One of my Minitrix locos, the G3/4H (Trix 12245), has been a real disaster. Refusing to run except for some short surges and a small jump every now and then. I am not very amused by hardware problems, and soldering is not one of my favorite pursuits. But last Monday evening I decided to try to fix it. It is a nice looking loco and it is a shame just to let it collect dust.
After several tests I found two problems. The first was the NEM contact for installing a decoder. No matter how I tried I could not get the all of the jumpers of the decoder to make contact. So finally I gave up and decided to solder the decoder directly to the PCB instead of using the NEM contact. And to my great surprise I succeeded. It suddenly worked very well on my straight test track.
But when I tried the loco on my layout the problems partly returned. But now only when running through bends and when going up or down hill. The second problem was that in every bend the tender lifted the loco enough for it to lose contact with the track resulting in a sudden stop. The plastic stripe connecting the tender with the loco was to short and to stiff. By cutting it into two and gluing it together again with a short and softer extension the problem was solved.
Of course it looked better when the coupling was shorter but now the loco runs well and I am a happier man :-).
After several tests I found two problems. The first was the NEM contact for installing a decoder. No matter how I tried I could not get the all of the jumpers of the decoder to make contact. So finally I gave up and decided to solder the decoder directly to the PCB instead of using the NEM contact. And to my great surprise I succeeded. It suddenly worked very well on my straight test track.
But when I tried the loco on my layout the problems partly returned. But now only when running through bends and when going up or down hill. The second problem was that in every bend the tender lifted the loco enough for it to lose contact with the track resulting in a sudden stop. The plastic stripe connecting the tender with the loco was to short and to stiff. By cutting it into two and gluing it together again with a short and softer extension the problem was solved.
Of course it looked better when the coupling was shorter but now the loco runs well and I am a happier man :-).
1 Comments:
Oh...this post is painful for me to read. I hate these kind of problems. I have heard of a lot of these issues with the Minitrix NEM651 boards....annoying!
I have a steam locomotive which has given me similar running problems, but its a Fleischmann BR 64. Its hard-wired digital from the factory, so its not a connection problem, and as its a tank loco, there's no issue with the tender like you had. I have to commit to spend some time looking at in more detail like you did to see if I can get it to run.
I do agree with you, such a beautiful engine, congratulations on getting it running!
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