Ok so now I have had my train for just over a year and its in a cold basement during the winter times, I dont run it that often but I had some family over looking at it and I went to run it and the engine wouldnt budge. I took it off the track and the wheels took some effort to turn by hand. Im hoping this is just a routine maintainence issue so any help would be appreciated.
The grease might have just solidified and dried out. That is common when kept in a cold environment.
If you turned the locomotive wheels by hand, you probably broke it, unless it is Lionel O gauge.
What scale are your trains?
Hopefully it didn’t break. Try bringing it up into the warm part of the house and letting the lube warm up. If that works, you may want to clean some of the excess lube off the gears. Might have to keep the locos where it is warm before trying to run them.
Good luck,
Richard
C.Rogers8705
The wheels will be extremely hard to turn by hand. The gear ratios are too high to allow that to happen. If you want to test for free rotation you should take the shell off. You should be able to turn the flywheel (assuming there is one), or the motor core if it is exposed, or the drive shafts quite easily.
As others have said, cold temperatures and too much grease or old grease will cause problems. However you would normally expect to get at least a buzz out of the motor, or perhaps very slow operation if the problem is with the grease. You should also get the lights coming on if there are any.
If there was absolutely no response from the engine my suspicion would be a problem with electrical conductivity. It could be as simple as dirty track and/or crud on the wheels. I have had several occurances where my locos would not initially run when put on my test track, which I forget to clean when it has been sitting idle for a long time. Clean the track and bingo![I]
Dave
Its a grease issue then, everything works but the wheels, its not a big deal if it did break I planned on replacing it anyways and I very rarely run it since I am still in the early stages of my layout. Thanks for all the help.
Yeah, it’s not a good idea to try to turn the wheels of an HO or N scale model locomotive, they have worm gears which tend to lock up the wheels and as they’re made of plastic it would be fairly easy to break the teeth on them.
Out of curiosity, what brand is your train set? If we know exactly what it is you have, we may be able to help you out a little more.[:)]