Been a long time since I have posted anything here or even visited, so first of all here is a big “how are you to all”. My good news is that I am getting the Christmas layout ready even though it is a mite early and yesterday I decided to see if my nearly 60 year old 1121’s still worked after not being used for years and years. So after unearthing them, cleaning all the rust and crud off, resetting the track pins and checking the mechanisms I set them in, made a circle, hooked up the controller and they worked like a charm! The most amazing thing was that the light bulbs, which are originals, all worked as well. My 2046 and all my cars run through fine. The 2026 2-6-2 doesn’t care for them but will go if done real slow. It works okay on the straights but the leading truck skips once in a while on the curves.
That’s my excitement for the day. Might not be much for a lot of guys but it sure made this old heart feel good to rehabilitate some old equipment.
Hello Highplains. Not too early for the Christmas layout! While I think the stores push the holiday too soon turning it into a commercial holiday, often forgetting the true reason for the season. I will make an exception here: it’s never too early for the train layout! And a good excuse to have trains in the living room, which sometimes the wife will argue about under other circumstances.
Here’s a simple trick for your steamer that has worked for me. Place a small magnet on the upper side of the front guide truck assembly and this will do the trick. Craft and hardware stores often sell a package of small round or rectangular magnets which work fine. Some of the ones at dollar stores are a little weak.
Another trick is to use a single self-sticking lead tire weight in the same manner. The magnet is easy though as it can be repositioned and removed quite easily, and it works.
If your pilot truck tends to derail to the inside of curves, you are up against a Lionel design error. Weights, magnets, springs, and elimination of irregularities on (inside) curved rails may do the job. But the real problem is that the front truck oversteers on curves because its tongue is too short; and the complete solution is to lengthen it, moving the pivot back to the vicinity of the front crossmember of the motor, which is a convenient place to drill and tap for a new pivot screw.
You are exactly right. It’s never too early for the train layout. If I had the room it would be up all year! Remember the old slogan about anytime is a good time for Miller time? How about “it’s always a good time for Lionel time”! Good idea on the magnets for a possible fix on the 2026. I’ve seen others comment that the 2 wheel lead trucks on Lionel Postwars are prone to do that. I did some adjustments to it and it was better but as was mentioned above, I do have a weak spring there and don’t want to drill out the rivet to fix it just yet so magnets it will be for a while anyway.
Thanks for the reply. The wheel gauge seems okay. I think the spring is weak which would not be surprising on a locomotive made in "48 or '49. It’s going to be the pits changing the spring though so I might go the magnet route first and see what happens. Mashing down the top tang on the pilot frame a little bit helped a lot.
I bent the tang up out of the way, bolted an extension to the truck tongue, drilled and tapped the front motor crossmember, and pivoted the new tongue from a 1/4-inch spacer screwed onto that crossmember. (This is for the later 2-6-4 Adriatic; but I think the arrangement of the pilot truck is very similar–the truck is identical.)
My experience with pilot trucks is that if they are oiled properly, they usually work OK. I had a problem some years ago with a 736 pilot truck. Turned out that the hole for the axle was worn and so I put a bushing in it and it worked fine. I just checked a 2026 I have and it doesn’t have any good place to move the pilot truck pivot to. It has slider pickups and no motor cross member. The pilot truck on the 2026 is missing, so I checked a 2027 I have which has a similar pilot truck. With the engine on an O-31 curved track, the pilot truck axle was perpendicular to the track. This is probably the best geometry. I checked it on O-27 track, and the geometry is about the same. I ran it by hand across a 1122 switch, and didn’t see anything that would cause it to derail. Of course I didn’t run it as fast as it would run under power. If the magnet works, it sounds like a good fix.
Neat idea and as I see it the arrangements of the pilot trucks are identical or close to it. I see what you did and if no other way works you’ve given me another route. Thanks!
Servoguy, not all locomotives derail on all layouts. And, as I said, weights, magnets, springs, etc., may do the job in any one situation.
I don’t know who made your 2027; but the Lionel prairie and Adriatic locomotives with the 675-19 pilot truck do have incorrect steering geometry. Correct geometry would be, as you said, axle perpendicular to the track.
But, unless the pivot is about equidistant between the pilot axle and the middle driver axle, it won’t be perpendicular. Draw a circle, representing the center line of the track, and two (non-parallel) lines tangent to the circle, representing the fore-aft axis of the locomotive and the tongue of a pilot truck whose axle is perpendicular to the track. You will see that the tangents intersect at equal distances from the circle.
The locomotive’s center line is actually not exactly tangent to the circle, because of the blind center drivers; but it is very close. The geometry to correct for that is not too hard; but it doesn’t make a practical difference.
For anyone who’s still awake and wants to try to move a locomotive’s pivot, the exactly correct location is slightly forward of midway between the pilot-truck axle and the middle of the drivers. The amount by which it is forward of the midpoint is the square of the wheelbase, divided by the total distance between midpoint and pilot-truck axle, divided by 8. For a 2026 or 2037 this is about 1/4 inch.