I got a pair of locos that use the tender as their primary form of electrical pickup...

A Walthers 0-8-0, and a Con-Cor 2-10-2

The Walthers is going to be a bit of a pain to get into as I couldn't get the tender latchted down properly so I superglued it together

Both operate fine when I put my finger down on the tenders of the locomotive, but following the train around with my finger on it is kinda counter-productive of the hobby....

What are the best ways to improve electrical pickup on these locos? I've added a brass weight to the Con-Cor and it didn't really do anything... there has to be a better way to do this...

It must be the wipers on the tenders are somehow not making contact.
The wipers must be sitting on top of the axels. I'm only guessing this cause you said when you pressed down on the tender, it ran fine. Might be as simple as bending the wipers down until they contact the axels a little better.
If you could post a pic that would also be real helpful.

I actually took the wiper issue a step further and did something that proved to be futile... I soldered small pieces of wire from the trucks to their respective wipers. this did not help the issue.

I also decided to route additional wires from the loco frame to the tender as per a post I saw on the Atlas board... still nothing. tons of stalls

I checked to make sure that my solder for the decoder install is nice and clean...which it is.

so at this point the only thing I can think of is more weight.

I was going to suggest utilizing the front wheels but I see it was already suggested from Atlas dudes. I would think clean the wheels and track and keep adding weight.

Bahahahah!!!

This just keeps getting better and better!

I finally got it working on my test oval in the living room. It stalls every once in a while, but for the most part it ran fine for about 30 minutes...

UNTIL IT SIEZED UP!!!!

*insert loud profanity here*

:peasoup:


just when I was going to take a video of the amazing sound and working locomotive to share... darn you con-cor!

so I took the wheels out... the loco isn't seized.... it runs fine if I take out the wheels.

How do I get these into 'quarter'

I also noticed that the siderods connect to two pairs of wheels... would I be foolish if I took the connection out of one of the wheels? I think the siderods are whats making the motor stall/seize/bind