Basics of disassembling a Lionel 2026 please

[msacco]

You'll probably get a few opinions on this but here's mine:

You can get smoke pellets from Jeff at Train Tender or other parts places. They're being made by a Dallas train dealer again,but even with those you'll probably get anemic smoke. Your element is probaby feeling a bit fatigued. so....

You could leave it alone and add a couple of drops of JT's smoke fluid and get some really nice smoke, or..

You could take a turn of Nichrome wire off the original element and get more smoke, or..

You could purchase a new smoke element either new old stock (harder to find) or a repro one. Most repro ones don't smoke a ton so doing the above mod usually helps too. Or....

you could convert to a liquid unit. Parts available from part dealers. I did this but wasn't happy with the longevity of the liquid elements so I went back to pill heaters.

I use a mixture of both pellets and JT's. If I'm not getting enough smoke for my taste, I take a turn of nichrome wire off the element to get more. Oh, K-line pellets do work, I still have some

Hope this helps,

Mike S.

[Anonymous]

Well, thank you everybody. I got it apart just fine. Pulled the armature and cleaned it and the brushes up while I was in there, cleaned out the carbon from the arm slots.

Wow, the smoker was LOADED with gunk. Cleaned that all out, cleaned out the piston and
air hole. I did have to file the air piston linkage. It was hanging up during part of its motion.


So.... got it all back together. It runs noticeably better (I'm sure cleaning out the armature slots helped).

Problem:
The smoker definitely works now. If I put a pellet in there, it melts. If I use the e-unit to
turn up the voltage with the engine stationary, smoke comes up and if I operate the piston
lever with my finger, it puffs the smoke out.

But... the smoke is kinda, well, pathetic. There just isn't all that much visible smoke puffing
outta there, especially while it's running. I have an ancient bottle of "official" Lionel pellets.
I also had a bottle of pellets from K-Line (also very old). Do these lost their potency when
they get ancient? Is there a better pellet I might try?

Thanks!

[msacco]

I have successfully taken apart the Prairie style (2026, 2018, 2037, etc) without taking the pin off but in some cases the pin must be removed as Bob says.

   Once the screws are removed if you gently push the motor assembly forward,  sometimes  the motor will come out of the slots that the pin pass through. Then, you just lift up and pull out the motor.

   Now if  you're not careful doing this and force the motor to hard forward you can mess up the e-unit lever, loosening and bending it.

   the way I usually approach these engines is I first look at the pin to see how tight it's seated in the shell. If it's pretty snug I'll try the above approach first.

 

Mike S.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for an excellent reply.  I see how the whistle circuit works.  So, that relay coil "chokes" out AC inside the tender, so the relay works only on the DC.  And they had a solid-state rectifier inside the transformer, even back then, eh?  Pretty impressive.  Copper oxide, never heard of that type.

So, this will let me get the body off.  I'll see what's what on the smoke coil.

Thanks again!

[lionelsoni]

1.  Yes, you have to drive out the pin.  It is splined on one end only; so you don't have to move it very far to get it loose.

3.  Yes, the transformer puts DC on the track.  It switches in an additional 5-volt winding and puts the whole transformer output in series with a copper-oxide rectifier diode.  Then, as the control moves farther, it shunts the rectifier with a resistor.  The first stage is to provide a strong DC component to get the relay to pick up; then in the second stage it puts out just enough DC to keep the relay operated.

The relay has copper rings at one end of the coil.  These act like a shorted secondary winding on a transformer and shield the relay armature from the alternating flux due to the AC component of the track voltage.  But they have no effect on the DC component.  That's what makes the relay selectively sensitive to DC.

When the transformer is connected in the usual way, the whistle control makes the center rail positive relative to the outside rails.  The relay doesn't care; but modern electronic locomotives distinguish between polarities and blow the whistle (horn) for positive and ring the bell for negative.

There are several odd things about that locomotive:

--There has never been an American prototype 2-6-4.  Lionel always called it a "prairie"; but that's a 2-6-2.  Supposedly some 2-6-4s were built in America for export, leading to the name you sometimes see used--"Adriatic".

--The (blind) middle drivers are larger than the others.  See whether you can tip your locomotive slightly fore and aft on the track.

--The front truck oversteers.  If everything is working perfectly, this may not cause any trouble.  But complicated trackwork with frogs in the wrong places can cause derailments, characteristically to the inside of a curve.

[Anonymous]

I hope you guys don't laugh too hard at me.

I am a long-time N Scaler.  I take apart N Scale steam, kitbash it, scratchbuild it, with a fervor.  But with Lionel stuff, I'm a total dolt. 

I've got a 1950s era 2026 engine (the 2-6-4, not the late 40s 2-6-2).   It runs quite well.  The reverser works, the whistle tender works.   I have some basic repair questions, and I'm hoping you guys can help me.  I've been through the FAQs, but they don't show me what I need to know.

1. How do I take the body off?  (told you I was a dolt!) I see a screw in the top, and some screws underneath in the front.  But they don't release the body.  There is a friction pin across the rear end that locks into either side of the body.  Do I have to drive that out to take the body off? 

2. The smoker used to work, but doesn't anymore.  I've read up on the common woes of these, and I think I can fix it if I can get the body off and get to it - don't use sharp objects, be careful of the nichrome wire, get the residue build-up outta there, clear the piston air hole.   Anything else to be careful of?  I will measure the wire with an ohmmeter and make sure it's not just burned out.  I'm not interested in converting it.  If the nichrome wire is shot, can anybody tell me what gauge/type it is so I can rewind the coil myself?

3. One final thing that's always puzzled me - When you activate the whistle control on the transformer, what exactly does that do?  Does it send some DC into the rails that activates the relay in the tender?  If so, is there a capacitor in the loco to block the DC from the motor?   The relay works, the whistle motor spins, the whistle is fine.  I'd just like to know what's going on here.

 

Thank you for your patience!

 

--- Max