I have a Japanese tinplate set that I believe was made just after WWII. I believe my grandfather got it when he was assigned there during the occupation. The locomotive is modeled after an electric engine w/ a 2-4-2 arrangement. Considering it’s tinplate the detail is fairly interesting. The locomotive is labeled EB57. I have found no other numbers on it, but the box has some faded numbers on it that are J-4060-AP. It’s also labeled as Standard Model Rail-Way built by Sakai. Anyone know the history on these sets?
One of the “features” of this locomotive is that it runs really fast even on the transformers lowest setting. My grandfather had added a rheostat to the original transformer which had only speed steps, but it runs this way w/ even modern transformers. Would it be possible to add a dropping resistor to the motor in order to reduce the speed. I has no E-unit and it looks like my grandfather added a manual reversing switch.
I’ll try and get some pictures of it posted at some point.
Bob
Sakai was a well known manufacturer and your engine and cars probably look like Marx products. You see these sets show up on ebay regularly. There is a Yahoo group devoted to these trains and they can probably tell you everything you want to know
Tom
It is possible to add an on-board resistor; but it won’t do anything that the external rheostat is able to do. You could also use the bridge-rectifier trick, which would tend to make the speed less sensitive to loading than the resistor will.
The fact that it always runs fast makes me a little suspicious that your grandfather might have wired it incorrectly when he added the reversing switch. If he happened to wire the armature and the field in parallel rather than series, as they should be, he would have created a shunt-wound motor, which, unlike a series-wound motor, naturally wants to run at a constant speed, leaving you with very little control. You might check for this possibility before taking any other measures.
Thanks for all the info. I’ll have to check out the group on Yahoo. Be interesting to see what other sets look like.
I’ve never had the locomotive apart so I will check how the switch is wired. I sure it could use a good cleaning anyway and I’ll let you know what I find.