I ditto what wolverine49 said.
However, I am curious…While several CW-80’s were dead out of the box, has anyone had failures after the unit had run for more than a day? How about a poll? Let us know if you had a CW-80 failure after burn in or if you have a CW-80 that continues to operate 1 month or a year after you started using it.
Jim H
OK Jim, I’ll play – although it might be better to start a new thread. Keep in mind that one often sees 40 complaints for every accolade no matter what the subject…
I have crossed paths with 4 CW-80’s. I bought one from a dealer, 2 from eBay, and one was given to me. I have given two of them away – to a person I like. The two I kept are still running flawlessly.
The one that was given to me was said to be “bad.” It worked some, but “never seemed to work right.” I soon discovered that the accessory post had somehow been re-programmed to zero output, which I promptly corrected. Also, the gentleman apparently didn’t understand that the throttle normally “lags” behind both the hand and the direction button, and that instead of a circuit-breaker there is a “fold-back” circuit that causes the green light to blink and reduces the power when shorted or otherwise overloaded. I don’t think he had ever seen the manual for it. I tried everything I could think of to finish it off, using it exclusively for two full weeks. Try as I might, I couldn’t make it do anything wrong.*
So I sent it to a friend who has postwar stuff mostly but had just bought his first train with electronics and wanted a “modern” transformer with built-in whistle and bell control, etc. Despite my warnings to hook it up “plain and simple” initially, he put it into an existing setup where he managed to cross-connect the “U” posts, and heaven knows what else. It died as soon as he started it up – no fan, no green light, no output at all. (I think he blew the infernal, nearly unreachable, 50 cent fuse. Or it might have sustained damage in shipping. Or perhaps it was defective all along, even though I couldn’t find it.). So I sent him one of my “spares” which he tested and found to work perfectly, but in truth he hasn’t given it any real use yet.
My two remaining ones are well into their second and third years respectively. Both are s
I am stuck with my CW-80.