Upgrading a Lionel RS-3

Classic Toy Trains Forum
1

I have a pair of Lionel RS-3 Locomotives, the NYC version made a few years ago, and the newer Southern version.

I am not really sure as to why I got the NYC one originally. I remember bringing with some issues of CTT with me during a month long underway, and one morning (if submarines actually have a morning, due to the 18 hour days underway), I literally woke up and decided that I would buy the Lionel NYC RS-3. The first day off I had after pulling back into port, we went to Charles Ro, to find that they had ONE left and it had been sitting for a long time, as by that time, the engine was already replaced with the Alaska RS-3. Needless to say, I bought it, upon first startup, one of the wheels in the rear truck was found to have fallen off. Not that hard of a fix, I applied some JB weld to the splines on the axle, and pressed the new wheel on with a bench vise.

Since then, it has been a very sold runner, albiet a tad weak due to poor weight distribution. (The weight seems to be balanced between the front powered truck and the rear unpowered truck.)

What I plan on doing to both units is to install a motor in the rear truck to help with traction and to allow for a longer train without straining the single motor.

The rear truck seems to be an exact match with the front truck, aside from the lack of a motor, gearing, pickup rollers, and the rear wheels (understandably) do not have traction tires.

From what I understand of it, the reverse board on the RS-3 is the same used on the twin motored Lionel GP-38, so changing the board out should not be needed. (A new board for the GP-38 is only $13, so changing it out would not be that bad.)

Has anyone else attempted such an upgrade? If anyone has any advice and/or suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated.

James

2

I’m pretty that you’ll be able to get a power truck, with the motor installed, from Lionel for a few bucks. A good many diesels made since the MPC years, including GP-7s and GP-9s, U-boats, and the RS-3s have used that exact same truck. In fact, several RS-3s have been dual motored.

Once you have the truck installed(which should be straight forward), you’ll just need to splice the wires on the new truck in with those going to the old one. They should be wire nutted on, so this won’t be any trouble to do-just test before soldering, and if the motors turn in opposite directions, reverse one of the wires.

The new power truck should also have pickup rollers, the lead from which can be spliced in with the other one already there.

3

James, I’m can’t recall Lionel making a RS-3 with only a single motor. As a general rule, the RS-3’s with the all-plastic frame have only one motor. Lionel’s catalog writers don’t always have their facts and there are exceptions: the plastic framed Ontario Northland RS-3 has dual motors (even though the catalog said single motor). The Conrail U-36B had a single motor, while the very next one, a CSX cataloged with a single motor actually came with dual motors.

You can go to the Lionel website and look over the service documents to get the correct part numbers. I can’t believe that they didn’t at least put roller pickups on the dummy truck. Anyways, you’ll need the Mabuchi motor, the motor mounting screws, the 3-gear gear set, the 2 roller pick-ups, the copper strip that the pick-ups insert into and the copper strip that grounds to the wheel axles. Just so you know, the gears and motor look very similar to those K-Line used in similar locos BUT they ARE different.

Solder your wires to the copper pick up strips before you put them into the truck assembly, sliding the wires into the slit opening first. For you own ease, use the same color wires Lionel used so you can easily link up the ground (and center rail hot) from the first truck with your new powered one. The wires from the motor will be reversed so the motors are running in-synch. So if the wires from your existing motor are blue and yellow, you will connect your new wires the blue with the yellow and the yellow with the blue.

You could check your local hobby shop if you have one, or an electronics shop. I’ve bought bags of colored wire that have shorter pieces (maybe about 8 or 10 feet each) but you get a wide variety of colored wire which comes in mighty handy for such projects.

You can greatly improve the tractive effort by adding some weight to the locos. The self-sticking lead weights that are used for automobile tire balancing work great and are cheaper than those found in a ho

4

If you chose to, you can wire the motors in series instead of parallel.

5

Both of my RS-3s have single motors. In fact, when I was at Charles Ro and looking over the NYC RS-3, I had commented on the single motor and asked why it was such. They checked the catalog and compared with the then in production Alaska RS-3 and nothing was found that said it was dual motored.

All the catalog says about it is that it has a “powerful, maintenance-free motor”.

The ground connection for the motor to the axles is present on both of my RS-3s.

Overall, I would say a very well detailed locomotive, a tad bit interesting in the fact that the RS-3s are larger than my other diesels (ALCOs, GP-7s, and such).

When I find the digital camera, I can post photos of the locos, and the work done to them.

Thanks for the advice,

James

6

I just got the Alaska RS-3 and it is a single motor.

STEVE

7

Done that to several engines. Gives them great slow operation [conventionals and even ones with TMCC that do not have EOB or Odyssey] and yet will still give adequate high speeds. I have found weight to be a great help in giving traction and pulling/pushing power for this type of engine. I use lead weights [fishing or stick on tire weights]. If it has a fuel tank without speaker, I remove it and fill it with lead weights.

8

Chief,

It has been awhile since I pulled apart the NYC RS-3 to reattach the wheel. I think there was a small weight in the fuel tank and the horn speaker inside the body.

Right now I think it has enough weight to produce enough drawbar pull for my layout, I don’t think it is beneficial to have the weight in the center -evenly distributed to the dummy truck and the powered truck.

The main thing I am going after on this one is to even out the power distribution, and to help the engine pull more if needed in the future.

I doubt it will be able to haul as much as my new Lionel Southern 2-8-4. We set it on the main line (O-42 with about 4’ long straightaways on the oval shaped mainline) with all of the Southern freight cars we have. The train ended up being about 3/4" away from the Baby Berk’s pilot, and it had no problem pulling the train.

With the NYC RS-3, I tried running it with a trio of black Lionel 6462 Gondolas, only to have a great deal of slippage to the point where I reduced the train to a pair of them. I did not have to prematurely replace the traction tires.

If, after theupgrade is complete, I will add more weight as needed.

I want to have the NYC RS-3 be able to haul all 3 of the 6462s, and a caboose without slipping.

Since the NYC and Southern RS-3s are treated as twins, the modifications done to one will be duplicated on the other.

Thanks,

James

9

James I read somewhere some time back that if you had a single motor engine to run it with the power truck to the rear as it would give it more pulling power instead of having to pull it self andthe cars it would basicly be pushing it self with the same power it uses to pull its load and it would have more pulling power soposely. also in you have a power and dummy put the dummy in front.

just a thought for you to think about now I’m sure just a alco or having a b unit in front would look weird but for your RS3 it would just be running long nose first which some railroads did.