I’m having a little issue with my recently-acquired N Scale Life Like USRA 0-8-0. It will run for a little while and the stop moving. The lights stay on. This tells me it’s not a power pickup issue. If I give the engine a nudge, I will start moving again for a little bit but stop again a short while later. This may be a gear issue. I’m running on conventional DC. Have any of you had an issue like this before?
I have two of these little guys and one of them is prone to several problems like the one you have. The primary issue is the complex, closely-fitted valve gear and side rods. They occasionally hang on each other and stop the loco suddenly. It’s hard to see exactly where the binding is; you just have to run the loco for a while and when it stops, look closely with magnification to find the trouble spot. It’s always been something external on mine and usually one of the rivets that hangs on a rod somewhere.
Carefully bend the offending rod a tiny bit and see if that fixes it. With luck, you’ll find the culprit. Without luck, you’ll induce another part to bind.
I did have one of these 0-8-0s lock up right on a turnout, which made it overheat and melt down one axle. That wasn’t a pretty sight and Life-Like doesn’t carry spare wheels and axles, it seems. I found a replacement right in the original box: the axle and attached wheels that did not have traction tires. Now, I need to use Bullfrog Snot on those wheels to make it pull decently again.
See the review of this engine on this excellent site: http://www.visi.com/~spookshow/locos.html
I am not personally familiar with that engine, but when you write that it was recently acquired it reminded me that “back in the day” (I know I know – some of us are tiresome geezers aren’t we?) a break in period was usually in order for any newly bought or newly assembled engines, particularly steam locos.
Of course that is back when there was more metal than plastic involved, but one traditional practice was to place a new engine upside down in a soft cradle of foam or cloth and attach alligator clips and just let it run upside down for a time, reversing direction from time to time. That would help smooth away any little burrs or other slight irregularities in the gears, bearings, running gear or side rods. If the engine is prone to stalling you’d want to monitor this, but one advantage to having the engine upside down is that you can run it at higher speeds than you might want to on the layout itself, and you can attend to other projects at the same workbench during the process.
Dave Nelson
Dave, I broke the engine in by running forward at half throttle for 10 minutes and then backwards at half throttle for 10 minutes as recomended by Life Like. I generally follow this procedure with all new locomotives. It ran fine for about a month before this problem cropped up.
Hmmm. OK. And the lights stay on which seems to rule out a faulty or failing electrical pickup from the rails, but not necessarily a faulty or failing connection to the motor itself depending on how the thing is wired
An ammeter reading might be instructive – if it is mechanical binding the amp reading should show that. It still might be interesting to see if this same failure happens when the engine is not picking up power from the rails but rather is getting power from alligator clips attached to wheels and is upside down. If it stil fails then I’d consider the electrical connects to the motor OR as a prior poster speculated some newly developed failure in the drive train. Refreshing the lubrication does not help I assume?
Dave Nelson
I tried running the engine upside-down. What I found was at 3/4 throttle the loco would speed up and slow down fairly regularly. I lubricated the the gears but on the engine is still binding up on the tracks. When it does run on the tracks it speeds up and slows down just like when I ran it upside down.
I still suspect that the side rods or external valve gear are binding. On both of mine, the only way to find the problem was to run the loco at low speed while watching the rods.
If it stops at the same point of rotation each time, note that spot carefully and shut off the power as soon as the wheels stop or slow down. It will be hard to isolate, but mine were binding as a result of a rivet rubbing against a rod. Bend the rod clear VERY GENTLY and try again until it clears up. It may recur a month or so later; there doesn’t seem to be a real cure.
Often, binds such as this will cause the finish on the offending parts to be worn away - useful if the valve gear and side rods are painted or blackened.
Another thing that can cause the regular slowing and speeding up symptoms is a driver slightly out-of-quarter. A simple way to test for this is to stop the loco with all of the driver counterweights on one side of the loco at the top or bottom position - the ones on the opposite side should all be in similar alignment vertically. If one (or more) don’t line up, you may be able to re-quarter it “by eye” using a little finger pressure in the right direction (make sure that the wheel on the other end of the same axle doesn’t move). This can often be done without dis-assembling the loco. If possible, apply a small amount of ca to the interface between the offending wheel and its axle, taking care to keep it away from everything else. If this is the problem and it recurs, you may have to remove the wheelset to do a more thorough repair.
Another problem which I’ve encountered (once only) is a piston rod which is too long, causing it to strike the inside front of the cylinder on its forward stroke. The cylinder casting was slightly skewed when I got the loco, and I unwittingly introduced the problem by straighten it and tightening its retaining screw. I then wasted a lot of time looking for