RailPro > RailPro Specific Help & Discussion

LGB install assistance (please)

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snowdog:
I picked up an LGB install project and am thinking I got in over my head. While the concept of Railpro is universal, application is not. The gentleman has a Lake George & Boulder steam loco that I've figured out the basics with. Getting the wires to the motor and light is a different story. I managed to get the tender open (easy) but getting into the front end not so much. Would anybody here care to offer guidance to help me get out of the jam I got myself into?

Much appreciated,
Bryan

snowdog:
Adding to my earlier post. I have removed the innards of the loco and found that there are 3 wires going to the motor. The motor works when only 2 wires have "juice", green and white. What function does the brown wire serve? Anybody?

Thank you.
Bryan

gregeusa:
3 wires...

2 pick up track power, and one goes to motor

the 3rd is the other side of the motor...

There are some tricks to isolating the motor from its direct connection to the track pickup...

you find that connection, break it somehow, and then solder an extra wire to the motor tab, and now you have 4 connections, 2 for power pickup and 2 for motor...

but, you may get confused on how to use the motherboard, and figuring out if lights and smoke are 5v or 18v...

Greg

trainman605:
I've rewired 5 LGB engines to Rail Pro, all were easily done, 3 diesels and 2 Moguls. First I do away with all the LGB electrical components and discard them in my scrap wire box, I remove the electrical pickups in the trucks, or the mogul's engine blocks, plus the electrical sliders, no more track power for me. I totally re-wire the total engine with LED lighting, I use an 8-wire plug from the engine to the tender, thus each idem that is power has its own wiring, just the way I do things. Fishing wires in the diesels is not really a problem as there is not mush to fish, but in the Moguls you will have to fish the wires in the boiler between the plastic boiler cover and the engines weight, this part of the engine does not really come apart once it is glued at the factory. You could reuse the factory wires, but I chose to run my own wires and I like everything uniform and I was replacing the Headlight to LED and I did add engine side marker lamps to the front of the engine.  My engines are pretty highly modified to give them a different look from what LGB did, but you can still tell they are LGB engines. All my new wiring was smaller then the LGB wiring say 22-26 gauge, but the engine power wire was 20 gauge if I remember. I purchased my miniature wiring plug kit from eBay as well as my LEDs. And yes, you will only need two wires from the engine block to power the engine, I know there are three, but can't remember what the third on does, nothing for your Rail Pro. I tried to post pics here, but this forum does not really support easy pic posting of pics, too much BS to post them. 

snowdog:
Thank you for the replies. I ended up pulling all of the original control components and replaced them. I replaced the lights with LEDs and the entire project went much better than expected. The key for me was (as mentioned) to remove all of the original components and start fresh. The battery the customer wanted wouldn't fit in the tender so it was placed in the trailing boxcar. I used a 6 wire JMT connector between the loco and tender and am looking forward to doing his second unit.  THANK YOU RailPro for making things easy.

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