I purchased a Proto 2000 2-8-4 Berkshire from a swap meet a couple of years back but shortly after ended up moving and didn’t have a layout until recently. It did run when I bought it. Anyway, I recently pulled it out and put it on the tracks … it moved about a foot and then just stopped moving. After that, only the Tender light was lit. The smokebox light is not lit and there seems to be no power to the drivers at all. I also noticed smoke coming out from the front of the tender and a burning smell. I immediately pulled it off the tracks and it have not tried it since.
Any thoughts? Can it be repaired? Is it worth it to try? I do not know much about pulling apart steam locos and am nervous to do so.
Anyone repair locos in the Milwaukee, WI area? And again, is it even worth it?
I had that happen. The burning smell is the tip-off.
Look at the wiring between the engine and the tender. If the insulation has begun to melt, the drive rods probably seized up.
The shouldered bolt that holds the drive rod to the first driver stands out pretty far, presumably to give the rods space to move laterally on sharper layout curves. It’s also far enough that it can hang up on the main rod coming from the cylinders, if that rod has been bent in at all. Since the rods on these locomotives are rather thin metal, this is easy to do.
If the rods hang up and you keep applying power, the load on the motor goes way up and with it, the amount of current it tries to draw. When this happened to me, the insulation on the wiring between the engine and tender melted, and something burned out on the circuit board in the tender. Fortunately it was not a sound-equipped locomotive!
I ended up replacing the wiring harness between the engine and the tender with a couple of connector sets from Miniatronics, then tossed out the circuit board from the tender and hard-wired a decoder in place.
Replacing the wiring harness is fussy work if you want to be at all careful about preserving the delicate details on a Proto Berkshire. You have to get pretty deep into the engine-- it’s not for the faint of heart. I took my time and did this over a couple of evenings.
Since my Berkshire was a first-run model with the funny-looking flat-faced drivers, I took the opportunity to replace the drivers with the newer Proto Berkshire drivers while I had the locomotive apart. These were available from Oregon Rail Supply, through their web site for $35 a set.
I have three of the Proto Berkshires. Once I fixed the one that burned up on me, I set all of them aside until I can make time to chase down shorter bolts for the front drivers.
Thanks for the reply Rich. I am indeed using DC and not DCC.
I just really got back into the hobby after a number of years out and know nothing about DCC. I’ll pull the tender apart and post a description of what I find.
The only way to tell is to look at the front two drive wheels on each side. If the bolt holding the side rod to either wheel is contacting the diagonal drive rod that connects the third drive wheel to the shaft coming out of the cylinder, then you probably have (or had) a lock-up issue.
The best option would be to take the locomotive to a hobby shop that has a good repair guy, one who can improvise, since there’s not much chance of getting actual factory repair parts for this locomotive.
Since I cannot assume that you have a good hobby shop nearby, you may need to search around online for train repair shops. If you find a listing for someone who might be able to do some creative repair work, send them a note with a clear description of what you have (don’t forget to mention which scale), and copy of this entire thread and see if they are willing to quote you a price, a rate, or if they are even willing to take on such a project.
The hobby shop I worked at in West Michigan about twenty five years ago had exactly the kind of repairman who could and would do that. Regrettably the shop has been gone for seventeen years, now.