Subject:
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Re: Wear out patterns in LEGO train motors...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:37:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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2259 times
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In lugnet.trains, Christopher Masi wrote:
> So... through NELUG, I have been involved in the Millyard project in the
> SEE Science Center in Manchester, NH. The other day, we took one of the
> engines off the track, and removed it's dead motor. The motor had died
> because the springs had failed (no real surprise there). The motor was
> the leading motor on a 4 car train, and the springs on one side of the
> motor had failed. The trailing motor on the engine was fine.
>
> Since I had this one data point (springs on one side of leading motor
> failed before the springs on the trailing motor failed) I began to
> speculate wildly, as any good scientist would... right? Here are the
> questions...
> Do leading motors on two motor engines fail more quickly than trailing
> motors? (The folks at the science center had no information about which
> motors were failing.)
> If they do, would we be better off putting an unpowered truck in the
> lead, follow that with a powered trailing truck, and a powered tender?
>
> Chris
It's too late for this particular motor to determine whether it ran slightly
faster or slightly slower than the trailing motor.
If the trailing motor was slightly faster than the leading motor, it would have
pushed the leading motor harder into the curves, thus compressing the springs on
the outer flanges more, leading to premature failure.
When making a 2-motor engine, I run any unused train motors I have round a large
oval layout (all facing the same way round) and see which ones are fastest by
swapping them when one catches up with another. I also test that they will all
bunch up in reverse and then separate when going forwards again. When they are
all in order of speed, I pick two of similar speed and put the slightly faster
one at the front.
I had this problem of slower leading motors with my Pendolino train, which has 2
motors on the leading carriage and 2 motors on the last carriage (to reduce drag
in the curves). When the motors on the last carriage were faster than htose on
the leading carriage, the bogies of the middle carriages could derail in curves
when running fast. With the faster motors at the front there are no problems.
The trailing motors just reduce drag so it's not critical for them to be as fast
as the leading motors.
I take it your track layout had most curves in one direction only - not a
figure-eight? A figure eight might have worn out all four springs.
Mark
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Wear out patterns in LEGO train motors...
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| (...) [...] (...) [...] (...) Mark, Good suggestion, but I don't know if it will work for us. The display is at a museum, and I don't know if that is something that the staff would be willing to do. Chris (18 years ago, 20-Jun-06, to lugnet.trains)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Wear out patterns in LEGO train motors...
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| So... through NELUG, I have been involved in the Millyard project in the SEE Science Center in Manchester, NH. The other day, we took one of the engines off the track, and removed it's dead motor. The motor had died because the springs had failed (...) (18 years ago, 19-Jun-06, to lugnet.trains)
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