My Emerald Night Power Functions Tender Mod

[edsmith0075]

Greetings gang,

I have decided to post a modification that I have made to my Emerald Night Locomotive that may help others. The problem I was having was with the PF XL motor and rigid train frame the EN would get stuck on dips and rises throught the track surface. This was primarily an issue going over switches or minor grades changes. So my initial plan was to remove the XL motor and build a passenger car that was equipped with motors to push the engine. I changed my mind on this one and challenged myself to incorporate the XL motor in the engine and then an additional motor in the tender along with the battery.

So after the assistance of fellow enthusiast on this site and the Railbricks magazine, I created a boogie/truck to mount on the tender with minor modifications to the original tender design. Keep in mind this is still a work in progress but what I have completed thus far has made a huge difference and resolved alot of traction issues with this particular locomotive. Pictures are below feel free to copy and I am always looking for additional feedback to better a design :-)

http://flic.kr/p/e7AJX7

Check out my Flickr page for more pics. I also added the modification to the front rod which fixed the locking up issue and smoothed out the engines driveline. As you can see I only geared one axle on the boogie, this is due to me running out of gears and not having enough to gear the other axle. I have ordered the additional parts from bricklink and will update accordingly. I have tested this design and even with only the one axle powered it helps a whole lot. Does anyone have advice for adding weight to the tender or even the engine to further improve the traction?