Lego 7597 Toy Story Train with RC/PF

[stelek]

Hi all,

I've searched the forums but I could not find any detailed answer. I'm fairly new to Lego Trains but I decided to buy and motorize the Toy Story train. Four BrickLink orders later I had all the needed parts and started building. I put the battery box and the IR receiver into my custom built tender and I replaced the "big wheels holder" of the locomotive with RC train motor. It all seemed to work well at first...

...until I noticed that the train was derailing very frequently and had a lot of problems passing switches:

I watched the train very closely and I noticed that the big wheels did not touch the rails very well but I could not figure out the reason. I was going to give up and put the train back onto a shelf. And then I saw it - attaching the big wheels to the RC train motor placed the coupler higher (exactly two plates higher) than the standard height. The coupler of the tender was lower (standard height) and was pulling the motor down which was raising the front big wheels and derailing the train.

So I modified the tender - the front coupler (next to the locomotive) is now two plates higher than the back coupler (where I attach the train cars) and... the problem is gone. The train does not derail without a reason. But unfortunately this introduced two new problems:

1) The tender looks strange. Not only the front and back couplers are at different heights but also the body of the tender is simply too high (compared to other cars). This does not look natural.

2) The tender is heavy (batteries!) and this modification moved the center of weight higher. The whole train derails on curves much easier than my 7938 Passenger Train.

What's your experience with motorizing this train (without big modifications)? In particular I'm very interested in how you solve the problem of coupler's position in the locomotive after you attach the RC train motor to the "big wheels". Is there a way to put it on standard height somehow?

[pinioncorp]

Easiest way would be to put the motor in the tender, which would also slow the whole thing down a bit.

Otherwise, you could try using the old buffer beams and putting the magnet holder with magnet in upside down.

[Rustie86]

I would make a brick-built connection between the locomotive and tender. Effectively, that's how it is in real life. I'm working on such for my 2-6-2 Prairie right now.

[Cwetqo]

I think that you drive it too fast thru tose bends. This train is really high and it does not do curves very well.

Edited June 6, 2011 by Cwetqo

[stelek]

Thank you for the suggestions. In the end I went for something like that:

Instead of attaching the coupler "on top" of the motor, I put it "next to" it. I built some support from top and bottom and it seems to work well. I had some doubts at first but it's definitely strong enough to hold the coupler. The whole thing is a little bit longer than the original but visually it's acceptable.

But now I've discovered a new "problem". The motor in the Toy Story train is positioned "wire to the back" while the motor in the passenger train is "wire to the front". So when I put both trains on an oval track facing the same direction, the logic for controlling is different for each of them. Turning the control clockwise makes train go forward when controlling the passenger train and back when controlling the Toy Story train. This has my kids confused... I know I can change the control direction in the remote but I don't want to do it each time I change the channel. Is there a way to invert the direction of the motor permanently? I thought the "mystery switch" on top of the #88000 AAA Battery Box would do that but it does not work like that. Any ideas?

[AndyC]

Is there a way to invert the direction of the motor permanently? I thought the "mystery switch" on top of the #88000 AAA Battery Box would do that but it does not work like that. Any ideas?

You could put a PF Pole Switch (#8869) between the remote unit and the motor, that has a little switch on it which can be used to invert the direction.

[Jay Sathe]

The switches on the remote should work. They will switch which way the train goes when you turn the wheel.