Seriusly I did not know I had this engine, must have been a mistake as I only bought DC before my move. This would be a good find except it runs teriable and derails everywhere. The conection between the cab and tender seems really stiff. Bought it second hand soo it could have come with issues.
The new stuff I have bought from Bachmann has non of these problems and I have had Spectrum engines before.
rrebellSeriusly I did not know I had this engine
Yesterday, when cleaning out the storage locker, I found an Atlas PENNSYLVANIA RS-1 that I do not remember buying. I have no idea why I would have bought it.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I bought the Spectrum HO 4-4-0 about at least eight years ago. First thing I did is I took my wife's small ssewing scissor and carefully slit the clear plastic tube covering the wires on both sets of wires. Covered them with black ink and made them look like hoses. Tucked them up into the tender a little.
Put a SoundTraxx Micro and 28mm speaker in the tender. LED in the loco so I added a 1K resistor. Great running loco.
I also did that to the small driver 4-6-0.
The larger driver 4-6-0 came with SoundTraxx onboard.
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.
Lastspikemike I have only older Spectrum apart from a ten wheeler (not officially Spectrum by this time) which I bought new. The 2-8-0 use unwrapped wire with the plugs fitting horizontally into sockets in the tender. The 2-10-2 has sockets vertically mounted under the locomotive cab with plugs leading wires coming horizontally out of the tender. The new 4-6-0 has horizontal plugs, if I recall correctly. The 4-4-0 is the only one with four pieces of un-shrunk wire shrink tube on the wires and the whole harness is just plain too long from the factory.
I have only older Spectrum apart from a ten wheeler (not officially Spectrum by this time) which I bought new.
The 2-8-0 use unwrapped wire with the plugs fitting horizontally into sockets in the tender. The 2-10-2 has sockets vertically mounted under the locomotive cab with plugs leading wires coming horizontally out of the tender.
The new 4-6-0 has horizontal plugs, if I recall correctly.
The 4-4-0 is the only one with four pieces of un-shrunk wire shrink tube on the wires and the whole harness is just plain too long from the factory.
LastspikemikeInteresting. Internal links to threads frequently do not insert in active font.
A known flaw of the forum software. The easiest workaround is to use tinyurl.com and then you get a link that acts like a normal link.
https://tinyurl.com/y525qlkp
or if you want to dabble in HTML, you can type the following and replace the parenthesis with the square brackets. Do not use the link icon
(url)http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/284230/3278177.aspx#3278177(/url)
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/284230/3278177.aspx#3278177
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Interesting conversation. I'm not sure that the wiring cover is an un-heated shrink tube. Looks more like regular rubber to me. But even it was, shrinking it would probably make the connection more rigid, which would lead to derailment problems.
Simon
rrebellThe conection between the cab and tender seems really stiff.
That seems to be a common problem with Bachmann engines. Even on my mainline with 28"R curves and No. 6 turnouts, I find my Bachmann engines derail unless I use the longer of the two drawbar holes.
BTW with it's small wheelbase, I wonder if the bad running is an electrical pickup issue? Adding a decoder with a keep-alive might solve it, if that's the case.
My Bachmanns are among the most reliable of my steamers. My 4-4-0s (Richmonds) and 4-6-0s run almost flawlessly - and I have 22 inch radius curves. I am a bit obsessive with trackwork and make sure that all is absolutely flat in all directions. I do have a 4-8-2 Bachmann that I bought used very recently that is very finicky (the Ebay seller did have the warnings in the message). But after some work on the engine (some of the power pickups on the drivers were crocked) and one of the curves (I had a little blob of solder that I missed), I fixed the problem. I knew it would be a challenge with my 22 inch curves, but I won that battle.
This is a timely thread! I just got my NCE DCC system running for the first time last night (YAY!) and this is one of my locos that I have had waiting to run on it.
It ran a little rough, but what we could not figure out was how to get the sound to work. Lights work, it dims and brightens with that function, but no sounds.
Another DCC loco I had worked just fine, so the programming seems to have been done right on that one, but this one has no sound.
Will look at wiring etc, and see if I can figure out, perhaps bad connection. Is it possible to have partially programmed loco where it will run and lights work, but no sound? User error? I got it second hand, so perhaps there was an issue with it not working properly to begin with.
Any insight to similar would be greatly appreciated!
Work Hard! Train Hard!
What sound decoder does it have? When you check, the ID number will come up.
Onboard is a SoundTraxx. My one onboard Bachmann was a SoundTraxx.
Maybe a poor speaker wire connection.
Do a decoder reset. Maybe previous owner did something to the sound CV's.
Reset is pretty much a must on old locos. Clean the wheels too. One of my locos stopped emitting sounds at some point - all was OK after I cleaned the wheels. It seemed like it was not getting enough juice to get the sound going...