Was checking out the operation of the Rotary Tipple and my train handling skills last night. Was just beginning a dump on the third bath tub hopper when the train started to move and the tipple jammed. Rest of train derailed as well of course as it goes thought a prolonged ess-curve on the way back down to ground level. Couldn’t get the machinery to budge. Finally got the directions and read them!! The directions say if you take off the back panel you can raise the shaft that has a gear meshing with the cam and realign the whole thing. Tipple is in a back corner, got the back panel off and tried the Braille method to find the shaft, lift it up, disengage, reset. Shaft wouldn’t budge. Couldn’t find a mirror to see what was going on, so had to take Tipple off the layout.
To “quickly” finish this rambling post: a glass of wine later, and several disassemblings and re-assemblings of the holder of the cam and manually resetting and playing with all the reed switches, got it operational again. Now to reinstall on the layout.
Moral of the story: the directions sometimes lie (or don’t always tell the whole truth) and amke sure the train is completely stopped before you begin to dump coal!
Yep, gotta spot the hopper/gon just right (LED comes on) and let the tipple do it’s thing without interuption. You pretty much have summed up the procedure for resettting jams. I, of course use rum as my BP moderator…
Oh, and never, never be tempted to try any other coal but 6-24148…
I saved my old bathroom sink,will paint it black, and use it as a “funnel” to capture the dumped coal, feeding it into a bucket beneath the layout.
I don’t think it is design hiccups. It is a very precise piece of equipment with little room for error in stopping the car at the correct location. Leeway may be an eighth of an inch. My major difficulty in spotting the cars is that the locomotives begin to descend back to bench level one piece of track out of the tipple and start into a double ess curve in the whole process. Command control makes it much easier to work with than conventional. I’m glad I made the investment. I am getting some pictures of the setup ready to post. Probably over the weekend.
The Lionel tipple was a rather complex and expensive piece of equipment. I would venture to say that Lionel may not do another production run especially in view of the fact that special rolling stock is also needed.