Thought I was doing well in cramming everything into the tiny tender on the Mogul I am doing for a friend. It all works but no reverse! I have not altered the engine am using the original board, it runs fine forward headlight works fine but when I try to reverse it nothing happens. I used the four wire plug to the engine after identifying the wires that powered the motor and left the other two disconnected. Any idea what I may have done wrong? Never had this issue before.

Would guess you possibly damaged the output transistors. Be sure there is nothing between the motor and the revolution except 2 wires.

Greg

You were right Greg once I bypassed the Bachmann board and went direct to the motor everything was fine. Rarely have any problems with the Revolution receivors or Bachmann engines for that matter but this is my first Industrial Mogul also probably an older one.

I have found a number of bizarre wiring issues in Bachmann (and other brands).

The issue is that often the loco works on DC, but when converted to use a decoder, and the motor is (or you think is) separated from the track pickups, it is not really.

Found a consolidation that had a hidden connection between one motor lead and a track pickup, and it was hidden deep inside the boiler… when they “test” these locos, they are only tested in a DC configuration, and having an extra connection between the motor and track pickup is common.

Polarity is also often an issue… in a DC loco, if it runs backwards, you can swap the motor leads OR the track pickups anywhere from the wheels to the physical motor.

But for a decoder, you want to know the right and left rails properly and the motor polarity.

Greg

Its like the Aristo FA’s with the wires soldered incorrectly first one I did had me scratching my head until someone mentioned the problem wiring. Figure I can mess things up well enough on my own! Tend to rip everything out and start from scratch far easier.