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
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