I was wondering if anyone else might have had problems with BLI’s new M1a/b units. I have had 2 units do the same thing. When I put them in reverse they develop a short or overload leading to failure. I never had this happen to anything in the past. The locomtives ran perfectly forward but in reverse they obviously had issues. Any comments would be appreciated.
Does the M1a come with a smoke unit? If so, you may want to turn that off manually then try the unit again in reverse. (The slide switch is usually located on the underside of the cab.) My 20th Century Limited Hudson had shorting problems during programming because of the smoke unit. Shutting it off helped.
You might also try contacting the BLI Service Department and describe the issue to them in an e-mail. They’ve been fairly quick in responding to me that way.
Tom
SHorting in reverse usually means something is shifting and coming into contact with something it shouldn’t - perhaps the motor twists just enough for one of the terminals to contact the frame, or the gearbox shifts, or the drivers pushed to the side and make contact with a metal detail. Or maybe the lead or trailing truck gets pushed to the front of the loco and contacts the frame.
Try turning off all the room lights, then switch to reverse and start it - look for a spark when it shorts.
–Randy
I have a stranded Paragon M1A and it has been a problem child from day 1.Out of the box as soon as I would hook the draw bar up I would get a dead short.Tired the fix on Tony Train World and did not fix the problem! [banghead] Being new to steam I wanted to run this puppy. My solution was to remove the metal pin on the tender and use a plastic screw from a Kadee Coupler kit and cut of the head so the draw bar could slip over it. I then used electrical tape on the tender so the draw bar would not ground on the tender.
While crud, it stopped the shorting. Reason I did not send in for a warranty repair? I did not want to wait 6 weeks to get it back.
My self, now that I know more about the service department, I would give them a call. They will either do the repair or walk you thought the repair.
Ken
It could be the draw bar is touching the first axle on the tender. Either move it to the last hole or on some of my BLI locos I had to flip the draw bar upside down. My Blueline M1b was that way.
Pete
I would suggest you join the PRR-Modeling group on Yahoo. Nearly every problem with BLI PRR engines has been discussed previously and the members are very helpful.
Thanks for all the responses. You have confirmed my thoughts on these units. Clearly a generic type problem that BLI has not properly addressed. With this being a repeat problem BLI should have solved the issue so that no other units would have the same issue. Poor engineering. Sorry, but as a professional engineer I get paid to solve problems. This is unacceptable manufacturing. I bought another locomotive from another company and paid a premium price only to have the company drop the model due to a major issue with the design and replaced mine with a substitute, not really a desireable option though it did get me a working replacement. I still wanted the original model and am still waiting for them to get their act together and bring it back out as a functional unit. I just want a working model of this M1a as I have been trying to complete my collection of PRR locomotive designs. I suppose there may eventually be a few that no one ever makes but this was to be my M1 design and now I have to sit back and wait for BLI repair to fix the problem. I just hope they can fix it and not pull the same thing the other manufacturer did and try to appease me with a different model as I don’t want something other than the M1a. They were sold out of the M1a and M1b units as soon as the boat hit the docks. I’m sure they won’t be able to replace mine so I’m just hoping they can fix it properly. Does kind of make me hesitant to buy any more BLI locomotives if this is their norm.
Joe, it hasn’t been their ‘norm’. They did have some problem children in the past, particularly during 2009-2010, but their latest runs seem to have been tighter QA-wise. In fact, reading across about four different fora each day, and being interested in HO scale locomotives and their problems across manufacturers and importers, the latter of which BLI is, everyone is having problems meeting production deadlines or announced delivery dates, and when they do finally get the items out of sea-cans on this end of the Pacific, they get a good chunk of them back within the first three months with niggling problems…lights don’t work, shorts, binding drives, decoders that don’t work… The problem is that the workforce assembling these models are invariably young women who are content to get a name for themselves in the toy factories, but who have designs on bigger fish. IOW, they are largely itinerant, have no loyalty to their current employers unless they are at the top of their game and making a prized yen, or they don’t feel what they are doing dignified them. Plus, it is difficult and painstaking work. If you think assembling a nice kit would get really old about the end of the third 10 hour day, imagine what they feel like two weeks into assembly of the same darned model where only decals and paint change between units.
We are victims of our own success as a group. We harangued and hounded the importers for more accurate and finer models, and we are getting them. If we actually want them all to work like Swiss watches too [:P], we might think about opening our wallets a little wider to pay more motivated people of all skill sets and levels at the factories, and to those who bring them to us on this end as well. IOW, we should expect to pay another $50-150 per unit to get a return rate for defects down to under 2%.
Out of 8 BLI engines, no two the same, and offered by BLI over six years, I have had to re
If you have the drawbar in the closest hole to the engine, when in reverse, the drawbar hits the wheel contacts on the front truck of the tender and shorts out. Both of mine do that.
John
On another note, has anyone had an issue with the smoke units in these M1b’s? After running mine for a few days, the fans in both smoke units started to squeek. It’s rather annoying.
John
Joe, I won’t go into details but I have had very poor luck with BLI engines as a whole. My M1 A being the biggest problem child! It came in with the dead short I talked about. Shortly there after it cracked it center tower gear, not a lick of lube on the center gear! [banghead]
In total I have 9 BLI, PCM or Blue Line engines. Only my my PCM Y6 b (well it did finally go back after I wore it out with over 600 hours of hard pulling and it still dragging freight today)BLI NYC Hudson , Blue Line RSD 15 have never been repaired or sent back
With that being said you would think I would be scour on BLI! I am not! What there QC lack’s the Services Department makes up for Big Time!
Cuda Ken
Well I’m on my fourth return for the same issue. One unit litterally smoked the tender. The chip failed inside and smoke came out of the tender. Most of these just do things like randomly stopping and then restarting, then repeating and repeating, usually in reverse. The Service Depatrment has been cooperative but they can’t get the units to repeat the issues on their track. I’m beginning to think that this may be a programming issue though I am running it on DC. My track is flat and 24 inch radius. Time is not an issue. I just want this to run properly. I paid good money for a working unit. So far it isn’t working.
I hope you’ll excuse the obvious question, but have you metered track power? I wonder if you are putting too much current or voltage to the rails? It seems strange that the techs find the loco behaves normally on their bench, and have done so a number of times.
Crandell
OMG!! I just saw this thread. Let me tell you about what happened to my new M1b I just got last week.
It actually ran great out of the box, I was impressed, this is my first BLI locomotive.
Then after about 20 min. of running, it derailed shorted. Then everything went to the crapper. When I shut off my DCC system. Put it on the rails, then powered up my system again. It started running wildly in reverse. I tried a decoder CV reset through JMRI on the programming track. Nothing.
Then I did a hard reset using the button in the tender on the decoder. Nothing, I tried at least 10 times. Now when I had the tender open, I saw… BARE WIRES!!! Yes bare wires, not just one, but several. It looked like the worst kind of decoder install job I’ve ever seen! It was bad. Chinese guys can’t see straight.
When I called BLI support, I told them everything, and about the bare wires, they said it probably shorted and fried the decoder. I had to ship it back to them yesterday, they said it will take 6 weeks!
I’m not a happy camper right now, and everybody talks about MTH, pssst I thought BLI was supposed to have quality products. What QA, they don’t have any at all.
From the looks of everybody else having problems with these brand new M1a/bs units, good lord what the heck is going on here?
I, too, have an M1a which shorts when running in reverse. A close look revealed that the lead truck shifts slightly forward when running in reverse. With that shift the left front wheel can contact the pilot, causing a short. Similarly, when backing around a left curve, the left rear wheel of the pilot truck contacts the cylinder and sparks fly.
Other than that the M1a runs well, smokes like a locomotive (but I don’t like smoke and rarely use it) and sounds pretty good. But it still has a fatal flaw: it can’t pull. It stalled on a 1.5% grade with only six Walthers passenger cars. It struggles with 20 very free rolling hopper cars. In comparison, an earlier BLI K4 can walk away with the passenger train and can handle 50 of the hoppers without slipping. BTW, I refuse to use traction tires. If I wanted rubber I would model trucks.
Years ago I swore off BLI after a bad experience with a PRR 2-10-0. I gave them another chance with the M1a. I’ll keep the engine but I won’t love it.
I won`t buy another BLI or PCM locomotive again…had to send back my Y6b a few months after I got because the decoder went nuts…then when I bought a Q2 in 2010 had to wait a few weeks for a new decoder because that one was shorted out from the factory…then they never sent me the papers that are suppose to be with the loco…finally sold that Q2 in 2011…the Y6b…not sure if I want to get rid of it or go thru the trouble of putting a Tsunami decoder in it.
Thanks for your comments. I have solved the issue with this particular model and I feel it’s generic. BLI claims that none of the ones that I have sent back to them gave them a problem on their test track. They have 18 and 22 inch curves on their track, mine has 24 inch. Apparently the problem happens at just the right combination. The front truck has just enough clearance to not contact the main body of the locomotive behind the front (fake) coupler. There is a srtip of paint missing from that part of the undercarriage. In reverse the problem worsens as the truck has enough slop in the single screw attachement that the truck moves farther forward and easily contacts the main body. This explains why it is worse in reverse. The symptom of starting to move in reverse then immediately shutting down, then restarting with the slow start-up only to move a little and shut completely down again. This would happen over and over. In forward it would only happen at one point on my track which just happened to be the lead into a left curve. The truck would move just enough to make contact and ground things out which would also explain the burned up chip on the third unit I had. Bottom line is I put a piece of tape on the body and the train runs fine. BLI didn’t offer a real fix and they still don’t acknowledge that this is a generic problem but if anyone else has similar symptoms look at the front truck for grounding.
Thanks for taking the time to close the loop on this. It’s an interesting problem, to be sure, and one you’d think scale locomotive designers would know to avoid at all costs.
Crandell
If you are about to give up on your loco here’s one more thing you might try. Remove both the engine and tender shells. Identify the wires coming from the trucks and going to the motor. Remove the decoder, logic board, speaker and lighting circuit. Wire the trucks directly to the motor. Reassemble the engine leaving out all the complex circuitry and comp[onents and just run the loco in DC mode. I know! That’s not what you paid for but you said you were tempted to just give up on that balky critter so what’s to loose. Each time you send it back to BLI costs at least $12.00 the cheapest way and that adds up, especially if they don’t get it fixed. FYI, I’ve done this with a recalcitrant Bachmann engine and it works fine now. Gets us back to basics, right?