Any hints to make this less...growly...?

[nah00]

So I picked this loco up on the cheap from a local hobby shop. Figured it looked nice and the price was right ($40). Go home and run it and oh my. Is it ever loud. Is there anything I'm able to do to quiet it down? My only other steamers are a MA Type 9500 and Kato C11 and D51 and they're all nearly silent.

 

Edited January 15, 2016 by nah00

[kvp]

Adding the right amount of synthetic grease could help. Most Tomix locomotives need it and not all of them are greased correctly (especially used ones that were cleaned). Also try to run it around a bit to see if it quiets down. Imho Tomix locomotives, especially old designs, like this one with the motor in the tender and driving through an open air cardan shaft are loud by default, so it might be completly in order.

[Welshbloke]

Check the motor brushes and commutator, I've found if those are dirty then it can make a lot of noise. I'm not sure if it's possible to remove the brushes on these motors, but if you can then wipe them, clean the holders and commutator with lighter fluid and a paper towel, then reassemble.

 

Try adding a drop of oil to the motor bearings and any worm drive bearings, this is now my standard pre-running in process for any loco I buy. Don't drown them in oil, a tiny drop on each bearing will be plenty.

 

Obviously check for anything actually stuck in the gears, I've had one or two locos where the previous owner evidently wasn't too worried about concepts like gluing the ballast down so it doesn't find its way into mechanisms.

[HantuBlauLOL]

have you cleaned the gearbox?

 

a steam is hell when it comes to disassembling the mechanism.. i'd suggest you to ask someone to do it anyway.

[inobu]

If you have a wheel cleaner, use it to feel what is going on before you take it apart.

Prop up the tender on something so it is easier to hold the engine. Run it a different speeds.

 

Because of the bristles you will minimize the friction on the drive train and get feedback from the train. 

 

 

 

[nah00]

Well did some fiddling and tried a little bit of extra light oil but I think the problem is in the way the motor is fit in the tender. When I leave the top of the tender and it run it it's not *quite* so growly but as soon as I put it back on it just amplifies the sound. I wonder if drilling a few small holes in the bottom will help.

 

On positive note it does run MUCH better after some oil so there is a silver lining. Also the racket it makes guarantees the cat will NEVER come near my train table.

[kvp]

Actually drilling holes will make it more like a speaker and become more loud. Ideally you should be able to fit some light foam around the motor that will make it more quiet. Sadly there is no way to insulate the open air cardan shaft between the tender and the locomotive.

[HantuBlauLOL]

have you disassembled it? try run the motor only and hear how it sounds.

[nah00]

I took the tender off and just ran it in place and it was still buzzy. Not quite as growly. Most of the noise does seem to come from the shaft between the engine and the tender. Don't think I'll be able to get foam in there - it's quite tight and I have a feeling even if I added a little bit from an insert in Kato bookcase it would overheat. 

[beakaboy]

lovely looking loco! Didn't realise the early model had engine in tender. Looks like they realised it was a mistake early on and changed to the engine in loco, unlike Hornby who needed Bachmann to change things! The tender drives limited pulling power , at least on OO. I wonder whether shaft has a slight twist or bend as well from binding at some stage. I have found by stripping everything down and cleaning in Isopropyl alcohol, then reassembling and oiling,greasing, it improves running quality and noise. Older motors maybe worn on shaft, etc.I found one motor I had stripped down from chassis for binding and noise issue and it was a loose magnet on motor catching commutator. super glued magnet and it fixed it ( so far!)  Also gears can be tricky. I found a tiny piece of ballast that had bonded to gear and been covered with grease. even after cleaning, it took me 5 dismantles to finally find the problem and scrap it out.

[Ochanomizu]

Hello,

 

I recently purchased secondhand a Tomix Thomas the Tank Engine James Freight Car Set. 93802.  It suffered from terrible noise.  I examined carefully.  I removed the coupling rods.  Noise disappeared.  I connected coupling rods and noise returned.  I continued examination and discovered that the connecting rods were not set to correct offset of 90°.  I removed each pair of wheels and reset the offset.  I reassembled and the problem was resolved.  The whole process took less than 1 hour.  The James tank engine is 2-6-0 wheel arrangement.

 

So, please consider this as a potential cause of your problem.

[nah00]

I think I may have found the problem and I don't know if it's solvable. Judging from this the armature is rubbing against something inside the case, probably one of the magnets. It doesn't seem like the case is out of alignment (my first thought is maybe it got dropped and that was the result) but it also doesn't seem possible to disassemble. Commutator could stand another cleaning (this thing is like a dirt magnet and I've also been running it a lot) and maybe I could try VERY SLIGHTLY pushing back the brushes?

 

beakaboy- yeah she is a nice looking loco, that and the price is why I picked her up. I see no real reason why they went with the engine in the tender as there is plenty of space in the loco body and they could have just put the engine in there. I am starting to wonder though if the magnets are pulling the whole works back though...

 

ochanomizu - when you say coupling rods do you mean for the running gear on the locomotive or the electrical contacts on the tender for the motor?

 

 

[katoftw]

Coupling rods are the bars on the side of the loco attaching the wheels to the piston.

 

Edited January 19, 2016 by katoftw

[nah00]

That's definitely not the issue then, as far as I can tell mine are at 90 degrees from one another.

[kvp]

The 'rubbing' you feel might be the permanent magets grabbing the iron cores when they are moved by hand. This is perfectly normal for a 3 pole straight wound iron core motor. Using more than 3 poles, going with a skewed winding or building a coreless motor would help. Loosening the grip of the brushes help the motor roate more easily but too weak springs could result jumping around on the surface of the commutator, that causes arcing and increased carbon dust generation, which would finally result in a commutator short.

 

The biggest problem with this design is that the motor is in a tender that can vibrate and the cardan shaft is powered without any gearing, meaning the full rotational speed of the motor is present on the shaft. Gearing it down a bit would have helped. Also the motor is an open design, with visible brushes and the tender is also open at numerous places, allowing sound to get out.

 

On the picture, the motor is not placed straight in the tender as the main axle is not pointing straight towards the middle tail light. Aligning or even gluing it in with a soft, easy to remove, flexible glue that is thermally inert in the operating range of the motor would help (like a bit of hot melt glue). Adding a few thin slices of stronger foam between the motor and the shell would work. If you are concerned about overheating, use thin sheet metal instead, glued with the aforementioned flexible glue. This would keep the motor in place, shield most of the vibrations and hopefully make it less growly. (which is otherwise a perfectly normal sound for these ancient designs)

[nah00]

I did have the motor slightly pulled out for that picture. Taking it all the way out of the tender isn't doable unless I want to resolder connections. One thing I did find is one of the contacts for the brushes was misaligned where it meets the springs from the wheel pickups - I was able to correct this but doubt it has anything to do with the noise. Going to try the foam later but one other thing I noticed is that the motor has some play along the axis of the shaft - it can move back and forth a fraction of a millimeter. Wondering if this can be part of the noise.

 

Also kind of resigned myself to the fact this is just a noisy loco, maybe it will be my first attempt at installing a new motor if there is one that would be less noisy for this type.

[nah00]

Tried some foam alongside each side of the motor, just seemed to amplify the noise. At this point after running it as long as I have over the last few days I've just resigned myself to the noise unless I decide to re-engine it.