Electric motor problem

[Monkeyleg]

I have an American Flyer 293 that I got for Christmas in 1955. I haven't run it in probably 30 years. I came across it in the closet over the weekend and decided to set it up.

The motor on the locomotive hummed, but the wheels didn't turn. Not surprising. I took it apart, cleaned the brushes and commutator, and put some oil on the axles, armature worm gear shaft, and on the brush end of the armature shaft. It ran like a top.

Tonight I was going through the bag of extra parts, and came across the reverse control, a complexly designed relay that goes inside the coal car. I must have taken it out of the system way back when I had no tools. I cleaned the drum and fingers, removed solder and, with the help of a wiring diagram, put the control back into the wiring loop.

I applied power to the contacts, but just got a clicking from the reverse control. I checked my wiring again against the diagram, then took the control out of the loop. I had the power from the contacts going to the brushes and the two connections at the magnet assembly. The armature would start to turn when I applied power, but wouldn't move more than a fraction of an inch. I tried reversing wires on the magnet assembly. I checked the wires. I took the brushes and armature out again, cleaned and lubricated, and tried again.

The armature turns freely by hand, and turns the wheels easily. If I put power just to the magnet, I get a clicking, and the armature is drawn up to the brushes. I'm wondering if the windings in the armature may have gone bad from me fiddling with this.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what to look for?

Thanks much for any replies.

[230RN]

^"with the help of a wiring diagram"

Need it, if you can attach it.

[RoadKingLarry]

And pictures of the model train.

[charby]

And pictures of the model train.

I have the same train. I bought it cheap because it didn't run, its on my to do list projects.



http://www.rfgco.com/wiringdiagrams.html
Click on 282-293 Pacific

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

Jealous now

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

[230RN]

Dug this screen shot up from
http://www.rfgco.com/wiring.html
But it makes no sense to me.  Diagram seems to presume you have the engine in your hands, so you can say, "Oh yes, this is the motor," and "Oh, there's the track pickup" on the diagram.

Sorry, can't help at this point.  Might be better diagrams out there, but no time to do deep research on this one.

Attachment has been reduced by 50% because of attachment size limitations.

Terry

[Monkeyleg]

The wiring diagram makes it too complicated with the reverse unit in the mix. It's a very simple design. Voltage from the positive rail of the track goes to one of the brushes, and to one of the poles on the magnet that surrounds the armature. The other pole on the magnet and the other brush connect to the other rail on the track. The commutator is a disc divided into three sections so the brushes can only contact two at a time, reversing polarity each time they move to the next pair.

There's not much that can be wrong, as I see it. I could have developed a short or a broken wire in the windings. Or the wires to the magnet aren't sending voltage to one side.

Someone on a model train forum said it sounded like a voltage issue. The transformer is shot, so I used a DC wall converter that delivered 12 volts at 1.25 amps. That was more than enough  to get the thing chugging over the weekend.

[Ron]

I have that same train in a box with all the other stuff, tracks, cars etc up in a closet. haven't even looked at it for probably a decade.

[Monkeyleg]

Interesting. Popular train. That explains why they're so cheap on Ebay.

The smoke generator still works on mine. Still makes the chugging sound, too. I don't know what happened to all of the cars. I suspect my nephews trashed those along with my Strombecker slot car set after I moved out of my folks' house.

[Monkeyleg]

Well, I feel like an idiot. I checked the armature windings for shorts or breaks or leaks to ground, and checked the magnet. Everything fine. I  couldn't figure it out. Then I looked at the AC/DC converter I was using. I grabbed the wrong one. It was 12V 1.2 amps instead of the 18 volts 4.5 amp power supply I used before. When I hooked up the higher voltage supply, everything worked great.

I hooked up the reverse switch again, but it doesn't work. I'd already cleaned it and checked the fingers, so there must be something else.

[never_retreat]

Those old trains can draw some serious amps, might need to get something with more power.
I'm assuming this is a DC train but some of the older stuff is AC.

[Monkeyleg]

never_retreat, there were other models at the time that were AC, but the 293 was DC.

4.5 amps seems like a lot. I don't have a transformer, so I don't know how it would do on tracks. Actually, I don't have any working tracks or cars, either.