I have two 2-4-4-2's running on my layout.
First one and now the second one had power pickup problems.
It seemes like the two pickup wires, black and red, on the front bogie are to tight.
They go trough two holes on top of the front gearbox and then go down to the two bronze pickups.
On both two locomotives one of the wires just broke off near the pickups.
That means that i had to disassemble the locomotive and the front bogie to get to the soldering points.
I resoldered the wire and after reassembling the bogie i gave the wires some slack. through the holes.
Let's hope it will solve the problem.
Ton
Have these locos had much running?
Also do they run round sharp curves at all?
Yes and yes , very sharp corners 37.5cm.
My 2-6-6-2's also manage these extreme radii and have, after some mods, no problems at all.
But no problems with wires breaking off, yet.
The buildup of both types are the same.
Ton
I was wondering if the wiring problem was due to the movement due to curves,
We had problems with Hornby Brigton Belle 5 car units, where the wiring on the power bogie came adrift at the soldered joints, which we identified as being caused by the bogie turning and putting a strain on the joint in the turn!
Problem eliminated by re wirng with longer cables which provided some additional 'slack'
I just had a problem with a 2-4-4-2 where the front engine would hardly swing at all. It would move a bit then something was making the side on the inside of the curve rise up.
I had read somewhere that the steam pipe from the boiler to the front truck caused some 2-6-6-2s to derail but even after this was removed the problem still occured.
The pickup wires were not causing it so I took off the drawbar that connects the rear of the front truck to the front of the main chassis.
The problem was that the rear end of this drawbar is square and this was limiting its swing around the rear screw. So I took a file and rounded off the edges - now fixed !
Yes , you can remove the steampipe.
What i did was remove the pipe, snipped off the connection to the boiler and glued it inside the recess of the front truck.
So you still see the steampipe but it moves freely.
I also removed the top bolts of the front leaf springs.
Ton