The KLine Allegheny I bought off EBay is having major problems
The sounds cut out when the engine goes around curves - inspected the teather connection and it appears the wire is fraying at the clip.
No smoke.
Traction tires are dry rotted.
I found a place that has the traction tires instock and will order them today.
The question is, is it possible to fix the teather connection, or do I need to take this to a repair shop?
How do I diagnose what is wrong with the smoke unit? I assume I take the shell off the engine and trace the wires leading to and from the smoke unit, if those are OK, then the smoke unit is bad?
Could be a couple of things with the smoke unit. Bad element, the heating element can be tested with a couple of leads and transformer. Place leads on each of the wires leading to the smoke unit apply some power and check if it gets hot. Or could be that the smoke unit element is ok and the fan in the unit is in reverse. Simply switch wires to smoke unit. CHIEF, wrote a thread about doing this a while ago.
I had a similar problem with the sound cutting out on my K-line semi-scale Hudson.
They sent me a couple of replacement tethers, which incidentally are quite easy to replace(they just plug into the circuit board in the tender), but didn’t fix the problem. The problem, as it turned out, was a bad speaker. Once replaced, the sounds were fine.
If you can find a replacement tether, I’d suggest trying that first, as they are relatively easy to change. If that doesn’t work, though, I’d suggest replacing the speaker. Since by that point my engine was out of warranty and K-line was gone, I used one of the nice plastic-cone speakers from Digital Dynamics, which is a huge improvement over the stock speaker.
I have an email inquiry into the Train Doctor so we’ll see what they come back with… I haven’t opened either the engine or the tender so I wasn’t aware that the teather was such an easy fix! Hopefully Dean has everything instock! [%-)]
Brent, You might want to pop the tender shell and check the boards. When one of my Mikados came the sound board was completely out of the socket and flopping around in the tender. The only reason I discovered it was because I had to pull the shell to install a battery, of course I was cursing K-Line the whole time for this til I found the board. [sigh]
I opened up the Allegheny and her Tender last night. Seems the previous owner tried to do some repairs himself as ALL of the boards weren’t seated properly. The teather to the tender is shot… hope I can get a new one. When I opened the Allegheny I heard a soft rattle. Then when the shell came off a little piece came out… it is black metal with a hole through it, with 3 little silver legs coming out the bottom.
After removing the screws and putting the engine back on the track, I lifted the shell… this is what fell out:
I removed the board:
I think this is just a heat sink but I am not certain. The engine runs fine with this piece missing (not the board) except the smoke unit does not work.
The little black piece that fell out is the smoke unit triac on the R2LC.
If you want the smoke unit to work, you can get a replacement R2LC for $30. Alternatively, just hardwire the smoke unit to the center rail, bypassing the TMCC boards. This will mean that you can no longer turn if off from the CAB-1, and can no longer boost it from the CAB-1, but it will still work.
Just got off the phone with the WONDERFUL, PLEASANT, EXCEPTIONAL people at Brasseur’s! They have the traction tires and the R2LC… they asked if the teather is 3 or 6 pin… I think it is 6 but I’m not sure… if someone knows please post so I can get the order processed, otherwise I’ll call them back when I get home.
Called Brassuer’s on Friday and ordered a new R2LC, 6-pin teather, and 6 traction tires with shipping $71.00! [%-)] Oh well. If it works and the engine smokes, traction tires fit, and the teather solves the intermittant sound problem I’ll be happy. Emailed the EBay seller and he has agreed to refund me 1/2 the repair cost so that is good. [tup] Should be here between today and Wednesday.
Arrived home last night to find a package waiting for me from Brassuers! [tup]
IMMEDIATELY went down stairs to the train room, opened the box and installed the R2LC and teather. Fired up the layout and BOY DID SHE SMOKE! HUGE full plumes. Then nothing.
I fiddled around with resting the TMCC, turning on/off the smoke unit. Nothing. [banghead]
So I took her off the track and started working on the layout, figured I would give her a break and calm down. Then as I was setting some ceiling tiles I noticed a little black spot on the layout. Went over and sure enough it was the same voltage regulator that had fallen out of the original R2LC. So I thought ‘Hey I thought I put this away…’ So I pulled the R2LC off the Allegheny… Sure enough it had come off the new R2LC!!! I am so friggin bummed. What could be wrong with this? It didn’t derail and I did not put the shell back on before it stopped smoking… Could there be a short? If so where should I start looking? I’m thinking it is a short due to smoke fluid as the inside of the engine appeared to be ‘wet’… so if the inside is ‘wet’ do I just grab a hairdryer and go to town drying it off? Is there another way to remove the smoke fluid without damaging anything else?
From the looks of your earlier picture, that component overheated and unsoldered itself. Since it has happened twice, I see two possibilities:
It is overloaded. There could be an intermittent short circuit in the heater or the wires leading to it. However, from your comment “BOY DID SHE SMOKE!”, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has removed some of the heater element in order to increase the smoke output and thus caused the heater to draw an unusually heavy current.
On the other hand, that type of package is designed to attach to a heat sink (although it wouldn’t necessarily have one). Is there any metal in the locomotive next to where it was that it might have been intended to be fastened to?
It’s possible that neither the component nor the rest of the board is not damaged and that it could be reinstalled. If you try that (and there’s nothing to lose by trying), be sure you know which of the two possible orientations it should have.
But I wouldn’t bother to fix or replace the assembly again until you find out why it got so hot. If you do discover a likely heat-sink attachment, it is entirely possible that the component needs to be attached using a mica insulator and silicone grease, not just screwed on.
I’ve never seen that particular componenent attached to a heatsink. That’s not to say that it doesn’t exist, but any kind of attachment in such a manner would make both the removal and installation of the R2LC awkward.
Otherwise, though, Bob’s explanation seems likely. Working from memory, the resistance of the smoke unit heater should be in the neighborhood of 25-30 ohms. If it’s significantly lower, it’s likely shorted.
I don’t know whether this particular engine has a fan driven smoke unit or a puffer unit, although I would suspect the latter(what most K-line steam engines have). If that’s the case, one of the leads of the heater could be shorting against the metal smoke unit cap. When replacing one of these, I like to put a piece of shrink tubing around the heater leads to prevent this from happening.
I’ve always used replacement Lionel heaters in my K-line engines. They’re pretty darn close, and may in fact be the same part number. They certainly look and work identical. The last time I bought some, I paid around $1.50 each for them. Smoke heaters don’t last all that long in a command control environment, and are cheap enough that they are worth regarding as a consumable.
This is a fan driven unit. I just took the smoke unit out of the engine and it is covered with fluid. So I am going to wipe it down and see if I can drain the unit itself as there is probably a good bit inside it still. There are only two exposed wire leads and they are under the smoke unit fan when it is installed in the engine, there is a piece of insultation between these two wire leads and the frame so it isn’t shorting there.
I have looked over the engine and can not find any spots where there is exposed wire touching anything metal. So unless the smoke fluid was shorting out the silicone board I doubt it was a short.
