Replacing Traction Tires

While I'm in the house every day this week while still recovering from a very busy week last week, I've been doing some maintenance on some of my model railroading locomotives in between long naps.  Earlier this week, I cleaned and lubed a big Fn3 scale steam locomotive.  That little project went extremely well so I continued testing various locomotives and provided maintenance on them as needed.  

The latest two locomotives I worked on were two MTH O scale locomotives.  One was a steam locomotive and one was a diesel locomotive.  I haven't run either of these locomotives in a number of years so I expected them to need some work.  I already knew that the MTH steam locomotive needed new traction tires so that is where I started.  I had the new traction tires on hand so that seemed like the logical place to start.

Since I hadn't used either of these MTH locomotives in a few years, I quickly realized that I have forgotten how to set up the power control for these MTH locomotives!  

I had to dig out a TIU (track interface unit) which is a rather large electronics board with various inputs and outputs around the entire circumference of the housing.  I knew where the power brick and the remote control was for this power controller but then I had to figure out what cable to use between the TIU and the hand control.  I dug out a book specifically about the use of this control system and was reminded that this hand control is wireless so I didn't need a wire.  (It turns out that I would need to find this wire/cable later to update the firmware.)  Then I needed to set up a short test track to connect to the TIU.  Once this was done, it was time to replace the traction tires.  

These traction tires are really just perfectly sized heavy duty rubber bands that fit snugly over a couple of the driver wheels.  There is a groove in the driver where the traction tire sits.  The rubber allows the driver wheels to grip the metal rails which provides the locomotive with more traction to pull a lot of weight without the wheels of the locomotive slipping.

A number of years ago the traction tires on this locomotive broke while Lukey was running my New York Central passenger train.  Lukey didn't do anything wrong.  The traction tires were just old and dried out.  I ordered a new couple of sets of traction tires right away but never got around to replacing them on the locomotive until this morning.  (I have far too many hobbies and interests while having far too few hours of the day when I am not sleeping.)

Replacing these rubber traction tires was actually far easier than I thought it would be!  The hardest part was finding a 5mm nut driver to remove the driver linkage.  Well, remembering how to set up and use the control system was a bit of a stumbling block too but it required a bit more effort to hunt down a nut driver.  Fortunately, I had one in the tool drawer of my astronomy gear.  

It turns out that installing the new traction tires was a piece of cake which was a nice surprise.

While I had this locomotive in front of me, upside-down, I cleaned the wheels and looked everything over.  I still need to go back to lube everything but it was time to test this steam locomotive on a test track.

I shot some video of this test run and there is a short clip below.  

I have to say that I really, really enjoy these MTH locomotives!  The sound quality is outstanding.  The fine slow speed control is very realistic and a joy to use.  Controlling the front and rear couplers with the handheld remote is nice too.  

As I said, I still need to lubricate this locomotive but the hard part is done and it is, once again, running very nicely!