I'm having trouble with the Casey Jones steam engine. It stops and goes at all speeds and sometimes it stops dead on the track until I push it a little. I've have taken off the wheels and oiled it but that did not help. All I can take apart is the wheels, not the top of the engine to see if something is dirty inside. Yes I've cleaned the track.
The other engine works just fine but it is too small to pull very much.
Any suggestions?
Katie
I use automotive carburator cleaner on the track. You could have transformer trouble like i did, some time ago. Diode shorted out. Long distance diagnosis is, at best, difficult. If the engine is very old, or much used in the past, the motor brushes could be worn down.
Your wheels might be out of quarter. When you removed them and oiled them, you may have put one in rotated a bit. The driving rods may be slightly off causing the locomotive to jerk along and sometimes completely stop.
It could be your transformer or type of outlet your useing. You might need to check the engine on that steamer. My life like engine has those problems, but life like isn't the best anyway. It turned out to be the rail. The jointer was jerked in a fashion to were only parts of the electrical pulses got through. Check you engine and track. :)
If you really have a "Casey Jones" engine numbered 382, then it's actually a 4-6-0. It's also an ancient Rivarossi or AHM engine with a VERY bad three pole "pancake" motor.
If so, you're pretty much out of luck. These engines never ran very well when they were first released in the mid-1960s, and by today's standards they're horrible.
The engine CAN be completely disassembled. I don't have one handy, but IIRC, they don't come apart easily. Start looking for screws and clips to free up.
Once the engine's disassembled, about the only thing you can do is to make sure that nothing's rusted inside (oh yes; RUST was a major problem with Rivarossis...), give it a good cleaning with rubbing alcohol, LIGHTLY lubricate the moving parts with LaBelle 103 oil (NOT 3-in-one oil or WD-40!), making sure to get NO iol inside the motor itself, and start test running it until everything works as freely as can be expected with this model...which isn't very.