11-19-2009, 10:09 AM
Make sure when you install those tender trucks to get the insulated wheels on the proper side. One truck will have them on the left side, the other on the right, but it varies from loco-to-loco which is which. When I was rebuilding my Consolidations, I wanted to test run one of them after completing a modification, so grabbed one of the four tenders on the workbench and connected the plugs. I was surprised to find that the loco wouldn't run at all. 
The work that I had been doing shouldn't have affected the electrical side of things, so I was stumped until I looked at the other tenders. It turned out that one or two of them had the trucks reversed - with the proper tender, each of the locos ran fine, but using a tender with the reversed trucks resulted in no power to the loco. I would guess that the position of the wires in the plugs was altered to suit the particular truck set-up - perhaps different workers on the assembly line when the locos were built. I run DC, so no damage was done, although such a situation may release decoder smoke for your DCC-equipped loco.
I have three more of these locos awaiting some extreme modifications, and am going to see how they run with that circuit board removed completely. That would allow me to get rid of those cumbersome plugs, too.
Wayne
The work that I had been doing shouldn't have affected the electrical side of things, so I was stumped until I looked at the other tenders. It turned out that one or two of them had the trucks reversed - with the proper tender, each of the locos ran fine, but using a tender with the reversed trucks resulted in no power to the loco. I would guess that the position of the wires in the plugs was altered to suit the particular truck set-up - perhaps different workers on the assembly line when the locos were built. I run DC, so no damage was done, although such a situation may release decoder smoke for your DCC-equipped loco. I have three more of these locos awaiting some extreme modifications, and am going to see how they run with that circuit board removed completely. That would allow me to get rid of those cumbersome plugs, too.
Wayne