Learning About Lionel

[PatB]

As noted in the Coarse Scale 0 Gauge thread, my grasshopper mind and kittenlike attention span has resulted in a new interest to go with my dabblings in 2FS, 80s style 00 and "scale" 0.

 

A few years ago I started collecting a few odds and ends of cheap Dublo, to be used in a "one day" outdoor 3-rail project. I like the engineering in Dublo models, but they lack a certain amount of heft, particularly for outdoor use.

 

Then, a couple of months back I discovered (not quite sure how) that there's a massive source of coarse scale, 3-rail 0 equipment at affordable prices on the other side of the Pacific, the only barriers being the need to switch my interests towards North American practice, and the sometimes ludicrous shipping costs and t. Hmm. Interesting.

 

Further investigation showed that, although buying new was still beyond me (and I didn't really find the modern models appealing, for various reasons), and truly rare and collectable pieces remain expensive, run of the mill Postwar and 1970s Lionel equipment can be had quite cheaply, especially if it's a bit scruffy or doesn't run well. A tatty Bo-Bo diesel in an undesirable livery seems to be typically well under AUD$100 equivalent, as are most flavours of 6-coupled steamer. Freight cars, again, if not collectable or pristine seem to be AUD$15 and up. That's an awful lot of bang for the toy train buck. Double hmmmm.

 

Yet more Google detective work indicated that these things are mechanically and electrically very simple, with spares readily available (again with the proviso of shipping costs). Plenty of scope for a technically savvy but impoverished chap to buy cheapies and, with a bit of work, turn them into acceptable garden railway fodder.

 

So, much trawling of Ebay and dealer websites, noting shipping charges and rejecting those sources with the most eyewatering, yielded this, a figure-8 of tinplate track for it to run on round the dining room table and a couple of turnouts to provide a little variety and test its trackholding ability. "This" being a Lionel No 627 GM 44-Tonner (stop laughing at the back, I know it's about twice as long as it should be, presumably to fit an existing chassis) in Lehigh Valley trim.

 

The seller described it as a runner, but rough and noisy. The photos showed it to be complete and largely intact. It was affordable and the shipping wasn't completely stupid. Perfect.

 

After a couple of weeks waiting, the beast arrived. Time for assessment and play :D.

 

[friscopete]

I remember when Gamages store had their super huge Lionel layout  every Christmas .it triggered a life long inteest in US trains .i neve  got near to owning a Lionel set but always fancied on e.Hey ho .it never happned and I settled for some brass instead .Good luck with your Lionel experiment .Often the the "toys' are where the fun is not in the last rivet.

[PatB]

So what did I get? Well, in summary, something that was already a bit of a dinosaur, even in 1956 when it was built. The chassis is a steel sheet stamping, incorporating the end railings, one of which is broken in a couple of spots and needs soldering/brazing back together. This runs on a pair of bogies with heavy, diecast cosmetic sideframes and riveted sheetmetal functional inside frames. The trailing bogie (sorry, truck) carries a pair of spring loaded pickup rollers, which show little wear, suggesting limited use. The powered truck carries a huge, vertical, series wound universal motor, driving a transverse layshaft via a worm, which transmits the power onwards to both axles through spur gears. The top bearing of the armature shaft is housed in the brushplate which forrms the top of the motor. The lower bearing is outboard of the worm and is incorporated in a bakelite moulding riveted between the truck frames. More of this later. One of the power truck axles is also magnetic, to assist traction. Presumably the wheels are cast-iron or similar to provide magnetic continuity. The power truck frames are apparently aluminium so as not to interfere.

 

Electrically, as noted, the motor is a series wound universal to run off Lionel's standard 20V AC. Reversing is taken care of by a clever electromechanical device (the E-Unit) which reverses the current in the field winding wrt the armature coils. The unit cycles through a forward-neutral-reverse-neutral-forward etc. sequence, advancing one step each time track power is cut and reapplied. As I intend to run on DC, I may replace this with a bridge rectifier. E-units command a significant amount of money 2nd hand so this may allow me to reduce costs somewhat. The E-unit can be switched out to set the loco to run in one direction only, without risk of a patch of dirty track causing an inadvertent stop or reverse.

 

The body is a one-piece plastic moulding. Not sure what, but it hasn't warped so presumably not the same stuff as early Rovex/Triang. The detailing is quite nice, but, as befits a toy, it's all moulded in, with no separate parts apart from the bell and horn. The headlamp lenses are transparent and seem shaped to act as light pipes from a bulb within the body, although none is fitted. There is no glazing in the cab windows. The E-unit is mounted in the cab and seems to get quite hot in use so I'm not sure if enclosing it with glazing would be a good idea. Oh, and the thing is about twice as long as it should be. I assume Lionel needed it to fit an existing chassis.

 

The whole beastie has an air of simple solidity and a degree of heft that is rather impressive, especially for a toy. I like it.

[PatB]

Moving on to the condition of this particular example, the body shows a few nicks and scratches, consistent with spending 60+ years out of its box. As noted, the handrail at one end requires repair, but otherwise not bad externally. There are a couple of small cracks, too, where the body retaining screw has been tightened down a bit too hard. No biggie.

 

After checking that nothing was actually seized I tried applying 15V DC from my favoured laptop power brick to the wheels and pickups, via an ammeter. Well, it sort of ran, pulling about 3A and not starting reliably, nor reversing an demand.

 

OK, body off (one screw :D) to expose the motor and E-unit. Applying power again, I could see the end of the armature jumping up and down by what looked like 1/8" (but, realistically, wasn't), there seemed to be a small bonfire under the brushplate and the E-unit was only cycling occasionally and sounded "soggy" rather than the nice crisp click of a healthy solenoid throwing. Everything had a thin coating of genuine North American grime.

 

So, armed with a jar of isopropyl alcohol, a can of contact cleaner and a supply of cotton buds I set to to clean everything in sight. Pickups and wheels were easy (and filthy). Off with the brushplate and lift out the armature (no risk of demagnetising a universal motor, nice :D), giving the commutator face a good scrub with IPA and cleaning out the grooves with the end of a wooden toothpick. Brushes and housings cleaned. The edges of the top bearing looked a bit nibbled. Not sure what's going on there. All the appropriate thrust washers were in place, but the endfloat was quite excessive, so I stuck in an additional brass washer of the right sort of size and thickness. All the gears and bearings got a blast of contact cleaner to get rid of old lubricants, as did the E-unit and the pickup mechanism. Then it all went back together with suitable oils and greases where necessary.

 

Testing again, the E-unit cycled much more crisply and it ran much better and more smoothly, with much less sparking from the brushes, when it ran. It still would refuse to start in one direction or the other maybe one time in three or four. A finger poke to the armature or a rapid forward-reverse-forward cycle would generally persuade it to unstick, but clearly something was still wrong.

 

A trawl of the internet took me to the Classic Toy Trains forum where I found a similar query to mine. The consensus was that such symptoms could be caused by the bakelite moulding housing the lower armature bearing coming loose between the truck frames. Sure enough, when I checked, I could visibly wiggle this moulding around. The proper cure is to strip down the truck and tighten up all the rivets holding it together. The lazy bodger's method is to clean as well as possible between the bakelite and the ally frames and then run some thin superglue into the joint. Guess which I did ;). And it worked. Testing again showed reliable reversing, and the visible top end of the armature didn't bounce half as much.

 

After a little fiddling with brush spring tension I found that, running on blocks, the current consumption had come down to sane levels and it was smooth and quiet. Powerful too, given the vigour with which it trapped my fingertip when I carelessly placed it between armature pole and static pole piece. Ow.

[PatB]

While I'd been fiddling about with the loco, the second package containing a figure-8 of 0-27 tinplate track had turned up, so it was essential that I stick it together on the table, place the loco on it and apply some volts.

 

It worked!

 

Powered by my trusty power brick, Lehigh Valley No 627 trundled around the circuit under its own power for the first time in, I suspect, quite a while. On the 5V setting she trundled around steadily and smoothly, quiet enough that the main noise was the wheels and pickup rollers clickety-clacking over rail joints and the 90 degree crossing in a most satisfying manner. On anything above 9V it was sufficiently fast that I was concerned centrifugal force would overcome the enormous flanges and result in a trip to the floor.

 

I've currently no stock to test haulage power, but a quick hand test gives me no cause for concern. If it proves inadequate there's plenty of room in the body for some lead around the power truck.

 

I like this loco.

[PatB]

So what's next?

 

I've got a cheapo Ebay PWM module and the necessary bits to turn it into a practical controller on the slow boat from China at the moment so I'll be able to avoid doing speed control by twiddling the voltage setting screw on the power brick. As noted, I intend to run on DC. I understand this will mean i can't have working Lionel horns or whistles, or those operating accessories which rely on AC to create vibration, but I can live with that as those aren't the aspects of these models toys which appeal to me.

 

I need some stock and have an eye on a dealer with sensible prices and shipping. I just need to save up enough to buy sufficient varied freight cars to stock a 3-2-2 Inglenook for the time being. More can follow in time.

 

More track and turnouts would be good, so I can put together a variety of interesting temporary layouts. Again, it seems to be a case of keeping an eye open for large bulk lots from sellers who won't gouge on shipping. I'm not intending to go daft because this is strictly an interim measure before that "one day" garden project happens, at which point I'll be handing over a goodly proportion of my life savings to Gargraves for their wooden sleepered stainless 3-rail flexi.

 

I am, however, rather fascinated by the potential prospect of building all those layouts in early editions of 60 Plans for Small Railways, which required r-t-r 15" radius points, in 0-27, in the same space as the already tiny 00 rendering :D.

[BR60103]

Pat:  I never had one of those locos. If it has a horn, it may be aided by a small (large?) C or D cell battery. These frequently leaked in storage. Since you don't mention it, I assume there isn't one. The horn/whistle was activated by a bit of DC imposed on the AC power. Running the unit on DC causes the horn to blow continually. I don't understand how the relay works.

I think the chassis was developed for a GP7.

And O27 was 27" diameter measured over the outside of the ties (sleepers) so the radius for planning purposes is more like 12".

One of my Lionel transformers from that era says "3-17 Volts". I think the other one gave 16 or 18.

 

And 50 years ago I visited Gargraves in their basement. I suspect it's different people now.

 

[PatB]

Thanks for the info. The 44 Tonner is quite basic, with no sound effects or lights. Tha lack of horn or whistle ability on DC will only become relevant as and when I acquire more locos. I believe that on the horn equipped diesels the horn was powered by the dry cell but triggered by the burst of DC via the track. I certainly noticed that, where a seller wished to emphasise how well a diesel had been preserved they showed the pristine battery compartment in detail. 

 

0-27 is indeed a tiny, tiny radius, even by 00 standards. Funnily enough, though, in context I don't find that it looks as jarringly daft as I thought it would. These are, when all is said and done, toys after all. I do rather like the elastic ruler that Lionel's designers must have used to make everything work in such confined spaces.