This must be a mistake. For sale on Ebay is a new MTH Rail King 1 Gauge Dash 8-40BW Diesel Locomotive Amtrak # 519 w/ Protosound 2.0.
Starting price was US $0.99, Current Bid is US $33.89
Why would the seller have such a low starting price? What if the bids go no higher? Would he have to sell it at such a low bid, or would Ebay let him remove it and refuse to sell it?
Here's something that you've probably never seen. For sale on Ebay is a Märklin 16075 Gauge One Rail Zeppelin!
Supposedly it is new and unopened. But I'm a little suspicious of its condition because of the lack of good photographs. Go to Ebay and scroll down for description.
Here's something a little different. These are propeller driven locomotives I designed using model airplane motors, push propellers, flatcars, and Gary Raymond dual ball bearing low friction wheels. These run on conventional dc track power and they are the fastest locomotives I own. The dual ball bearing wheels are important especially to get them moving from a dead stop. Once they start moving, I must be careful not to give them too much power or they can travel too fast and derail on tight curves. When going down a hill or when approaching a tight curve, I reverse the current and the propeller spins in reverse and acts like a break to slow the vehicle down. I modeled them loosely upon an old 1909 photograph of the prototype's proud inventor. When I run them, I disable the remote's momentum control so I have faster acceleration and deceleration response when needed. When going downhill, they actually act more like roller coasters. It is a completely different experience running these since they respond so differently from wheel driven engines. It takes a bit of practice, but it's easy once you get the hang of it. The small one only cost me about 30 dollars to make.
I would paint the sides of the rails with flat dark brown rust colored enamel and would hand lay the rails with miniature spikes on distressed real wood ties stained with dark walnut stain.
I just inspected the condition of the plastic on the rear slave A unit of my Santa Fe F-3 AA set (70-2013-1). I see no hairline fractures or cracks as I saw on the main front A unit. This seems like strong evidence that the plastic fatigue is a result of a bad batch of plastic used in the front A unit and is not age or environment related as both units are the same age and have been stored in the same places.
I desperately want to have at least one fully functional F-3 to pull my train. That said, it occurs to me that I might be able to remove the good frame from the rear slave unit and use it on the front A unit. The frames seem to be the same design. Would this be possible?
I'd also like to replace the front A unit's broken Protosound 2.0 board with a new 3.0. Is this a difficult upgrade or simply an easy matter of unplugging all the 2.0 board connections and plugging them into a new 3.0 board?
What all would I need to buy from Ray? Would it be the Protosound 3.0 Upgrate Kit (Diesel) 50-1912?
Thanks for any help with this. I've never done an upgrade before and I'd like to learn how.
John
p.s. If Ray is successful in getting a new frame from MTH, I can put it back in the rear slave unit. But lord only knows how long that will take and if they even have one!
I've always wondered why MTH has never produced a one gauge locomotive from the mid to late 1800's - like a wood burning 4-4-0 American or a 2-6-0. Could this be because the protosmoke generator wouldn't fit in the boiler of these smaller locos? They do make these locos in O gauge however so couldn't they make one in one gauge?
As long as we are all dreaming of our favorite locos that we'd like to see made by MTH, I would love to see the Jupiter 4-4-0 with the blue paint job, or how about a very old historic loco from the early 1800's like the Stevenson Rocket, Adler or DeWitt Clinton. Nobody makes electric powered versions of these for large scale!
Joe- I will gladly sell you the F-3 with the broken frame at a very reasonable price if Ray can't get a replacement frame from MTH. It might take a while, but I'll keep you in mind...
Thank all of you for answering. Here are my comments and answers.
Blid: Seems that you and Ray are the only ones who have seen this. Enginear Joe, although he has many old MTH has never seen it. This seems to point to a bad batch of plastic or environmental factors. Although I'm not a chemist, I know that rubber will disintegrate and become hard and very brittle in dry climates like Arizona. Once I bought a box of rubber bands and after just a year they were all hard and unusable. Maybe plastic behaves like rubber in dry climates?
Enginear Joe: Scratch building the remains into something useable has crossed my mind to salvage the workable parts. The motors and smoke generator work perfectly. It'd be a shame to throw them away.
Jerry B44: Yea, I thought about repairing it with brass reinforcements, but it might be useless and short-lived as the plastic rot will surely continue rotting the rest of the frame. Oddly, all the plastic rot has been on the frame and not on the body shell. Different plastics maybe?
Rayman4449: I bought it on Ebay and unfortunately can't remember where it came from. It's very good news that you haven't seem this on any of your steamers. I'd hate for this to happen to my beautiful Triplex someday. You hinted that F-3 replacement frames might be available. Is that true??? If so, please let me know.
Three years ago I bought a used Santa Fe F-3 Diesel 70-2013-1 made in 2005 or 2007. Since I've owned it, many plastic parts have developed hairline fractures and then broken off. Most of them I could repair by gluing. At first, it was the small parts like stairs. Then those plastic pillars that screws screw into began falling off. Then the cowcatcher. It got to the point where I could only screw in half of the screws that hold the body shell to the frame. Today though was worse. I had to remove the body shell to get to a broken protosound unit that I was going to send to Ray for testing. As I gently removed the body shell, the frame cracked completely in two and the front truck fell off! This engine has never been mistreated while I owned it. I always keep it inside while not in use. It's almost as if the plastic has some sort of plastic cancer. Who knows what the previous owner did to it, if anything.
Here's my question. Do you guys think this is from some sort of mistreatment (outside storage damage from sun or temperature), old age, or is this just the nature of the plastic used?
If it is caused from old age, then I'd imagine that everybody who has an old MTH locomotive would see the same plastic rot on their old locomotives. Have any of you seen this on your old (circa 2005 or 2007) MTH locos?
There's a great country song called "Burlington Zypher" by - Rick Cunha and Marty Cooper that's in my collection of train songs. You can find it on a CD called Treasury of American Railroad Songs, Vol. 1.
Bidding starts at $900.00 Sounds like a real good buy with all the upgrades. Wish I could afford it myself!
I don't know the seller or who did all the upgrades. But the type of upgrades done to it certainly seem like those done by Ray or somebody else on this forum.
One of the things I like about Ray Manley is his curiosity, analytical mind, and perseverance of the truth when it comes to solving problems. I must apologize if I jumped too quickly to the conclusion that PWM power caused my TIU capacitor to explode. As Ray pointed out, it could have been a defective capacitor or something else. We just don't have conclusive evidence. So I think we should follow his advice to follow MTH's advice (to not use PWM) but to not be fearful. But we still need to be cautious!
Thank you Ray for your detailed and thoughtful analysis.
As far as Kevin Strong's observation that Crest Train Engineer with PWC (same as PWM) caused erratic behavior from the loco's Protosound board, and his solution of using a PWC filter, I found out that Crest also sells as an accessory a PWC filter for 29 dollars. Obviously, Crest has seen problems from their PWC output and offers this accessory as a solution. Although Mr. Strong does not say, I bet this is the PWC filter he used:
But I'd be hesitant to use the Crest PWC filter with other brands of PWC controllers such as Railboss 4 since my electronic knowledge is limited in things like this. For the time being, I will continue using my DPDT switch solution which is working well.
One more comment on the two solutions (mine and Mr. Strong's). With my solution of separating the TIU from the PWM controller using a DPDT switch, I can't run an MTH loco using DCS at the same time as a non-MTH loco since I'd have no throttle control over the non-MTH one. But using Strong's PWM filter solution will allow him to run two locos at the same time and still have throttle control over the non-MTH loco. Of course, he would not be able to run the non-MTH loco in reverse while running the MTH loco simultaneously because the reversed polarity of the Train Engineer would prevent the TIU from functioning.
p.s. Kevin Strong's solution was to "put a filter on the output of the controller to turn the PWM voltage to a flat, linear voltage." After he did that he said "normal DC operation was smooth and reliable"
Yes, of course, Bridgewerks works great since it is linear, filtered and regulated. But I think it is important to get the word out about the problems of using PWM power since there are huge numbers of railroaders who use these popular relatively inexpensive PWM controllers, and they may purchase an MTH engine for their traditional analog DC, unaware that their controllers are harmful. Since I too was unaware of this problem, my TIU blew up and I could have damaged my Triplex soundboard. To solve my problem I either had to buy an expensive new Bridgewerks controller and Bridgewerks remote, or try something else.
The inexpensive solution I came up with was to separate my PWM controller from my TIU using a DPDT switch, powering both of them with the same linear regulated power source. This way I have a choice of controllers. For my non-MTH locos I use my Railboss4 (PWM) controller; but when I run my MTH locos, I flip the switch and use the TIU.
The new Garden Railways Magazine (April 1016) features a favorable review by Kevin Strong of the recently available MTH F-7 AA unit with Protosound 3.0 and DCC compatibility.
Unlike most of us on this forum, Mr. Strong does not use a MTH DCS controller. Instead, he tested it using a DCC controller (an MCR Prodiigy Advance2). And, of particular interest to me, he also tested it with traditional analog DC using an Aristocraft (Crest) Train Engineer controller with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), not Linear.
He loved how it worked using his MCR DCC controller saying that he could activate many important functions that we can do on our MTH DCS controllers.
But he said problems occured from the Train Engineer's Pulse Width Mopdulation (PWM) when he tried using analog DC. With PWM, his F-7 responded in erratic and strange ways. Like Mr. Strong, I also have observed this using Railboss 4 which also has PWM. Not only did my MTH locos act in strange ways, Ray and I believed that PWM current also caused a 50 v capacitor to blow up in my TIU unit a few weeks ago. There was a big explosion- like a firecracker! Thank goodness Ray was able to fix it. Reading Mr. Strong's similar experience, I now feel almost certain that PWM current negatively affects both the Protosound board in the locos and can actually damage the TIU.
Moral of the story:Don't use an MTH engine or power a TIU unit with PWM power!
That's a relief to know that smoke fluid overflow does not cause any serious problems other than internal cosmetic ones. But I was surprised to hear that so many MTH owners don't use their protosmoke units since their engines have just about the best smoke units in the industry. Almost nobody but me in our local club uses smoke either, which is understandable since none of them own MTH engines.
With all the repair work you have done Ray, which do you see more of- burnt out smoke generators from lack of fluid, or oily messes inside the engines from smoke oil overflows?
As for smoke oil overflows, what sort of engine damage can an oil overflow cause? I ask this because I remember in one of your postings that you said a dirty optical speed sensor on the flywheel can cause problems. So I wonder if oil overflows can mess up the flywheel or maybe even damage the Protosound board?
I am always worried about running out of smoke fluid and burning up the Protosmoke unit, but I'm also worried about filling it too much and having a messy fluid overflow inside the engine.
So I have couple of questions...
1. Is there any way to measure how much fluid is in the Protosmoke unit?
I was thinking that we might use some sort of "dip stick" to measure the fluid level (a toothpick maybe?). I have not tried this because I fear inserting a toothpick into the smoke stack might damage the heating coil or wick). Is this safe?
2. What is the fluid volume capacity of the Protosmoke unit in number of drops, milliliters (ml)?
3. Do you prefer using the MTH Protosmoke fluid container or some other type of bottle or syringe?
I've noticed that it is hard to get just drops to come out. If the bottle is full or if I squeeze it too hard, a stream come out and I loose count of the drops.
I updated the firmware for the WIU device to v1.1 using the instructions in the WIU Users Guide. By following the well written instructions exactly, I had no problems doing the update on my wireless PC laptop with the WIU plugged into it.
I have some useful information that should be helpful to those of you who are using the old Crest Train Engineer Trackside R/C. Like many of you, I’ve been worrying how we would replace it if it breaks because it was discontinued by the manufacturer (Aristocraft) years ago.
Last April I read a very favorable review in Garden Railways magazine about the new Railboss 4 Trackside R/C. Since there are not many reviews out there yet, the best source of information on it is at their website https://www.gscalegraphics.net/store/c1/Featured_Products.html I loved the idea of replacing Train Engineer with an inexpensive controller that has a smaller remote without a long antenna. Be sure to read the excellent manual on the website!
I installed and tested the new Railboss 4 Trackside R/C yesterday and am happy to report that it worked flawlessly as advertised.
I absolutely love the little six button remote! It fits so nicely in my hand and in my pocket. I can operate it by feel with my thumb. I was so happy to get rid of that old outdated clunky brick-like heavy Train Engineer remote with that obnoxious antenna!
The Railboss Trackside base station receiver is slightly smaller than the Train Engineer receiver so it fit very nicely in the place in my electrical cabinet where the other one was.
The range of the Railboss 4 was great and reached to the farthest point of my layout.
One last thing, The momentum feature is definitely better with Railboss than with Train Engineer. The engines I tested all started very smoothly at very slow speeds. With Train Engineer, my engines would move in a jerky fashion at very low speeds, but with Railboss, they crawl along smoothly. This is because Railboss has built-in high frequency PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) which makes the motors run smoother at low voltage without overheating. Marvelous!!!
This really is the perfect replacement for the old Train Engineer.
I've read several letters saying that track power supplies and/or controllers with PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) can sometimes be problematic with some older engines, some sound cards, and with DCC. Reports say that this is especially true with low frequency PWS. Since the MTH DCS system is similar to DCC, I wonder if it could also be affected negatively by PWM input power on the TIU?
I currently have an old Crest Train Engineer connected between my regulated linear power supply and the TIU, but I always have the Train Engineer receiver set to linear mode, and the TIU works just great. But I will be replacing Train Engineer with the new Railboss 4 Trackside R/C which has built-in PWM (20 KHZ).
According to Del Taparro, the owner of G Scale Graphics and inventor of the Railboss, his Railboss 4 PWM is different from other PWM power controllers in that it has a much higher frequency which prevents the problems that other PWM power sources have (overheating, improper sounds, and light flickering).
So here's my question:
Have any of you had problems with your TIU when it is supplied with PWM? If so, do you think the TIU will be immune from the Railboss (20 KHZ) PWM since its frequency is much higher?
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for sale: MTH Rail King 1 Gauge Dash 8-40BW Diesel Locomotive Amtrak # 519
in For Sale / Wanted / Trade
Posted
This must be a mistake. For sale on Ebay is a new MTH Rail King 1 Gauge Dash 8-40BW Diesel Locomotive Amtrak # 519 w/ Protosound 2.0.
Starting price was US $0.99, Current Bid is US $33.89
Why would the seller have such a low starting price? What if the bids go no higher? Would he have to sell it at such a low bid, or would Ebay let him remove it and refuse to sell it?
I wrote the seller but he has not answered.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MTH-Rail-King-1-Gauge-Dash-8-40BW-Diesel-Locomotive-Amtrak-519-Proto-Sound-/371669702511?hash=item56893d976f:g:LUUAAOSwZ1BXdCbs