Lionel Atlantic

Quick links to major topics on this page:

• General comments
• Useful notes
• Valve gear problems
• Disassembly
• Improvements
• Sound and DCC installation
  
• Part numbers and how to order
• Repair notes
  

General comments:

Lionel used to make a nice model of a Pennsylvania E6 Atlantic, 4-4-2. It's a reasonable looking mode.

You see them on ebay, they often go for $250 "new" in the box. It's not a great drivetrain, and many people advertise them as new or mint, when several things are wrong, so I waited and watched for about a year, this one cost $99, and is in "perfect shape", according to the seller.

The Lionel model # is 5110, or 8-5103, and you can still order SOME parts from their website, see the end of this page.

By the way, George Schryer has a nice page on tips for this loco. Click here to see his page. Recommended reading!

Useful notes:

Pick the loco up from the walkways above the drivers, not the air tanks, and keep your fingers away from the fragile plastic valve gear. You will thank me!.

There is a bit too much play up and down with the drivers, even after the mod to hold the motor in place. If you pull downwards on a driver, you can disengage it from the gear, and thus get the drivers out of sync with each other. Save yourself some frustration and take George's and my advice, add some shims to limit this. More on this later.

Valve gear problems:

Before opening it up, I checked the valve gear. The eccentrics on the second drivers were a bit loose. Removing the long chrome screw in the center revealed the problem, the crankpins were split. I tried gluing them back together at first, but reinstalling the screw just split it apart again.

Investigating, I found that the crankpin has plenty of threads all through it, and the chrome screw is almost an inch long so I held the broken end of the crankpin on with small vicegrips or a piece of heat shrink. I then drilled 1/4" down with a drill that would give clearance to the screw threads. I then epoxied the split crankpin ends together. JB Weld worked best in this case. (It's a very hard and tough epoxy found at auto parts stores).

Disassembly:

Now with the valve gear running well, I proceeded to take the loco apart.

Note: if you lay the loco upside down on the boiler, you almost certainly will damage the bell harp. Pull the harp and bell straight up from the boiler first. Don't ask me how I know this!

You can pull the boiler apart from the chassis, or remove the bottom of the gearbox. If you are doing both, take the boiler off first. (see below)

Here's an underside view, the 4 screws to remove the gearbox cover are right by the outer edges of each driver.

I would remove the pilot and trailing truck next no matter what you do. You don't have to remove it to pull off the gearbox only, but they flop around a lot, so it's just one screw each to remove them.

Remove boiler:

Remove the pilot and trailing trucks, each have a single screw. Notice the arrangement of the washers and spring on the pilot truck.

You can now remove the front pilot/cowcatcher.

Removing the pilot truck reveals a long screw between the cylinders. Remove it and the pilot/cowcatcher comes off.

Now, loosen the two screws nearest the back of the loco. This loosens the cab floor. You don't need to remove them, just loosen them a bit. (This gives you more clearance when pulling the back of the cab off, you will see.

Now remove the 2 large screws nearest the on/off switch (not the on/off switch screws).

Separate the 2 assemblies a bit, lifting up on the boiler first. You will then be able to disengage the rear of the cab.It's kind of a loop that hooks into the rear of the loco.

You will find 3 wire nuts tying the headlight and smoke unit to the wires from the switch and the motor. Note how the wires are connected.

Here's the chassis with the boiler off:

Wiring:

On my loco, the headlight has 2 black wires, and the smoke unit a yellow and a brown wire.

There is a blue and a black wire from the track pickups, and a red and a black wire from the motor.

The on/off switch also has a red and black wire.

The three wire nuts are wired as follows:

Blue nut: blue wire from the track pickup, one black wire from the headlight, the red wire from the motor, and the blue wire from the track pickup

Blue nut: yellow wire from the smoke unit, one black wire from the headlight, the black wire from the motor, and the black wire from the track pickup

Tan nut: Black from on/off switch, and brown wire from smoke unit.

After disconnecting these wires, you can separate the 2 halves.

Removing the gearbox cover:

Next you can remove the 4 screws that secure the gearbox cover. Be careful, the brush contacts are small carbon rods, and they will try to fly out along with the springs. There are four each in the gearbox cover.

The original spring part number is obsolete, but get the new ones, the parts are listed at the end of the page. They are non-magnetic, so I don't know what they are made of, but get new ones if at all suspect. In a pinch, you can use Kadee draft gear springs (the long ones), a tip from Dave Goodsen.

If you have already disconnected all the wires in the boiler, you can now pull the gearbox cover away.

Improvements:

George found that the single cable tie holding the motor in place did not do an adequate job, allowing the motor to rock and lose contact with the gears. He used a second ty-rap, I used 3, they fit together nicely that way.

George also shimmed up the gearbox cover to limit the downtravel of the axles. There is typically enough "slop" to allow the drivers to slip a tooth with the worm. He used shims of 0.020". I checked mine. They also could come out of sync. Looking at the underside of the gear cover, there are small raised spots that are right over the axles. I measured mine and found that .015" styrene eliminated the slop. Since this only limits the "downtravel" of the axles, I believe styrene is fine. I strongly recommend checking this and shimming since it was easy to get the wheels out of phase, and then stuff starts breaking.

I added weight to the loco inside like George did, he added over 3 pounds. I found some perfectly-sized 2 pound weights (called "rock cod sinkers") and put one directly over each driver. There is plenty of space in the boiler. With these 2 additional weights, total weight of the loco is 8 pounds 10 ounces.

I will look into putting in metal wheels for the leading and trailing truck. Someone suggested that Aristo Pacific leading truck wheels and bushings are easy to add, and would provide additional power pickup without any additional drag. I will see what I can come up with.

Adding sound and DCC:

I put a QSI unit in the boiler between the cab and the second driver. There is a perfect little spot for it. This lets me run the loco without the tender for testing. I used the "magnum" adapter board. Note that the documentation sometimes identifies the terminals wrong, be sure to follow the silk-screened letters on the board. Common for the lights is NOT ground, but unreg (unregulated.

The headlight is described as a 12v light. I missed that and nuked it on my DCC voltage. I bought a new one, and it drew 72 milliamps on 12  volts. So I have 22 volts to the lamp, I found two 270 ohm 1/2 watt resistors, and paralleled them for a 135 ohm 1 watt. (10 volts divided by .072 = 166 ohms).

black - right rail pickup
red - left rail pickup
brown and green to speaker
yellow - backup light
gray - decoder common (plus)

Here's the pictures of where I drilled the hole for the wires, just go horizontally. Remove the cab floor for this operation.

This way, the wires come out in the boiler, and don't foul the trailing truck:

Just to reinforce, you HAVE to add power pickups from the tender, the wheelbase is just too short for some switches and the 2 drivers is just not enough.

I put a really nice 3" speaker from Jonathan Belize of Remote Control Trains, he always finds the nicest speakers.

The tender has 4 screws underneath to take apart, and has a removable underbody detail panel, I removed that and then took a 2-3/4 inch hole drill to make the speaker hole and hot glued it in place. Sounds great.

Tender:

The tender has 4 screws underneath when you get to it.

(picture coming of mods)

I still need to find metal wheels for power pickup. May do the eyelet thing, like my Aristo mod. We will see, depends on what I find. Would love to find some ball bearing wheelsets, so I could have 8 wheel pickup, but don't think I can find them in a small enough size.

The tender wheels are 0.95" in diameter (tread diameter measured at the flanges). The wheelbase of the trucks is 1-3/4" and the overall length of each truck is 2.9" (over the flanges), the truck sideframes are about 2.3" long. There looks to be room to have slightly larger truck wheels, plenty of clearance between the wheels and the underside of the tender, over 1/4".The axle tips are 0.12" in diameter.

It also needs weight. Even after putting the big 3" speaker in it, it only weights 1 pound 12 ounces.

All finished and ready to go:

Part numbers and how to order parts:

 Harold / Hap from MLS gave me the pointers on a few things, like where to find the parts, and some other common problems like the connecting rod and the crankpins can break if the loco goes out of quarter.

Note: the exploded diagrams do not show the leading "8" in the part number

Santa Fe is model number 8-5103, other atlantics are 8-5102 (NYC), 8-5106 (Chessie), 8-5107 (GN)

the Santa Fe tender is 18-5103-T01, 18-5102-T01 (NYC), 18-5106-T01 (Chessie), 18-5107-T01 (GN)

Prices & availability as of September 2008
santa fe is model number 8-5103, other atlantics are 8-5102 (NYC), 8-5106 (Chessie), 8-5107 (GN)

the santa fe tender is 18-5103-T01, 18-5102-T01 (NYC), 18-5106-T01 (Chessie), 18-5107-T01 (GN)

Prices as of September 2008

818-5101-052 - connecting rod screw - #4-40
818-5101-090 (818-5003-120) - 00.70 - Brush spring (power pickup, there are 4 in the loco)
818-5101-138 - 00.40 - Headlight bulb and socket (note: 12 volts)

818-5102-115 - Headlight body (the outside shell) **** not available
818-5102-135 - 00.30 - Headlight lens
818-5102-580 - connecting rod (front to rear driver)
818-5102-586 - front wheel and axle assembly
818-5102-930 - 00.50 - Bell bracket
818-5102-940 - 00.80 - Bell, Silver
818-5102-596 - 14.35 - Rear wheel and axle assembly

818-7401-022 - crank mounting screw  - #4 x 3/8"
 

Click here for an exploded parts diagram of the loco

Click here for an exploded parts diagram of the tender

Here's the link to order parts: 

http://www.lionel.com/CustomerService/Findex.cfm

Repair notes:

Often the springs behind the brushes are collapsed from overheating. You can most likely use Kadee coupler springs, the original springs are 0.142 diameter, slightly over 1/2" uncompressed length.