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Polarity tenderness

Harlequin

Entry posted by Harlequin

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I am trying to make one working loco and tender from a pair of secondhand Hornby purchases, Tintagel Castle and Beverston Castle.

 

A previous owner of Tintagel has removed all the pickup wipers from the tender. (If it was you please say Hi because I'd love to know why). It runs haltingly over track where a little Barclay 0-4-0 has no problem.

 

Beverston was sold as a non-runner but its tender has a full complement of pickup wipers. Thus, the Beverston tender matched with Tintagel loco should produce a working Castle loco (with some small livery tweaks).

 

When I paired them up and placed them on the programming track the DCC programmer reported shorts. After trying a few tests I placed the combination on an isolated, unpowered section of track and put a multimeter across the rails. Dead short!

 

So, the left hand wheels of the loco are connected to the right hand wheels of the tender by the connector plug! (And vice-versa, of course.)

 

Did the previous owners fiddle with the wiring? Is that why Beverston was a "non-runner"? (I tested the motor and I know that works fine). Or do Hornby chop and change the wiring of the loco-tender connection between products?

 

The upshot for me is that I've now got to do some very fiddly soldering...

 

P.S. I hate those tiny plugs under the tenders - so fiddly and so much potential for damage while you've got the loco upside down.

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Harlequin
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I checked and double-checked that there really was a polarity crossover between loco and tender then, feeling like a bomb-disposal expert, I cut the red and black wires in the tender between DCC header and loco connection plug.

 

Stripped them and soldered red to black and black to red, slid heatshrink sleeves around the joins, pushed everything back into place and plugged in a new decoder.

 

Success! Tintagel Castle runs smooth and slow. I can't give it a proper run-out yet because I'm waiting for some track glue to set after my cat ripped up another section...

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