I’d like to find info on this loco and any ideas on how to re-moter it.
pics.
Oringinal moter (found metal shavenings near the magnet and won’t run)
fraime
loco body/fame
The body and chassis are Varney, but it looks like it’s been modified to hold a Lindsay power truck. Your motor appears to be missing the brush plate and springs, and I don’t know of any way to get it running again other than using parts from another Lindsay motor.
There are quite a few options for repowering. If you want to simply use a different power truck, you can use a PDT or Stanton drive from NWSL (Stanton replaced the PDT), or a SPUD from Tenshodo (out of production, but not too uncommon for a decent price). Or you could replace the entire chassis with one from manufacturers such as Athearn. Or if you want it to be bullet-proof and last forever and beyond, you can locate a Hobbytown F-unit chassis.
The Lindsay power truck in your Varney diesel was once regarded as one of the smoothest drives around. They were well engineered, pretty strong for their size, quiet, and had decent speed control from their 7-pole skewed armature. At this point, there are many options that are far superior, but working Lindsay drives and motors have gotten to be a bit of a collectors item.
Hello well Darth did a fine job covering this. Here is a little more.http://hoseeker.net/otherhotrains4.html go under the lindsay page to L-137 Varney conversion.You will find you motor. And this is the Varney page. http://hoseeker.net/varneymiscellaneous.html hope this helps and keep us posted on your project. Have a nice day Frank
As posted above this is not the original Varney power train. My old F3 pulled like a son of a gun but eventually the fatal flaw common to models of that era – bad zinc – caused the truck assemblies to simply disintegrate. I saved the shell and the motor – somewhere. The wheelbase of the trucks was not quite correct by the way.
Oddly enough the old Marx HO F3 was a very crude knock off of the Varney and used the same general theory for its power train. Eventually Varney cheapened their F3 to look more like a Marx unit!
Dave Nelson
Was this the part missing?
What I generally do with the old Mantua, Tyco, Varney and globe F units I come across is to rerower them with Athearn drives. It’s a lot easier than hunting for parts that may not exist anymore and I end up with a loco with a more dependable drive.
Yup, that’s the part. It looks like your parts are all OK, so unless the armature’s gone bad, that thing may run with a simple cleaning. And if the gears have gone bad (like mine did), NWSL makes replacement geared axles for all Lindsay diesel drives.
I hear that. I got an F-7 B&O A-B-A freight set for Christmas in 1962. The zinc frame for the flat cars exploded a few years later. I run the engines every now and again for nostalgic reasons. A few months ago I cleaned and relubed the engine and had evrything running like a top. When I put the shell back on the frame broke in several pieces
What kind of transformer do you recommen? (I am testing with a bachmann starter set one) I was thinking of a old lionel one to get the right voltage, because I did the maintenanceand no reaction it judt sat there.[:(]
It will sit there, probably with a growl, and likely on its way to eventual overheating until you use DC power. Permanent magnet motors - the ones used in HO equipment - require 12 volts or less DC. That is the NMRA standard. Power supplies for DC are generally called power packs, not transformers, to distinguish them from AC output transformers.
Toy train manufacturers (Lionel and all the 3 rail O guys, Marklin, etc) usually do not comply with the NMRA standard. Because they started making toy trains before the NMRA, they used universal motors which ran on either AC or DC. AC was chosen because rectifiers were relatively expensive before and immediately after WW2. So Lionel transformers put out AC (except in a very few rare cases).
In almost all situations, the type of outputs and voltages are printed on the power pack or transformer case.
To replace your Bachmann starter set power pack, I strongly recommend purchase of an MRC Tech series power pack (new or used). It will give you much better control of your locomotive.
my thoughts, your choices
Fred W
What ever you do, DON’T hook it up to a Lionel AC ransformer, unless you like the smell of cooked electric motors! In the 50s and 60s many HO models were diecast from zamac. Many refer to this material as pot metal. It is a blend of several metals. If the was pure, the casting last forever. If it wasn’t a good blend, the casting distort, crack, and “explode”. I have many of Mantua and Varney locos that look fine. I also have a few other brands that are horrible.
That explains the crumbled frame I have from a Mantua F unit. It looked fine until I tried removing the shell and the frame busted into several pieces with some of it crumbling into dust. It was OK by me as I had no intention of using it again anyway.