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(LGB) 25554 - reporting from the wild side

 This is a story straight from Klaus' workshop

Tom calls and starts ranting:" I have an (^***&#)-  engine here that runs only for 3 feet and then stops. For no obvious reason. It doesn't display headlights and the sound is not working". 

 Klaus asks:" What type of engine is it?"

Tom:" (LGB) 25554- the green one"

Klaus now asks Tom what kind of power supply he is using (standard analog 5 Amp). This excluded a motor going bad which would have overpowered a starter set throttle. As Tom didn't want to mess with it he shipped the engine to Klaus.

(LGB) 25554 by Maerklin/Simba-Dickie

                                                                                                  

The engine arrived three days later and was put on the bench right away. With the engine on its side Klaus connected regular DC power to the power shoes of the front motor block. Then, gradually, he raised the voltage having a close eye on the Amperage. Only to discover that the engine did not pick up any power on the front motor block. The same test on the rear motor block revealed a strange behavior:

Klaus' precision testing device - the voltage generator

the wheels were turning and when the voltage was raised above 4 Volts the Amperage would shoot beyond 4 Amps. Klaus immediately stopped the test to prevent further damage to the engine. Now Klaus opened up the engine to find a strange configuration of electronics in the rear body.

There was a soundboard (MTS) mounted to the base plate held by only one screw and an MTS onboard decoder mounted to a lead weight. Turned out it was the lead weight of a Forney. Now, this was something special.

Klaus has never seen a White Pass & Yukon engine with this kind of interior. The suspicion arose that this is an engine made in China. Another hint was the cover of the engine's switches and volume control: normally it takes a bit of an effort to remove the cover but this cover nearly fell into his lap. Which points to a different kind of plastic that LGB used in Germany.

Meanwhile a bit of research revealed that the engine was made somewhere in 2010 by Maerklin possibly while the takeover by Simba-Dickie took place. That meant China was still a possible manufacturing place before Simba-Dickie turned to open up Gyor/Hungary.

Back at the workshop the next step was to isolate those motor blocks and test them individually with regular DC without having the internal electronics of the locomotive connected. The front motor block did not pick up any power and only the motor worked. The rear motor block picked up power with the motor being OK but the motor would even run when power was only supplied to the power shoes. As this was a DCC motor block track power and motor leads should have been totally isolated from each other. So question was why did the motor run with power supplied to the power shoes? There was only one solution: a massive short between the motor leads and track power pick-up.

Opening up the lower lid of the rear motor block revealed two dislocated power bus bars. The bus bars were made out of sheet metal which was about half the thickness as the regular LGB bars would be. So it was possible that the lower lid was closed with the power bars dislocated and nobody noticing it. The imprints in the bus bars that were made by the lid and the body of the motor block confirmed this theory. With the lower lid screws being untouched it was clear that this happened in the factory. Unfortunately it also proved that there was no quality control performed in the factory.
Basically the same condition was found in the front motor block.

Klaus repaired the motor blocks and inspected the onboard decoder which turned out to be fried and

the yellow line circles the burnt decoder part

was replaced as well. Klaus programmed a new onboard decoder to match the locomotive and reassembled the engine.

After a quick test drive in DCC and regular DC the 'patient' was released as healed and shipped back to Tom - working just fine.

LGB Firebox Light - A Klaus Creation Part 2

The light bulbs of the choice had to be the 5 Volt plug-in bulbs which Klaus colored manually. The reflector was initially a piece of aluminum foil. Peter Stock, a close friend of Klaus since childhood times, designed the electronics. Klaus then cut open the firebox door of the LGB Mogul to insert the firebox-light parts and everything was implemented in a pre-production 2019 Mogul body. 

cutout in the firebox door 

The initial pause between firebox activation was 45 seconds long. So everybody kept watching the locomotive closely until the firebox lit up again. Surprisingly the light even illuminated parts of the track between the loco and the tender just as in reality. Later in production the pause was reduced to about 8 seconds.                                                                                                               

Old LGB factory in Nuremberg

Klaus demonstrated this locomotive and firebox to Wolfgang Richter and Gunter Ruhland in Nuremberg. Everybody was surprised and exited about this idea. They wanted to implement this product into the Mogul and Klaus was asked to finalize the product for mass production; namely design a reflector which can be utilized in the final product.

Klaus made several molds out of Dental Silicone - see below - to produce multiple reflectors of the same shape which then can be manually altered. The reflectors themselves were made of Dental Plaster. That way Klaus was able to alter the reflector surface manually to find out which surface works the best.

Note the 2nd piece from above: Klaus grinding bit surface - aka his "signature"

A couple of weeks later Klaus found out that tiny dents in the reflector made by a ball shaped grinding bit delivered the best results. LGB then had an electrode made according to this reflector and used this electrode to manufacture the injection mold for the reflector. This happened by way of the electrode being used in electro-discharge machining. This is the reason why the mass-produced reflector even still today shows the manual work of Klaus and his grinding bit - just like his signature.

Klaus firebox light parts before mass production

It became a huge success. After furnishing the Mogul with the firebox-light LGB installed it in other steam engines as well. All leading model train manufacturers picked up the idea and manufactured their own versions. A number of little electronic firms started offering those firebox lights in all their variations. Today it is a standard feature for pretty much all steam engine model trains regardless of scale.

Here is a brief video of Klaus original firebox light in a very old LGB Mogul:

LGB Firebox Light - A Klaus Creation

 One warm summer night in the mid 1980's Klaus was sitting on his back porch. 

He had just finalized the improvements for the first Mogul #2018D, namely the driving characteristics.

Now he was relaxing,  enjoying his LGB layout with an American freight train passing by. Led by a Mogul and trailed by a lighted caboose. After a while he noticed that watching the loco go by all he could actually see was the dominant headlight followed by dark ghost cars and the lighted caboose marking the end of the train.

Courtesy of Hollyhobo

Klaus had a clear sense that something was missing here.

There was a stoker standing in the front of the (Mogul) tender apparently doing something but he could neither see the engineer nor the stoker. Klaus assumed that the stoker was about to open the firebox door fixing to shoveling coal into the firebox. This must have some influence on the lighting situation in the cabin and front of the tender. The stoker must be standing right in the midst of this light. And that was it.

Now, how did he put this into reality? His first idea was to install 3 or 4 lights hidden somewhere in the rear part of the boiler shining through narrow tubes single light beams onto the stoker. The drawback of this idea was that when the engine passed by there could have been a chance that a bystander could look right into one of those lights. Basically, a good idea but not close enough to reality.

This made Klaus realize that there is actually more to reality than initially hits the eye. In a real steam loco there is a light source (fire box) which illuminates the control cabin and the stoker and the front of the tender. This light source should not be kept a secret. The bitter truth is that the stoker opens the fire

courtesy of telegraph.co.uk

box and is then showered in a flood of (fiery) light. This consequently led to the idea to have lights being reflected in the lower door half of the fire box door. The lights had to be one red and one orange to give a warm, realistic light. the lights had to flash in two frequencies that are not compatible to each other. The red one would do a slow pace while  the yellow one worked a faster pace. The firebox light was supposed to jump into action every 90 seconds.

To install the firebox light Klaus would have to remove the lower half of the firebox door in the rear boiler part of the Mogul. Behind the still closed upper half firebox door the lights could hide. The light would be reflected by a reflector behind the lower open firebox door. This would even give the impression of embers glowing.

A smart electronic board would control the light bulbs.

He had it all worked out - in theory. Now he had to translate all into reality: finding the fitting light, creating the needed electronic board, cutting the Mogul open (again...)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++to be continued ...........................