums. There are some wiring diagrams if you search the HO foums.

Rich

If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.

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Posted by richg1998 on Monday, December 21, 2015 1:15 PM

Sounds like an intermittent pickup issue and not an intermittent short.

I have some Bachmann locos. Some have the connectors under the loco cab. Some have the connectors in the front of the tender.

I had to switch the wires on the HO USRA tender to match my 4-6-0 because I had to use the two adapter harnesses that came with the tender. No issues.

If no solution here, I would join the Bachmann forums and ask. There are forums for different scales, many users of Bachmann products and company reps.

Rich

If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.

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Posted by DigitalGriffin on Monday, December 21, 2015 1:12 PM

From what I can tell the connections are the stanard bachmann 4 + 2 combination

The 4 wire is left pickup, left motor, right motor, right pickup.

The 2 wire is the headlights.

There should have been no need to rewire it and I'm a bit baffled why you did.

Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions

Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!

  • Member since
    January 2001
  • From: Nevada
  • 825 posts
Is there an electrical issue with the Bachmann Spectrum Vanderbilt tender?
Posted by NevinW on Monday, December 21, 2015 12:53 PM

I model the early 20th century Nevada mine railroads so the Bachmann 4-6-0 and 2-8-0 is very useful to me.  A lot of those railroads used Vanderbilt tenders so when Bachmann Spectrum came out with that tender as an accessory, I was very pleased. 

it was designed for the 2-8-0, so I was aware of the known wiring problems in hooking it up the the 4-6-0.  I rewired the tender so it would run with the 4-6-0 but when I ran it, it was clearly having electrical problems and ran very intermittantly. Stopping and starting. 

Figuring it had something to due with my brilliant electrical surgery I took another Vanderbilt tender and put a decoder in it and hooked it up to a 2-8-0 that I know runs well with the stock tender.  However, it ran just as poorly as the other did with the 4-6-0.  So my question is whether there is a known wiring problem with the Bachmann Vanderbilt and whether there is a simple solution to the problem.  Any thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.  I plan on getting the 2-8-0 to run well first and then go after the 4-6-0.   

Why Bachmann would not wired all of their locomotives so that all of their tenders would be interchangable remains baffling to me.  Thanks - Nevin

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