I have an Atlas GP-38 and it was my favorite engine. Now it runs so crappy I pulled it off the layout.
It came with a Lenz chip and ran smooooooth. I decided I wanted sound so I got a drop in replacement from Tony’s, a SoundTrax LC. The engine sounds good, although weak–it’s high volume is drowned out by Broadways on the other side of the club layout. The real problem for me is that is stalls on turnouts and jerks and sound cuts out for no apparent reason. A million people told me that the LC series is crap, so I added an N scale NCD to run the locomotion functions. Nothing improved.
Last night, I checked continuity from front to back wheels, and that is good. It thought I might have a pick-up problem.
I’ve cleaned the wheels a million times, and cleaned parts of the track for testing with no noticeable results.
Have you re-moved the wheels and trucks and checked them for pick up?If the pick ups are durty that will happen!I have two BB GP 38’ one of them had an problem after a bout 5 years the little copper pick up were dirty,I’am like you I lubed and cleaned the wheels,and it still did’nt help,on my engines they have little brass square thing’ees on the wheels they were dirty,It works great now!
Soundtraxx LC decoders are not bad, but I would call them a budget “mid-range” sound decoder – and it’s hard to beat the price of an LC decoder these days. An LC decoder, however, does not have the best motor control (noisey, and no back EMF or pulse power settings), and I tend to use them mostly in dummy units because of that.
The sound cutting out over dirty spots in the track and dead frogs is just life with these decoders. You can, however, add a keep-alive circuit using about $4 worth of parts – but you’ll need a small soldering pencil with a sharp tip and a steady hand. Here’s a web site with details.
NOTE: You will void the warranty on the decoder if you add the keep-alive circuit. Still, getting rid of the decoder constantly cutting out over dirty track or dead frogs is worth it, if you ask me.
I have not removed the trucks. It was such a hassle getting the two decoders to fit that I was avoiding it. I assumed that if I tested continuity between the front and rear wheels, then I was getting good pick-up as well. I did not spin the wheels to see if there was a point where contact was lost.
Joe,
The funny thing is that both the LC and the NCD decoders have the exact same symptoms while the original Lenz did not. That leads me to look in a direction other than the decoders. However, if I were to get brave and try to tackle the modification, would I be looking at doing it on both decoders? I suppose I could do it on just the NCD because it is the drive decoder. At any rate I have two problems with that. I am not that skilled with a soldering iron and N scale decoders are small to begin with. And with two decoders and a speaker cramed into the space, I can’t see how anything else will fit.
The NCE decoder should run it fine, at least as well as the stock Lenz-made decoder if not better. Atlas used a rather low-end Lenz decoder and the NCE should be actually better. The Sountraxx LC motor control, on the other hand… but since that is no longer a factor here, and the loco still has the same symptoms, there MUST be a problem somehwere between the wheel pickups and the decoder source. OK, maybe not MUST - try some test leads and turnt he loco upside down and touck them to the wheels and see if it runs well or stalls out. If it stalls out like that it could be a bad motor - dirty commutator, bad brush, open winding, etc. If it runs OK, then there is a problem between the wheels and th edecoder. Either the wheel contacts aren’t all touching all the wheels, or the wires leading to the decoder are broken somewhere. It could be that it is only picking up from one truck instead of all wheels.
I’ll try that tonight. Funny I have not been able to really duplicate the problem at home, just at the club where I run it.
Now I did test for continuity between the all combinations of front wheels to back wheels and got solid zeros for all but one combination and then got an 002. With that I ruled out contacts and leads to the engine from the contacts.
I ran the engine to night at the club and definitely noticed two distinct performance levels. As the track got dirtier, the sound failed before the NCD failed. The engine ran great on clean track, but it seemed to be the most sensitive engine on the layout to dirty areas. The good thing is that a bunch of people jumped in and started cleaning track.
I agree, this is a common problem on the Atlas pickups that wipe the back side of the wheel. However, it is not neccessary to remove the trucks to clean them, just get a small piece of rag and put it over the end of a flat blade screw driver. This will allow you to “reach” the rag in and clean the contacts.
It is also possible to remove the truck “caps” without removing the trucks from the frame. They have a knotch on one end and a sort of stiff wide hook on the other. Pry the hook open and tilt it off. Be very careful or all the wheels can go flying. To do this the couplers might also need to be removed depending on the clearance. Note also that if this method is tried it can be difficult to get the contacts reset behind the wheels during re-assembly.
That’s the reason for adding the keep-alive capacitor to the sound decoder. Even dirty spots too small to make the loco stop (mainly because of momentum and the flywheels in the drive) will make the processor on the sound decoder reset. You know you have good pickup and clean track if the lights don’t flicker while running… If another loco also has flicking lights at a particular spot - the track’s dirty. If other locos run clean, then the first loco has dirty pickups or another problem.
It is almost too bad that some of the other club members aren’t experiencing similar problems, or the “crew” might be more willing to address the cause of the problem which is probably rolling stock dirty wheels spreading dirt repeatedly over the layout. The cure may have to be a major wheel cleaning of all the engines and rolling stock, definitely not as much fun as running the layout, but in the long run a better solution to the “problem”.
Too true. Almost all the rolling stock have plastic wheels and in the two years I’ve been a member of the club, no one has even mentioned the rolling stock. As it is, many members openly refuse or ignore our rule that all engines must have their wheels cleaned before they are put on the track. I even built two cleaning tracks and put them at key locations so they couldn’t be missed. Still they are mostly unused.