i have been a fan of articulated trains for a while. i worked a lot with a couple of up bigboys, one athern and a AHM. i kinda know how articulates work but not too well. i have had a mantua 2-6-6-2 (No. 345-157) logger with tender that always had problems. i bought it just after mantua shut down and have never been able to run it on a club layout. first the forward truck sat high, so i extended the joint connecting it to the rear truck. that allowed it to handle switches. but now i upgraded it to DCC and for two years there has been a grinding sound from the front (i guess it is from the u joint) and it dies intermittently on track that every other train will run on. I love the trian but i don't know how to fix the power problem. the track is all clean the train is clean but something is wrong with it. has any one had this problem before. do the contacts on the drive wheels or tender need to be modified?
thanks
Country: USA ~
Posts: 1 ~
Member Since: January 02 2010 ~
Last Visit: January 02 2010
Mine was new a year ago and by all standards still isn't perfect, but I like it too much to give up on lol. Does yours have tender pickup? Mine does, but only on one axle per truck. Upgrading it to have the other axle pickup power would be easy as just adding another set of wipers. I just haven't had the time for mine. Another adjustment was pulling the support springs out from under the front & rear trucks. Too me they seemed like they were pushing the engine off the rails they were so stiff. I have no clue if the older ones suffer from this. But for mine once I pulled the springs the wheels sat more level and the engine had better contact with the rails. Eventually I plan to put softer springs back under the pilot wheels so they can handle going into turns & switches better. Finally there is the U-joint upgrade (you can read in detail about it in the post above). For all intensive purposes I need to redo mine since it still binds every now and then and stalls the engine.
Country: USA ~
Posts: 531 ~
Member Since: January 29 2009 ~
Last Visit: July 10 2020
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Posted - January 03 2010 : 12:09:44 AM
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