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Transformer power interuption


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Just set up our 20 year old LGB starter kit again this year, with added track (~40').  The 5003/110 transformer stops putting out its typical 14 volts after 30 minutes of use.  No volts showing at transformer spring-loaded terminals.  After a "cool down" period, its back up and running, then stops again, but in a shorter time frame.  The spring-loaded terminals are tight.  Is the engine motor causing the malfunction?

Kids are coming over tomorrow.  Help!

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The 5003/100 is a power supply that has a rating of 7va (7 watts) and is just too weak to run what you have.  In fact 7va isn't really sufficient to run anything in Largescale. (I realize for some reason LGB made this power supply, but find it shocking they would make something this weak.)  You really need to get something that has much larger power output and would be looking for something that would output 100va(100watts)(example: 20v @ 5amps).  20v x 5amp=100watts) to make sure you could drive anything you needed to.  (100watts is likely a bit overkill for what you are probably doing but it gives you some extra capacity)   You could perhaps get something rated at 3amps but I wouldnt get something smaller than that or you run the risk of what you have happening now.  Unfortunately I don't see any way to around what you have going on now unless you can turn off the lights and smoke on the engine and still have the motors work.  That might conserve enough power to keep the power supply from going into thermal overload which is what is happening now as you are exceeding the capabilities of what the power supply can handle.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

If you don't mind my commenting on that Raymond, because I surely do not have the electrical expertise that you have, but this I think is important in relation to this question: For some reason that I cannot understand American manufacturers and their Japanese, Korean or today Chinese suppliers use traction motors on their models that use up a great deal of current: 3 amps and 24 volts is not uncommon in the US garden railway world.

 

Not so in Europe most Marklin models run on 12 v Dc with less than 1 amp  and most imports for the European market (Fulgurex, Kiss, KM1, Lemaco to name a few) use coreless motors for their high performance with low amperage. This I have experimented with in HO for years and have incorporated on two of my scratchbuilt locomotives: The fact is boys, that with low current motors you practically never need to clean the rails or the wheels. They spark much less I presume and in turn this keeps the rail head and the tires clean, at least it does indoors. Outdoors there is polen and in my case jet fuel (we are near an airport) that creates a good deal of corosion even in good weather on the rails, gunk forms and so on.

 This is furthermore quite odd because American practices uses double heading more often than European (or lash ups), also the trains are much longer. Perhaps this is the reason this is so, they can withstand overheating better, I cannot say not being expert on the subject.

 I enclose two photos of my two scratch built engines: The first is all brass model of the SNCF 2D2 9100, sort of our equivalent to the GG1; it has four nose suspended Maxon motors with module 5 gearing in 3 mm. thick brass framing with ball bearings. Each one of those motors is used by one of the best French craftsmen to power a mountain type in O gauge. It is extremly powerful and uses direct gears so as to coast across any interuption in the current supply.

 The renault ABJ 1 railcar is an experiment I made with styrene construction it is entirely made of styrene sheets and profiles. It uses an HO scale Portescap RG4 motor and reductor on one axle and can actually move if I just roll the 2D2 on the same track by hand (from the current generated by the beastie) yet it can haul a Märklin six wheeler coach as a trailer and up my 1,8% grade. By the way this railcar was cousin to the ABJ 3 (whith the radiator on the roof) whose front is nearly identical to that of the Burlington's Pioneer Zephyr. But as the Renault's archives were bombed out during ww 2 we shall never know, who copied who???  Both are near contemporaries. my ABJ1 is in PLM blue and grey as they were before the late forties; when they were rebuilt with buffer beams to haul trailers which disfigured their lovely streamlined look, then they were painted vermilion and cream.

 I use one of the big Buhler Fleishman transformers as a test transformer in the shop (i think it is identical to the LGB one which is red when the Fleishman one is green, both made by Buhler) when testing MTH engines they run at about half track speed on it.

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Edited by du-bousquetaire
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