Well, I opened up the engine tonight to get at the light bulb inside.
All the exterior lights, like headlights, or foglights and such are not individual bulbs, but small holes drilled into the shells with a bit of clear plastic/resin put in to give the appearance of glass.
There's a single 12v bulb that sits on the chassis inside the shell and lights everything. This one's clearly broken, you can hold it up to the light and see the filament inside is now in two pieces, I just have to find a modern-day bulb that's compatible and that will be fixed.
The reverse unit is proving more problematic. (Apparently, that's a big bug-a-boo for all veteran Flyers at this point)
It's a three position drum switch. Every time you apply power from the transformer, it will cycle through the positions, Forward/neutral/reverse by causing a little brass rod to push on a plastic cog gear and move it "ahead" one position, then fall back and do it again, and again, until you get the direction you want.
The problem is the rod is getting stuck after one advancement, two if you're lucky, and then it refuses to cycle until you physically open the unit up and reset it. It doesn't take much to free the mechanism, but I've cleaned the bejeezus out of it and soaked in in WD40, and it still gets stuck, so something might be binding that I have no idea how to fix. I'll keep at it for a bit, but if it still refuses to cooperate, I'll just get a new reverser, it's separate from the main motor anyway.
There actually isn't a smoke unit in this particular engine, turns out Dad's memory was a bit fuzzy, and he was recalling an earlier engine he had that did smoke, but it was replaced by this non-smoker after the original took a nosedive off the train table and onto the basement floor one day when it ran through an open switch.... he says he can still remember watching it fall, and was helpless to save it from the other side of the table....
So, there's one thing I don't need to fix, it don't exist!
All the exterior lights, like headlights, or foglights and such are not individual bulbs, but small holes drilled into the shells with a bit of clear plastic/resin put in to give the appearance of glass.
There's a single 12v bulb that sits on the chassis inside the shell and lights everything. This one's clearly broken, you can hold it up to the light and see the filament inside is now in two pieces, I just have to find a modern-day bulb that's compatible and that will be fixed.
The reverse unit is proving more problematic. (Apparently, that's a big bug-a-boo for all veteran Flyers at this point)
It's a three position drum switch. Every time you apply power from the transformer, it will cycle through the positions, Forward/neutral/reverse by causing a little brass rod to push on a plastic cog gear and move it "ahead" one position, then fall back and do it again, and again, until you get the direction you want.
The problem is the rod is getting stuck after one advancement, two if you're lucky, and then it refuses to cycle until you physically open the unit up and reset it. It doesn't take much to free the mechanism, but I've cleaned the bejeezus out of it and soaked in in WD40, and it still gets stuck, so something might be binding that I have no idea how to fix. I'll keep at it for a bit, but if it still refuses to cooperate, I'll just get a new reverser, it's separate from the main motor anyway.
There actually isn't a smoke unit in this particular engine, turns out Dad's memory was a bit fuzzy, and he was recalling an earlier engine he had that did smoke, but it was replaced by this non-smoker after the original took a nosedive off the train table and onto the basement floor one day when it ran through an open switch.... he says he can still remember watching it fall, and was helpless to save it from the other side of the table....
So, there's one thing I don't need to fix, it don't exist!
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