New guy and completely lost.

[Chuck N]

In your first post you mentioned that you were an HO guy.  Do you have an HO power supply that you can hook up to your track?  At 12 volts the engine should move, slowly, and the headlight should come on.

You could also turn the engine over and touch the wheels with power leads from the power supply and see what happens.  That should tell you if you have a problem with the engine or not.

I use an old HO power supply on my work bench to test engines when I'm working on them.  They don't put out enough volts for running on the layout, but they are great for testing.

Chuck

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Just for giggles, swap the wires going to the track and see what happens.  I had to connect the red (hot?) wire to the engineer side of the track to get things moving.

I think the blurb "delivers full voltage to the locomotive, even at slow speeds" doesn't seem correct, at least for my TE system (there's no part of my TE system inside my loco to act as a receiver), not sure about the set you have, but I know some TE sets had receivers that went into the loco.  My laptop transformer/power supply puts max volts to the TE receiver and through PWC sends signals/voltage to the track to "smoothly" run the engine.

Bob D.

[Chuck N]

I am probably wrong, but I think that PWC does put full voltage on the track.  But the controller determined an on off cycle.  At slow speeds there is more off than on.  As the throttle is increased, the off becomes less and the on becomes more.   The frequency is still fast enough such that we can't see it.

That's my guess.  That may be why some sound systems don't like it.

Chuck

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Chuck,

You may be right, never really looked into it other than to measure the voltage on the track once, but I did see an increase/decrease in track voltage so I just "assumed" the voltage was varying.  I'll check again now that I'm curious 

What you suggested about using an HO transformer is a good idea, that'll eliminate any question about power getting to the track.

Bob D.

[Chuck N]

Bob I just googled PWC and came up with this.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/294E67623752656686256DB800508989

Chuck

[Wade Colyer]

Hi Again,

Here's more info.

http://www.girr.org/girr/tips/tips1/te_programming.html#versions

Wade

[Loco Bill Canelos]

Jim,

If you try the locomotive with your HO Power pack and the locomotive runs OK, then the simple solution is to get an original dc power supply like the one that came with the set, or a cheap MRC DC power pack and just hook it to the track and run. Just dump the Train Engineer or sell it on Ebay and quit messing with it.  My MRC power pack from my HO days runs the Bachmann Large Scale 4-6-0 just fine.   Check the AMPs on your HO supply if it is one AMP or higher it will be fine for your simple around the room layout. 

Don't get to frustrated.  The key is testing the loco with something different than the TE, if the loco runs OK, you will know the problem is the TE.

Hang in there,

Bill

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Thanks Chuck!  All I can remember from my days in electronics was 0 and 1 

Looking at the link Wade provided I have the 10 amp TE handheld unit (1st handheld shown) and the receiver that's the 2nd one shown (the one with the auto type fuse).

I would go with Bill's suggestion and try a HO dc power pack and go from there.  My TE set has worked fine since I bought it but it's got to be 20+ years old now.  I did have to repait one of the battery connections that broke inside the handheld but all is fine (DO NOT leave batteries in these things!!!).

Bob D.

[grumpyjim]

Wade great web site for TRAIN ENGINEER. Thanks.

My BASIC TRAIN ENGINEER currently works as follows:

PUSH FAST: output of 20.6 DCV
PUSH and HOLD SLOW: no indication on voltmeter, then after a few seconds shows 0 DCV.
PUSH either direction ARROW: polarity changes, shows + or - 20.6 DCV.
PUSH EMERGENCY STOP: shuts off voltage immediately.

ERGO: 20.6 DCV constant sent to track. SLOW seems to have issues.

This I call my issue #1.

[grumpyjim]

ISSUE #2

Locomotive does not run when 20.6 DCV applied directly to any set of pickup wheels (left and right sides).

Continuity is present through motor when applied directly to motor.

All locomotive wires seem to be connected.

Looking more and more as a static display.

[grumpyjim]

ISSUE #2

Looks like I failed to perform a crucial test. Put 20.6 DCV directly to motor. Will advise.