Mysterious 0.2 amps leak - anyone know why?

[philkelly]

I have one loco which as soon as it is placed on the tracks shows a 0.2 amp draw on my Navigator - no locos selected, no lights on, no other loco does this. It's an LGB Cambrai, but I'm not sure if that is significant. It seems to run and respond to controls ok. Lift it off the tracks and the Navi goes back to 0.0. There is short somewhere, but is it important - a sign of impending failure? Is there an easy fault tracing procedure?

 

[philkelly]

Kim:

Thanks for your interest: the answer is yes to both those questions: but I have two other LGB Corpets which I also run dry and which don't produce the same amps drain...

Phil

 

[stockers]

It may have a decoder fitted as well as the smoke - but even so, 0.2 amp is rather a lot.

 

[Gizzy]

I would disconnect the wires to the smoke stack and check again.

This may be a daft question, but is there a switch fitted to your Corpet for the smoke? If there is, is it set to the same setting as your other 2 Corpet Locos?

Just a thought....

 

[philkelly]

The Corpet has a four-position switch in the cab - 0,1,2,3. Having glued in two crew, checking the position was a bit off problem. (Don't these guys ever go off-duty?) The well behaved ones are on 2, but so, I think, was the rogue one - but I might have moved it trying to get the driver's hand out of the way. I don't have the handbook with me...can anyone tell me what the postions mean? It's too dark to test but will do it tomorrow..Thanks for all your help, folks

 

[philkelly]

Oh and for Alan's benefit, they are all factory decoder models - all I've changed are the addresses.

 

[philkelly]

OK, some research and a partial result. I downloaded the manual from the Champex Linden site. (Where would we be without it - just Google LGB and the product number and bob's your uncle.) It says:

Operating Modes
This model has a four-way power
control switch mounted inside the
cab (Fig. 1, 2):
Position 0: All power off
Position 1: Power to lights and
smoke generator
Position 2: Power to motors, lights
and smoke generator
Position 3: Same as Position 1
(factory pre-set)

...When operating with
the Multi-Train System, the smoke
generator is switched on at all times,
unless it is switched off via the ?7?
button of your remote.
So I did that. I also cleaned the wheels.Navi now shows a flucuating drain between 0 and 0.1 amps with no loco selected. This stops when the offending loco is lifted from the track. As the Navi can't show less than 0.1amp, I guess that means that there is a less than 0.1 amp drain somewhere, but I can live with that - I don't think I will go to the trouble of disassembling the loco to get at the smoke generator. So - with thanks to you all - problem (mostly) resolved.

Phil