Apparently, one of the wirenuts in the tender worked loose and allowed a pair or twisted wires to short against the shell: the result was fried insulation, one of the wires melting into the case of the air whistle. The short caused the engine to jerk and derail, shorting something in it (I haven’t pulled the engine apart yet). The motor runs jerkily and slowly. Lionel was closed today–I can certainly understand that!–and their email is down (probably swamped).
Well, I shall email or call them tomorrow and see about shipping the pair to them (nearest service station over 100 miles away).
Actually, the boys are taking this quite well, but it did cast a pall over some of their celebrations.
[#oops]How old was the train? I have one that goes under my tree and we have had it for 4 years. The only problem we ever had with it was a coupler to brake on one of the cars.
yep that’s the price we pay when buying goods from China…
I bought a digital camera (simple toy one) for my 4 year old, from Wal-mart. Didn’t work worth a darn, and almost ruined her Christmas, thank goodness mom had the patients to fix it…
I could add a few line of rants here too on purchased duds from Lionel. some of their American flyer items are less than desirable… but the key is here, buy from a reputable dealer, and keep your receipt.
Sorry about the loss… good news is there are plenty of parts available and you will get her running again…
I feel your pain, palallin. I “lost” the front truck assembly last week on my 2046 when the pilot screw snapped off during dissassembly. After spending a couple hours cleaning and lubricating the engine and some passenger cars for a pseudo Polar Express at Christmas, I wound up running the stuff without the front loco trucks. Granddaughter didn’t know the difference and it ran just fine…bugged me to death though.
Yesterday we had the granddaughter over. While I was napping, I heard my wife actually running the train around the tree for her. That was a first for my wife as she has never operated the train. She was very careful with the speed because she didn’t derail the train once, for a whole hour! And it was parked safely behind the tree when I awoke.
The relief you feel when the teenage son brings the car home without any dings or dents.
I was always grateful when the teenage sons arrived home safely, never once worried about dings or dents. Still worry about them on the road at 29 & 32, dings or dents can be fixed, kids can’t be replaced.
palladin,
Sorry to hear about your bad luck- I was fortunate theat the first PE set I bought for my nieces two years ago was “built on a Wednesday” in China, ran out of the box with no problems. I bought a second set on sale at Macy’s this year, and that engine, although newer and cosmetically perfect, had a bunch of small problems I had to fix myself (bent siderods, wobble due to bad tires, smoke unit needed adjustment). I made the adjustments and the engine runs much better.
I don’t see how a malfucntion of the whistle tender would affect the engine, since they aren’t electronically connected. Try to run the engine by itself- my guess without seeing it in person is that your engine is fine. If it still runs slow, remove the plate that covers the bottom of the engine (held down with four screws), relube the worm gear and axles, and replce the cover.
But if you’re not the DIY-type, no worries, pack it up and send it back- but be aware that this time of year turnaround times can take anywhere from two to eight weeks.
I have run it by itself. what happened was that the jerking of the train because of the shorts in the tender derailed the engine, and it sat crosways on the track sparking till I could get to it and pull it off. " think some wires in it are now fried, too. I’m handy enough, but I really don’t feel like pulling the shell off and rewiring unless I have to.
palladin,
I seriously doubt your engine would be fried just because of a derailment- Lionel’s engineers know that toy trains ger derailed alot, so they’re built to take some abuse. Unless it was sitting on the tracks for an extended period of time, derailed, with other cars also causing a short circuit, transformer on full power, would I even think that would cause a fried board. But then the quality of boards in these starter sets isn’t exactly the best either.
If you feel your train isn’t running the way it should be, I suggest taking it to your LHS for a check before shipping it off to Lionel.
BTW, where did you buy your set? Was it at a big box store, LHS, or mail order?
Sounds silly, but its probably fine unless you could smell burned electronics (insulation…).
If its out of warranty, you might have luck taking it apart to determine what was fried, ie motor, board etc. See if you can figure out the part number for that component and check on the lionel main websight for repair parts. I discovered they had exploded view drawings, part numbers and price lists for many parts of the newer items right on line. I don’t know how fast they are about response, but I need to do the same thing for a 213 lift bridge motor that smoked after about two days(or 10 lifts) of operation…
It took me about ten seconds to get to the engine–I had to get past two boys and a duck-under–and the smell of burnt insulation or something similar was pretty strong.
I have no “local” hobby shop, and driving 100+ miles twice would pay for a LOT of postage.
Point of purchase was a show from a traveling vendor.