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Messages - pjdog350
1
« on: August 16, 2020, 05:52:26 pm »
Thanks Larry
2
« on: August 10, 2020, 07:34:04 am »
Does anyone provide road name and number transfers.
Back in the late 1980's and 1900's I use to get them from Janice Bennett But she is no longer providing these.
jack
3
« on: July 08, 2020, 02:55:19 pm »
I'm really surprised no one posted anything on this thread?
But I did find the problem with my new Hudson. It appears that the manufacture (China) does a poor job putting the shrink wrap on the stream engines draw bar. When the sound stopped I looked up what supported the sound. Then looked the engine over. I even removed the engines casting. That's when I saw a black wire that was under the back end of the engine near the draw bar. I'm a wizard with the soldering iron and sense we are talking about one wire how could I go wrong. I removed the lose shrink wrap and to my surprise there where three wires lose? Wonder what wire goes where. Looked at the drawing on the Lionel home page and saw that the replacement part is unavailable? Only $ 6.50 but not available! Could not get anyone on Lionel's support line. Thought I'd try the next day.
I'm all ways a mess when one of my toys is broken. I could not stop think about the problem all night. About 2 AM I got up and removed the casting from the tender. Then the light bulb came on. The tender has both orange wires soldered to the outside on the tenders draw bar. Then the two black wires are soldered on the two inside on the draw bar. The orange wires go to the speaker and the black wires go to the coupler on the tender. One orange wire was still attached on the engines draw bar. So I soldered the orange lose wire on the outside and two black wires on the inside of the engines draw bar. There are only four places to solder the wires. I placed some electrical on top of the engines draw bar so it would not short out on the engines frame. Went to the garage for the test. The sound works and the coupler works. I went back in the house to apply some shrink wrap so I would not have another failure. I'm so proud of me.
I have my new LionChief Plus Hudson back in order again and ready for another early morning run?
jack
4
« on: July 06, 2020, 05:44:43 pm »
I normally run my trains early in the morning as in Florida it gets hot in the garage. My new home has a three car garage and I use the third bay for a O gauge train layout. I look after my wife who has had a bad stroke and she's much better off under my care rather than a nursing home. Normally at 6:30 AM I have a hot cup of coffee and both main lines running trains. I prefer The Lionchief Mikado & the Hudson. I will watch them and service what ever needs attention at that time. I after 35 minutes I noticed the sound had changed. Only one engine was making sound. Then found the New Hudson was running along fine but no sound. Nuts!! I'm having a bad run of luck lately! After checking things out I found that a black wire near the engines draw bar but not attached to anything. Looked the Mikado over and it has four wires. Two black and two red. The Hudson also has the same thing only one wire was not attached! Also the black shrink wrap was not tight which I'm sure lead to the wire failure. I've also seen where the sound comes from the tender so I assume that's what the problem is.
Looks like the Chinese quality control got me again. Called Lionel for a warranty repair. Was on hold for 20 minutes listening to an irritating tune when a voice came on and said the mail box was full for this person and hung up on me. I got a little hot!! Something else came to mind was that when the Hudson got to a certain curve on my layout sometimes the sound would drop out but come right back. I watched for this before but could not always hear it. But now I think I under stand what was happening. The wire was broken but most the time was touching the contact when straight or turning right. So I had sound but when she got to the left turn it would cut out!
I looked at Lionel's web site and found a parts diagram for the Hudson and found the wiring harness I need But it's not available?
I'm not a happy camper today!
Jack
5
« on: June 27, 2020, 07:16:05 am »
I probably should not say anything but I've been having some problems with my O Gauge trains. I'm starting to think maybe it's the heat. My train layout is out in my garage and I live in Florida. It's really hot here. Summers the garage is like an oven. I just got some repairs done by MTH F3 and put in a new smoke unit in my Lionel Mikado. Sense then I bring all my engines that have computer chips in them inside. I keep them inside. Take them out in the garage in the early morning for an hour but when done running trains the engines come back inside the house?
Just food for thought. Was your Mikado stored in a area with high heat. I'm a retired software engineer and my passed computer knowledge says heat can play rough on computer chips?
jack
6
« on: June 26, 2020, 05:43:34 pm »
I was wondering if any of you modern train wizards had any knowledge about the life expectancy of todays Lionel engine smoke units. I've had two failures on my lionchief Mikado. I know that this line of Lionel trains is the bottom of the pile but maybe someone has knowledge about this. I called Lionel and ask this question but by the time I hung up I felt I had just talked to a used car salesman. I had posted in another thread that I had a fan motor failure and bought a replacement unit. Put it in and all is well now. My first failure I had was just a few hours after I got the Mikado new and I sent the Mikado back to the retailer and they sent me another one. That fan motor failed in about 30 hours (I'm guessing here). This new unit I'm watching a logging the time. I've also got another smoke unit coming and should have that in a week or so. I'm asking for any knowledge you all may have as while I was running my New Hudson and the Mikado this morning and enjoying a fresh cup of coffee the thought that I may have a failure again right know. Then I thought that maybe your not supposed to run the engines so slow so that puff slowly. One if the things I like about the modern Lionel engines is they are really great a pulling a load slowly. The Mikado is really great at this. The Hudson not so much but does so it.
I use to have allot of MTH steamers and never had a smoke unit failure. I still have three MTH locomotives. A Hudson, Torpedo and a smoking Railking Pennsylvania F-3 ABA. They all smoke like WWII Destroyers. The Hudson is from the late 1980's the Torpedo from the mid 1990's and the F-3's from 2013. Never had a problem with the smoke units?
Thanks ahead of time for any help.
Jack
7
« on: June 26, 2020, 07:00:15 am »
Steam. Born in NJ in 1941. PRR went near house and as a kid I use to go to the train tracks and was the steamers thunder down the tracks.
8
« on: June 25, 2020, 05:53:13 pm »
I ordered a Mikado smoke unit from by friend in New York that is a Lionel parts supplier. He said a 3 week wait. After a couple days I called Lionel support and got the parts folks. Ordered the 6801295200 as shown on the parts diagram for the Lionchief Mikado 3158. Got in a week (yesterday). Didn't get a chance to install the unit until this morning. The little screws are a real problem getting them out and back in. Cause I had to use a super little screw driver to fit then my old fingers didn't have the power to back the screws out? So I did a pair of pliers holding the screw driver handle and finally got them lose. After removing the old unit and installing the new unit. Using the pliers and super small screwdriver I managed to get the job done.
I was not really comfortable the unit was the real problem and if this new unit didn't work I was going to buy another Mikado and call Lionel to fix 3158. I've seen allot of posts on the net with smoke unit failures and a new unit not fixing the problem. Seems like the board that controls when the fan motor should run was the problem. I even called Lionel to see if that board was available. I took the Mikado to the layout with out the casting on the frame so I could watch the fan. Low and behold the smoke unit worked great. So the fan motor was the problem in my case.
Big thanks to trainlarry for the information and link to the Mikado diagram. Id like to add that after the postman left the smoke unit in the mailbox the Fedx man shows up with my smoking MTH Pennsy F-3's.
9
« on: June 08, 2020, 04:30:31 pm »
Thanks Larry. I had a friend in Louisiana named Bill Harrison. He was a good parts supplier. I just sent him an email asking if he had that part number.
I looked the unit over and it's smoking fine. But the fan motor has stopped. I did get it working again for maybe 25 seconds but it failed again. So we will see what happens? I sure loved this little Mikado. It's a super puller and didn't cost much. Perfect to run with post war Lionel stuff.
10
« on: June 08, 2020, 07:03:30 am »
Hello all. This morning my Lionel Lionchief Mikado smoke quit again. I got this engine in 2013. I've got allot of run time on it. I like it because you can run it slow and it's a super good puller. Anyway I had put 12 drops of Lionel smoke fluid in before I powered it on. Then started running it slow and again it was smoking like a WWII destroyer. It was running for a two or three minutes. I was running two separate mainline trains. I then notices that the Mikado just had a wisp of smoke. I stopped it right away and added some more fluid. I heard cracking. So I assumed it was hot in the smoke unit. When I started running it again I had nothing.
Can you buy a smoke unit with the fan any where. Does anyone know where these units can be bought. I'm going to try calling Lionel service but I'll bet they want you to send them the engine and let them do the work. I'd rather do it myself. Been fixing Lionel trains sense the 1960's.
I also have MTH engines. I guess the train gods are against me this month. A week ago I was running my Pennsylvania railking F3's that have a smoke unit. The smoke unit was not working so I opened the power unit up and saw I had over filled the smoke unit. I cleaned it up. tested the power unit without the shell on it. She was running and smoking great. I put the shell on and hooked everything up and poof. I lost the control board. I pinched the wire between the battery and control board to the frame. So now I need a new proto2 control board. MTH does not sell them to john Q citizen. You must send the unit to them and they do the work. And you get a proto3 board. Plus you send at least $ 200.00 bucks to them.
So if anyone knows where I can get a smoke unit for a 3158 Mikado please let me know. I use to get parts from a guy named Harrison? But I've lost his number. I think he is in New York state but not sure?
11
« on: March 20, 2016, 12:06:23 pm »
I think it's mostly just what you perfer. I'm a steam locomotive guy. I think because of my age. I was born in 1941. Steam was the motive power of the day. When I was a little kid in New Jersey I would go two blocks away and sit on the bridge and watch steam locomotives pull there loads. Sure was impressive!
I can remember two Pacifics pulling together work very long trains. Was great!
Jack
12
« on: March 20, 2016, 12:01:49 pm »
I had a light go out in one of my passenger cars. It has two bulbs but one had failed. I did what you said. I removed the phillips screws at each end of the car and the top came off. The car took a special light bulb that I was able to find on EBay.
Good luck!
jack
13
« on: March 19, 2016, 01:00:16 pm »
Thanks to chessie41 I stumbled upon why the Mikado was having smoke problems. chessie41 told me that the pplastic dropper supplied with the Lion Chief plus Mikado was for putting the fluid into the smoke generator!
Lionel does not identify the eyedropper in the Mikado manual. They just say use 4 drops of smoke fluid? Well there's four drops and there's four drops.
What volumn are we talking about. I use a oiler as a smoke fluid container. It gives pretty small drops. Where if you use the supplied eyedropper to provide
four drops your getting allot more smoke fluid.
I went to the Local train store to see if they had Lionel smoke fluid. They are really an HO store but they do handle some O Gauge. I bought two other brands of smoke fluid. They didn't have any Lionel smoke fluid. The Model Power fluid is allot thinner than the MTH fluid. Anyway, I used the supplied Lionel eyedropper to put four drops of Model Power smoke fluid in the Mikado. Then a added four more. Gave it a little while for the fluid to drain down into the smoke generator. Then I started up the Mikado.. She started giving lots of smoke.
So the real problem was I was not supplying enough smoke fluid to the new Mikado. I'm use to MTH RailKing motive power sense the 1990's. The little oiler work fine for them but not the Lionel!
jack
14
« on: March 19, 2016, 03:46:36 am »
Am I the first guy in the world that has had this happen to the new Lionel Chief plus steamer? Pus it's happened twice? What am I doing wrong?
Jack
15
« on: March 19, 2016, 03:44:41 am »
OK. I'll try that. I am afraid that I've cooked the smoke unit because now it's not putting out anything t all. This Mikado is doing the same thing as my first one. It only lasted about 20 to 30 minutes. This second Mikado is about the same. It started out really putting out allot of smoke. It would drive you out of the room. After I parked it for a few hours and then tried again it slowly stopped working. After adding more fluid it only smoked if I ran it real slow and the smoke was real light? Now I have nothing at all. I can feel the heat coming from the smoke stack. If I run it real slow I can feel the heat smoke fan puffing. My first Mikado the smoke fan quit! The smoke heater worked but the fan stopped.
I hate to take it apart it's new but this is my second one in two weeks that has failed?. I repair my MTH and old post war Lionel have for years. In fact I just replaced the wicks in my MTH Rail King Hudson, Torpedo and my smoking Pennsy F-3's. They smoke like WWII destroyers!!
The second time I ran The Lionel Mikado would not smoke at all so I added another 4 drops of fluid. I am using MTH smoke fluid. I thought they were all the same. MTH fluid works well in the Lionel Polar Express and all my post war engines?
I sure wish I knew what I was doing wrong. Wish I knew a real Lionel service engineer? I love this engine it kills me that she will not smoke!
Jack
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