rivarossi big boy 4884

Hello everyone, im new here and im really enjoying and learning from you all. I do have a question. I just inherited a rivarossi big boy 4884 with the motor in the cab. It was sitting amongs seven other locomotives that I inhereted from my great uncle and he never ran them, just collected and put them out for show. Ive cleaned all the old lube that turned to gum, reoiled and have it running ok, it would be great if it had more power.

So…my questions are these, how can I get it to go faster then slow at 100% power only pulling ten cars that have bearing wheels? And also, I have a few crossing gate sections that the big boy stops on because there are only connectivity in the front and rear trucks, is it possible to add connectivity points on the drive wheels so I dont lose power?

Thanks for all your help in advance, im really looking forward to getting to know you all and learning as much as I can, I also look forward to sharing all that we are doing here as well, we have four family generations of trains that we are running, my great uncles, my fathers, mine, and my 6 year old son that absolutly loves the hobby like the rest of us.

Gidday hotrod66, [#welcome] to the forum.

If you look on the right under your "Manage Profile? Community Settings, you should find the “Search Community” . I find it can be down right frustrating to use, I either don’t seem to phrase the question right or I have to sieve a whole lot of dross to get to what I want. It can be helpful though.

Here are a few previous posts that are similar to yours…

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/202827/2217621.aspx#2217621

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/197975.aspx?sort=ASC&pi314=1

http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/193714/2115198.aspx#2115198

and here’s one from the interweb…

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/model/remotoringbigboy.shtml

Hope this helps , Have Fun,

Cheers, the Bear

thank you very much for the welcoming and the links, i will check them out right away.