Author Topic: How to wire power pickups on steam loco tender  (Read 18372 times)

carpediem4570

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How to wire power pickups on steam loco tender
« on: April 10, 2024, 09:21:56 PM »
Greetings one and all:

I am installing an lm2S in my Mehano Ho steam locomotive.  This is being wired from scratch.

Originally the tender had power to the pickups.  On the instruction sheet, the locomotive wheel pickups are fed by the red and the black wires.  Can I splice into those red and black wires and run the spliced wires to the tender wheel pickups to give power to the tender.?

Or is there any point to getting power to the tender wheels, since now, the rear light no longer draws power from the tender.

Thank you in advance for…enlightening…me. lol

Kind regards,

Max

G8B4Life

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Re: How to wire power pickups on steam loco tender
« Reply #1 on: April 11, 2024, 08:24:27 AM »
Ok, your post is just a little confusing; There's no point in giving power to pickups, you want to get power from them, not give power to them.

Anyway, without being able to see how the model is wired from the factory it's hard to give any advice in any direction except to say it would be beneficial to use the tender pickups if you can as well as the locomotive pickups for getting power to the LM, the more pickups powering the LM the merrier!

- Tim

snowdog

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Re: How to wire power pickups on steam loco tender
« Reply #2 on: April 11, 2024, 10:12:21 AM »
echoing G8B4Life

In a steam locomotive, the power comes in through the tender and the drivers (sometimes) Some makers grab power from one side of the tender and one or more wheels on the locomotive opposite side. (sometimes)  Ideally; you want to pickup power across all of the wheels which help in power continuity. I may be wrong but it seems to me you are concerned about powering the rear light in the tender??? Please advise. Again, without seeing the original wiring, it will be hard to give specific guidance.

If my hunch is correct about the rear light, it will be fed power through the blue and yellow wires. Good luck!