I was converting an Athearn PA2 today to get it ready for DCC. I took the shell off, then stripped the loco down to the frame, motor, trucks, shafts, everything. I then turned the motor over, snapped off the two pieces that contact the frame, then carefully soldered a thin wire to it. I then put a strip of electrical tape across the bottom of the motor just to make sure the contact would not touch the frame. I put the motor back in it’s cradle mounts and reinserted it into the frame. Very carefully, I reattached the trucks and mounted the drive shafts, then soldered the other end of the wire to the ground pickup on the front truck. Since both trucks contact the frame, this is all I had to do, as far as grounding was concerned. I put the locomotive on the track and put power to it. ZIP! ZILCH! DANADA! BOPKISS! Nothing happened. I checked my power wires from the power pack (once in a while I accidently rip one off), no joy there, so then I check to make sure that part of the track has power. It does. The meter says 15.3 volts. What is going on, I wonder! So I look carefully at the locomotive and see what the problem is. I then solder two wires, one each from the positive pickups on the trucks to the positive strip on the top of the motor. Put power to the locomotive again. It runs fine. I’m thinking, I’ve been in this hobby for over 30 years and I missed something that simple and obvious.
That’s just human. If you want something really stupid…I got sidetracked and left my airbrush standing in water–for two months. I have a new airbrush now.
Jeffrey, I do live sound in my business. I can’t tell you haw many times my crew and I have spent 45 minutes to an hour retracing all the wireing because there is no sound only to find out that the speaker wires or some other of the many connections just wasn’t pluged in… Don’t feel bad!
Welcome back to the club. I just got a sound decoder in a brass 2-6-6-2, but it took an extra day when It wouldn’t run. Problerm - I put the tender trucks on backwards.
Jeffrey–I’m not DCC, but not too long ago, while testing my new 2-10-2, it stopped. Just stopped. I got panicky. I’d spent a lot of money on it, and it wasn’t running. Put another locomotive on an adjacent track. Ran perfectly. Took said non-running loco to workbench, tapped wires to tender and loco. Ran perfectly. Put loco back on track. Nothing. Panicked again. Was all set to take loco back to LHS, or at the most, E-mail the manufacturer and complain about something-or-other (what, I had no idea). Got REAL panicky, ran another loco around. Stopped cold. Started tearing my hair out. Stomping, yelling–the whole bit.
Guess what? Earlier, I’d cut off power to the block and forgot to reset it…
Boy did I feel DUMB!
Said 2-10-2 crawled down the block. Swear to God it flipped me the Finger as it rounded the curve and went into the tunnel.
Tom [:I][:I]
Working Reigate Signalbox years ago I had the S&T Small works team testing a few miles of new equipment for the last time before commisioning. They started on the first signal… no indication of signal aspects back to the (completely new) repeaters. I said “You haven’t put any lamps in”. they said “*" or words to that effect. One team started tracing that circuit. Another went to work on signal two… same thing. Same response. Quick check of more new signals: same problem - same response. Teams were called off other work. Ended up with five or six teams frantically checking circuits all over the place. BIG BOSS came down to find out what was going on. He said “Hello David”. I said “They haven’t put any lamps in the signal heads”. They said "”. He looked at me, all the testing going on… He said “Has anyone checked to see if there are any lamps in the fine signals”?
Person sent to check the first signal head came back a bit embarrassed…
I’ve just realised that that was one time senior management listened to a suggestion I made.
Doesn’t it really bug you when some smart non-technical-person (that’s one name for them) gets it right?
{If anyone is interested… if you call a light bulb a bulb around a signal technician you will be told that bulbs are planted in the ground and come up in the Spring… then again… they work quite well when plugged into signal heads…)
And folks wonder why after every DCC install I do, thier steamers have a small F written in silver Sharpie on the bottom front of each tender truck! [;)]
Its bad enough when I can’t get my own stuff to run, worse when it’s somebody elses!!!
Don’t feel bad man! I did almost the same thing with an Athern Sw-1500 cow and calf. They used to pull together fairly good, but since I tried to put new wheels on them. (nickle-silver Norhtwest Shortline wheelsets) they will not run together at all and will pull in opposite directions! This has been a vexing problem. I went out and bought another Sw-1500 calf, and right out of the box before I put on new wheels it worked fine with the other loco.
I took the motor apart for cleaning (my nephew decided it needed oil and poured bunch right into the armature) and I somehow, don’t ask me how, got the pieces with the motor cradles wrong. When I put the loco on the track to test it, it went the wring way! I ended up have to switch the trucks around to correct the problem. It runs the right way now. The motor is still upside down.