I want to put track pickups on the tender of my LGB Chrismtas tender. The wheels are smaller than the LGB track pickup wheels. Are there any that might fit?
Tim,
Are these for powering car lights or to assist the locomotive?
Yes, there are some small Gary Raymonds that fit.
There are some 0-4-0 LGB’s, (The Porter comes to mind) that have to be modified to receive power from the accessory plug if you plan on assisting the loco with pick-up.) I had to do that to my two Porters.
TOG
Both. I would like to power the lights and assist the locomotive. This is the LGB Christmas set I am referring to
Do the smaller Gary Raymond wheels you refer to have track pickups? There is a connection from the Loco to the tender already. Is it possible to just connect up to that with track pickup wheels?
Tim,
The smallest wheels GR made that supported electrical pick-up were 1.083 in dia.
These are not made anymore, and anyway, too big for your application.
I don’t have any other suggestions, except brushes. And I know you don’t want the “drag” of brushes.
I would use the standard electrical pickup on the cars and forget powering the loco from the tender.
Another alternative is to power from the first car, thru the tender.
jb
Yeah…that’s what I am thinking now. I purchased some of the LGB lights. There is a plug in the back of the tender that they can plug into.
Tim,
I fitted standard wheelsets and carbon brush pickups to the tender. I used the Aristocraft loco/tender disconnect cable (generally used for battery power connection on a battery powered setup). I also add carbon brush pickups to the loco pilot wheelset as well, giving all wheel pickup on the loco and four wheel pickup on the tender. You could pay out big bucks and put the LGB ball-bearing pickups on the tender if drag is a concern.
Once, a long time ago I utilised the standard cable connection for power transfer. This was on a sound-equipped loco. About 45 minutes later the sound board gave up the ghost and lost all its smoke. Whether this is a coincidence or not I do not know. I prefer to run a disconnect cable direct to the power collector pickups in the chassis. The Christmas loco is quite powerful and the additional drag of the carbon brush pickups is hardly enough to have concern. From memory the tender trucks required slight modification to fit larger diameter wheelsets (shaving the shoulder on the axle end mount bush in the truck sideframes. My 2-4-0's have at least 10 wheels of power pickup and are generally unstoppable through switch frogs at even a snail's pace. On others I connect the Aristo slopeback tender. This then enables 14 powered wheel pickups.
By adding an aftermarket power connect cable between the loco and tender you could dispense with the clumsy standard LGB connect cable and have a simple two wire polarised disconnect cable. Inside the tender solder the new tender wheel pickups to the tender through-power connection on the rear wall of the tender shell. This will then enable power to power lights on the coaches as well as supplementing power pickup to the loco.