Hello guys, please bear with me I’m just getting my feet wet.
Last week cleaning out the basement I found some old HO scale equipment. Probably stuff from an circa 1980 starter set and I proceeded to set it up.
I found the silver color (steel?) track to be corroded and sanded the top of the rails clean using mostly 220 grit wrapped around a pencil until it conducted better. The power locomotive I had did not do much but buzz so I ordered a Life Like Diesel EMD GP38-2 – Low Nose used off an auction site. It runs pretty well but just does not get enough traction to pull more than a railcar or two and has trouble hanging up on switches.
Is this just the nature of what I bought or are the wheels worn down?
Thanks in advice for looking and if they are worn is there a rebuild kit?
It would appear that the rubber traction tyres are missing off all four wheels. I’m not sure how you would go about replacing them.
I am afraid that I’m going to come across at my undiplomatic worst but I would suggest that you ditch the loco, go to your local hobby shop, if you have the luxury of having one handy and see what’s available, I’m not sure what’s a good bargain on the US 2nd hand market. Personally, provided its in good order,I still think that an Athearn Blue Box is a good starter loco.
I too must suggest dumping the locomotive and buying a new one.Check e-bay or if you’re lucky your local hobby shop but,beware prices will be much higher at the shop and like all places watch for sale pitches for high dollar models…
Athearn,Atlas, Bachmann and Walthers makes quality entry level locomotives and is by far the better choice…
Also if you have steel track I highly recommand replacing the track with Atlas track.
If you can find replacement tires, you will have to disassemble the model and trucks to put them on.
Another possibility is a product called Bullfrog Snot. This is a liquid plastic you apply to wheels for traction. It can be used to fill in the grooves, but will take several layers to fill them. It doesn’t require disassembly.
Life-Like is not high quality and you should look at a better engine as others have suggested.
First of all, you are not alone, I for sure have been down the route of purchasing a locomotive that was poor. I wonder how many folks have unknowingly purchased these Life Like “trainset” type locomotive and developed a bad taste for the hobby and simply walked away in frustration.
Many of us have learned the painful lesson that these are not great. Often they only pick up power from one truck, or a pair of wheels on each truck. They have little weight, poor traction and can’t pull a great deal, even when they are set up properly. They need the traction tires on the wheels to counter this lack of pulling power. Motors tend to be noisy, and due to the pickup arrangement they often run quite poorly, not being very tolerant of dirty track.
Mark, I got started using the Cheap Life Like Engines. I still have around 10 in a box under the layout. I was happy with mine till I saw there was better. After I got a good engine I realized what junk the Like Like’s where.
You are missing the traction tires. It was ever meant to be ran with out them.
If you don’t have a hobby shop and have to use E Bay look for Athearn Blue Box engines. We call them Blue Boxes because of the color of the box. They are older engine’s, some will be as old as 20+ years. But they where built to last and you can still get parts for them!
Here is a link to a Athearn BB engine so you know what the box should look like.
We’ve had several locomotives like this one donated to our club over the years, and only one or two were worth keeping. This looks like it is either a Tyco, Life-Like, or Bachmann very cheap train set locomotive with plastic wheels and traction tires on one truck, a pancake motor, and power pickup from only one truck. It’s probably not worth the time and cost of trying to find and install replacement traction tires.
The best advice is to throw that one in the trash and purchase a better product, as others have recommended. The rolling stock probably has poor quality wheels that don’t roll well, may have deep wheel flanges, and probably horn-hook couplers. The rolling stock may be salvageable, but that is questionable.
If you are seriously thinking about setting up a model railroad, do yourself a favor by first getting a better quality locomotive and rolling stock.
The loco you picked up cheap was probably over priced in the first place. It’s one of Life-Like’s old trainset toy locos that was made to run thirty days or thirty feet, whichever came first. Even with the traction tires it was pretty much useless. Without them it’s almost totally useless. It’s still good for use as a paper weight, dust collector on a shelf or a chew toy for the dog. There are other brand locos you can get that can be had cheaply. One is Athearn. Another is Bachmann. I have a Bachmann GP38-2 and it runs very well and I’m quite happy it. Walthers Trainline locos are also quite good runners. The Walthers Trainline GP9m are on sale now for under $50 new.
If you do replace the traction tires, put them only on one powered axle. Traction tires are non-conductive, and will generally eliminate electrical pickup from any wheel that has them.
I’d also recommend against the chew-toy for the dog idea, because the plastic will crack and leave sharp edges that will cut his mouth, and when you take him to the vet and say “my dog swallowed a locomotive” he’s going to look at you kind of funny.
Get a good engine, put this one in a box, and consider it a learning experience.
I don’t know what you paid for the loco (hopefully not much). However, if the auction site/individual you purchased it from made any representations stating that it was in good condition, was tested and ran well, or any other statement that would lead one to believe that it would operate properly, I think I’d be letting them know that they misrepresented the item.
I had one of those life-like locos as well (Still have one another a shop rite loco I picked up at the supermarket. Its not worth the trouble of fixing. The Santa Fe and the Shop Rite locos are now on permanent display in my “yard” which contains my unused rolling stock that I rotate on and off the layout. Instead of trying to fix that loco go to a local hobby shop (or online) and order one of the better locos mentioned above. The lifelike can then be a display model olny.
The actual running tread of the wheel should not have any sort of groove like that at all. That will definitely be why the engine has trouble around switches and probably a good contributor to lack of traction (besides the Life-Like being fairly near the bottom of the quality scale).
As others have pointed out, the grooves would be an indication that this engine is supposed to have rubber traction tires on those wheels, and somehow those tires have been removed and lost. You would need to find new traction tires to fix this. Do ALL 8 wheels have these grooves, or just the 4 on this truck? If all the wheels have tires, electrical pickup will be problematic to say the least.
The loco in question picks up power only from the non-powered truck. All the drive wheels are plastic and grooved for tires and driven by a cheaply made truck mounted pancake motor. My nephew bought one of these long ago and it’s still in the closet at his parents home.
Welcome to the forum. I agree with those who say, ditch the loco. Unfortunately it’s locos like this that can turn people off of the hobby. Please try to get a loco with all wheel pick up and all wheel drive. Perhaps a Kato, Atlas, Proto2000 or other high quality loco.
If you want to try replacement traction tires, try Stewart HO diesel traction tires, often found on Ebay. A Stewart traction tire tool makes it easier to install them.
Thanks guys, that was quite a bit of learning I did there.
Only the front four “drive” wheels have the grooves. The rear four pick up the electricity and besides needling cleaned when I got it are smooth.
After work I swung by the local hobby shop and was pointed to one bag on traction tires they had on the shelf. Installing them was easy enough. A couple mini screwdrivers and I was able to get one on w/o doing more than removing the shell. It was not very easy. My wife installed the other three while I gave junior a bath. Only one ripped.
The Santa Fe 3500 locomotive is considerably more usable now. Unlike before it will pull all six of my railcars and my dummy locomotive. They’re cheap and the dummy comes in handy as “distributed drag” to keep them on the track. It is noisy and not heavy enough in the nose to really get good traction but it does pull them light railcars up my my 3% grade. Perhaps later in the week I’ll set up a 6%.
This locomotive and its brittle hand rails have a purpose. My kid likes climbing around the train set. Perhaps I’ll let him drive it around the floor!
In a couple weeks I’ll start stalking Athearn Blue Box Locomotives and some quality railcars. That ebay link even had some Southern Pacific power units. Always had a weak spot for the SP.
Mark, glad you got it running. Make sure you ask a lot of questions before you buy! It is real easy to over pay if you don’t know what you are looking at.
On Athearn Blue Box engines. Read about them, some of the real early ones need a lot of power to run. One you want will have a gold colored motor. If you see a ad that says they have a Rocket Motor or the motor is gray you might need to re motor them.
There are all so a lot of things you can do to make your current rolling stock roll much more freely! Plus it is a good way to learn about how to make things work right!
A 3% grade? That would require a track run of one hundred inches (a little over eight feet) to rise three inches. A 6% grade rising three inches requires a fifty inch run, a little over four feet.
Just a little update. Old Santa Fe 3500 is still running and received a couple upgrades.
I found some knuckle style couplers at the LHS which helped make couple more reliably. Some Kadees are even coming in the mail any day now.
My railcar fleet is growing slowly but the SF would spin even the traction tires through 18" curves pulling ten railcars and a dummy locomotive. SO off came the body and out came the cut off tool. I cut and adhered some old SBC alternator pulley metal inside the cab. The bigger piece on top of the factory weights made it ride more stable through the curves at ridiculous speed. Then I put what I could in the nose and that really seems to help it. Top speed might be down but it sounds better going around the track and seems less light in the nose when pulling.
Overall I am ok with this guy. When my temporary track fails him or my toddler sees the handrails and comes to grab him off the table no major investment loss. If I ever put a slot car road crossing in this is going to be my power unit for any crossing accidents I hold!
