Non DCC N & W J-Class Locomotive

[noblepa]

I just acquired this locomotive. It is in beautiful shape. Unfortunately, it doesn't run.

I was able to get it apart and remove the motor. See the attached pictures.

Before I removed the motor from the frame, there was electrical contiunuity between the drivers on the right and left side of the locomotive. After I removed the motor, there was none.

In the photo of the motor itself, you can see the two electrical contacts near the motor shaft. There are wires leading down to the corners at 4 o'clock and 8 o'clock. When I applied 12 volts to these contacts, the motor spins freely and at what seems to be a normal speed.

What I can't figure out is the proper electrical path from the rails to the motor.

The frame appears to be two halves that are electrically isolated from each other. It appears that the 12v comes fromt the driver on one side, up the frame on that side, through the motor, down the frame on the other side to the driver on that side.

Looking down into the motor mount location (last picture), I can't see how the current gets from one side to the other. Both contacts on the motor are on right side of the engine, meaning that they appear to both contact that half of the frame. That's what has me confused.

Does anyone here have any experience with this locomotive?

The Bachmann website has exploded diagrams of the current DDC equipped or DCC ready versions of this loco, but that setup is considerably different. It has a more conventional worm gear on a can motor that mates to a gear on one of the second driver axle. In this setup, the motor shaft runs parallel to the rails.

Mine has a small motor with a shaft the is perpendicular to the rails. There is no worm gear, just a small gear that mates to a large gear on the rear driver axle. Its actually a neat arrangement. There is no discrete wiring in the conventional sense. Everthing is done by the electrically isolated frame halves.

Any ideas?

I have not tried putting it all back together, so maybe the gears were just jammed and I fixed the problem by removing the motor and that just reassembling it will solve the problem.

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