Model Railroading

A brief photo gallery of the Proto 2000 DCC/Sound Pennsylvania Railroad #5768 E8/9 in my HO Collection.

I purchased this locomotive on eBay in December for $62, with the addition of a Proto 2000 S1, Pennsylvania Railroad #9100; Proto 2000 part number 21362. The S1 ran and sounded great, right out of the box, but the E8/9, not so lucky. The DCC Sound functionality for the E8/9 worked fine, so I had some confidence in achieving a running locomotive, after a little work. In disassembling the locomotive to perform a thorough tune-up, I found the motor would not even turn by manually spinning the flywheels. I applied some light, plastic-safe clock oil to the four worm gear bearing points and the two motor bearing points and then let it set for a day or two. When I next checked the motor, after come initial sluggishness, it started freely spinning. With the motor now spinning, I was able to easily clean the commutator. At that point, I bypassed the decoder, connecting the pickup leads directly to the motor. It ran great and spent an hour running in both directions on my test track.

My next task was lubing the gears with a white teflon grease and another half-hour of running. It was running smoother now.

The final major task is rewiring the leads from the pickups to the decoder and from the decoder to the the motor. I like to use a silicone stranded wire for its flexibility and completed the wiring, so it is now in the correct NMRA colors. I placed a piece of Kapton tape, 15mm by 75mm between the weight and the decoder.

This locomotive will be remaining in my collection.