You need to keep checking. Part of the pickup is touching the motor controls somehow.

I'm guessing there is an interruption of power pickup from the wheels to the brass strips. Something is causing it to hesitate and lose power. Look carefully at the wheels and pickup strips as you slowly twist and turn them. I would be willing to bet either they're losing contact slightly, or something to that effect.

I'm excited!

Quote from: skipgear on November 02, 2014, 01:59:27 AM
It's from the ATSF 4-8-4 Northern. It's pretty unique to those locos. I've seen some people use it as the basis for a kitbash of the long distance PRR tenders.

Skipgear knows what he's talking about.

Add bullfrog snot to the rear driver wheels and change the tender to an all-wheel live tender from Bachmann Spectrum

I was hoping it would be more along the lines of the end of this month.

No one knows when these are going to be available or when they ship to customers who pre-ordered them?

I am ANXIOUSLY waiting for the new N scale 2-8-4 to ship. Anyone know when that will be?

You have to isolate the motor. Run the wires to the tender and hook them up to the decoder.

I thought on the old Spectrum tenders that the tender doesn't come apart. Hmmmmm.

You may want to try cleaning the track and cleaning the wheels of the locomotive. That may help.

Get a Soundtraxx Tsunami TSU 750 in Heavy Steam, install it, and be done with it.

Quote from: Maletrain on September 04, 2014, 12:55:11 PM
OK, so you are using axle bearing pickups instead of axle wipers.  That is what I was not understanding.  Thanks.

Yes, the axle bearing pickups are integrated into the Kato passenger trucks. I drilled a hole on either side of each truck bolster and made enough room for it to pivot and turn.

If you look at the Kato 800063 passenger trucks, you'll see two standard sticky-uppy electrical tabs that would typically go into the floor of the passenger car and wipe again a piece of copper or brass for electrical contact. In my system, instead of wiping against a piece of brass or copper, the electrical wires to the lights or DCC decoder are wired directly to each tab. So each positive wire from a light will be wired to two contacts on left side of passenger car (front and back) and each negative wire will be wired to two contacts on right side of passenger car (front and back). Makes for bulletproof electrical conductivity.

I might have some left over for you. I have been converting my Polar Express passenger cars to more free-wheeling cars using Kato 800063 Silver trucks and couplers. As for electrical pickup,  I drill holes on either side of the truck bolster for the electrical pins from the truck pickups, widen and lengthen them, and then hard-wire the lights to the truck pickups. The result is a very free-wheeling passenger car that does not need a capacitor for flickering lights.