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Problem with Old Athearn SW7 Loco
Lonny asks readers:
“I have an HO Athearn SW7 loco I was given. It had been in storage a very long time. When I tried to run it first time it just sat there and the light barely came on an wouldn’t move. I found a site that showed me how to disassemble it. I cleaned all the electrical and disassembled the trucks and cleaned out the old hard grease. I put it back together EXCEPT for the worm gear on each truck. I sat it on the track and the motor spun just fine, the light was nice and bright. I put the worn gears back on and tried again but it barely moved. So the problem is in the trucks, but what it is I can’t figure out. There is no grease in the trucks yet because I wanted to ensure it worked before I greased and oiled it. During reassembly I kept checking that everything moved/rotated and it did. Any insight on how to fix this will be greatly appreciated.”
5 Responses to Problem with Old Athearn SW7 Loco
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Please give the link to the site so we can see what the mechanism looks like !
(There are slightly different methods of gearing.)
I had a similar problem, and it was alignment goof on my part. I found it by moving the geartrain and saw that the finial worm gear was misaligned. (use a “glas” to check) and good luck.
Check to see if any of the gears are cracked. Since it was sitting for so long this could cause binding. I have had it happen to me on a Proto 2000. Just a thought.
From how you described it my guess would be the drive wheels are slipping on the gears on the axles. A common problem with both Athearn and later Proto 2000 drives. Really it is an easy fix, but you will need to replace most likly all four of the drive wheel and gear assemblies. Hope this helps!
The tank farm in the picture above bad no roads going to the tanks that oil product does not come and leave by train and also this type of tanks don’t feed or receive by pipeline also the tanks would require a type of dam surrounding the tanks to contain spills