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Model Railroaders Need Advice From Others In The Hobby
Here are four short questions you might want to help fellow railroaders with. Add you comments and feedback below this posting.
Gary asks readers about wiring:
Wiring For DCC
“How do I wire my y turn out? it’s a DCC layout, although I do run some DC right now also.”
Train Motors
Zachary asks readers about train motors:
“Train motors that haven’t been used for along time, do they still work?”
Power Supply
Derik has a question on train power supply for readers:
“I got an marklin train set for free, but the loco is not responding to the power, it only makes an clicking sound and the light comes, nothing more, what can be the problem and what should the voltage be?”
Making Trees
Fred want to hear from anyone with experience making pine trees:
“How do your readers suggest a means of making pine trees?”
3 Responses to Model Railroaders Need Advice From Others In The Hobby
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Hi Zachary and Derik, Sounds like you 2 have a similar problem. Zachary, motors that have not been used for a long time should work, they may need a little cleaning and if they are in a loco, you may have to oil the gears and try to manually turn the gears and give them a little push and run them for a while. Derik do the same, clean the motor and lube or oil the gears and manually rotate them to get them started, or your motor may need to be replaced if it is shorting out. If you have any experience in any kind of electric motors you can remove them and clean the armature and replace the brushes, but do this with some one who has done this before, it can be tedious and frustrating especially on the smaller scales of model RR. Oh by the way it should be 12 volts. The clicking sound could be it is shorting out or it needs a push or what I said before, clean it and or replace the brushes. To get more details and pictures on how to do all of this and more, you may want to invest in Roberts book. Tony P
Agree with what Tony says, in addition Marklin uses a strange type of grease that turns to stone, especially on their Z scale locos. Clean well with alcohol to dissolve the old grease and apply fresh light oil, sewing machine oil works well. Be careful not to over-lubricate.
Old motors will work just fine as long as they are not gummed up with old grease.
An additional note, you didn’t say what scale Marklin locomotive you have. If it’s a Z scale loco, ten volts DC maximum! Anything more you risk burning the motor out.