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| Running the Monorails |
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When you first set up your monorails, you may get frustrated in trying to keep them running. Sometimes you will have them running great, let them sit overnight, and the next day they refuse to run smoothly. I have had at least two different people tell me that as a child their dads had bought them the monorails, brought them home, set them up, and they could not get them to run. Frustrated, the dad promptly boxed them up and put them away, never to be seen again! (I bought these sets and they are now part of my collection.) The trains actually will run flawlessly if you know a few tricks and spend some time keeping them clean. Listed below are some tips you hopefully will find helpful in operating your Disneyland Schuco Monorails. If you have any questions or any other tips please contact me: trainfool@aol.com 1. The tracks must be clean. This is the most important tip. Buy a soft rubber type track cleaner, one that is NOT too abrasive. I like the one made by Perfect. It is yellow and sells for around two dollars at our local hobby shop. I would not buy "Bright Boy" as it is very abrasive and is great for Lionel and HO track, but not for Schuco track. You can actually "rub" away the plastic track. If you have brass rails, the Perfect track eraser will really shine them up! If you have black rails, be careful no matter what track eraser you are using. At some point you will probably end up with silver rails. There are kits available that will reblacken your rails. 2. Buy a good liquid track cleaner. I prefer Life-Like only because it does not smell bad. Some track cleaners smell "toxic" to me, and I would not enjoy working with them for long. They may be better, but I am happy with the Life-Like liquid track cleaner. After you have used the eraser, wipe over the track with the liquid. *Some other operaters are using a product called CRC 2-26 with great success. It is in a can and is an electrical conductive liquid. They spray it on a rag and wipe it over the track. They then wipe the track again with a dry cloth. The product is also a lubricant, so it is important to get it off the track. You can also use the CRC 2-26 to clean contact points such as the pickups and the connections between cars. 3. Keep the rubber wheels of the monorail clean. Use the liquid track cleaner. If your monorail is not climbing up hills well, or even spinning on level track, you should probably buy some reproduction wheels. The Schuco rubber wheels were hard to begin with and did not grip well. Over the years, the rubber has dried out, making them worse. You will find three types of "holders" for the wheels. All have a gear in the middle sandwiched by a rubber wheel and then held together by one of three "ends." One style of end cap is tin, another is black plastic, and finally one is white plastic. Do not be afraid to take any of these apart. It is very easy. If you have strong fingernails, you can pull them apart. Otherwise, try a jeweler's flat blade screw driver or a thin pocket knife blade and pry the caps off. You will eventually have 5 pieces: two end caps, two wheels, and the center gear. You can try flipping the rubber wheels around at this point and maybe get some more life out of your old wheels, but since you are this far, why not just replace the wheels with reproduction ones? I have had the wheels made for both the tin capped and white capped gear mechanisms. I did not make the black capped ones because the wheels have round center holes, and eventually they turn on the axle and slip (the wheels of the tin capped ones have round center holes, but seem not to slip). I suggest you replace the black ones with, first, the white capped ones (the whole mechanism) which have square center holes, or, secondly, with the tin capped ones (again the whole mechanism). One important note here. Monorails made originally with tin capped wheels WILL NOT accept black or white capped wheels. The wheels of the black and white caps are too thick. However, you can use any of the gear mechanisms with the monorails that were originally built for the black or white ones. The tin capped wheels are thinner, but the reproduction wheels grip well. Reproduction tin capped rubber wheels cost $1.50 each while the white capped ones are $2.00 each. These are just the rubber wheels only. You can probably get by with just two wheels, but changing all four will give you the best results. See What's for Sale for other items and parts available. 4. Oil the two axles coming out of the motor. If you run your monorail and after about 10 minutes find the motor hot, this is a good sign it needs oil. Warm is normal, but I mean so hot you cannot keep your finger on the motor for very long. As with anything that needs oil, you should not over do it, but it is important to keep these oiled. 5. There are brushes in the motor that will eventually wear and need replaced. To this day I have had to do so only a few times. Remember, I run the monorails at train shows for usually 6 to 8 hours at a time. Signs that the monorail needs replacement brushes is when it lights up when you give it power, but does not move. This can also happen if the brush spring is weak. I have not figured out a way to fix a broken brush spring, but you can make your own brushes. Carbon brushes are available at any good model train shop or even a small appliance repair shop. Carbon is a very soft material and can easily be sanded or filed to the shape you need. It is messy. Make sure you make the brush small enough so it easily slides back and forth in its slot. You do NOT want it tight. 6. Oil the little gear axles and the wheel axles. Do not over oil or get oil on the rubber wheels! These gears can also get gummed up. You may wish to clean them with an old toothbrush. 7. Keep the pick up points of the monorail clean. I use a pencil eraser to clean the center pick up and the track eraser for the sides. 8. If your monorail makes a "clicking" noise as it goes around your layout and across the sections of track or even snags on some of the track sections, there can be several causes of this. First, It is possible to have the metal tabs of the skirts actually hold the accordian portion (the bolster) of the monorail in too far inward. This would be particularly true of the rear car going forward, or the front car if you are running the monorail in reverse. The plastic bolster piece can actually be hitting the connections of the track as it is turning corners. To discover if this is the problem, simply take off the bottom metal skirts and run the monorail (be careful not to lose the nuts that are placed in the unit and receive the small bolts that go through the side skirts). If everything runs great, then the side skirts are the problem. To correct them, you will need to carefully bend the metal skirts out while they are in place or check the tabs at the end of the skirts and make sure they are not bent too far inward and thus holding the bolster in too far. Probably at some time, someone put pressure on the skirts and squeezed them together. BE CAREFUL WHEN BENDING! You may also try changing the radius of the curve or the bank of the curve. Sometimes there is a burr on one or more of the side pick ups. This is very unusual, but I have had these so bad that it actually stops the train. The good news is that your monorail was probably never run much as this would have worn down with operation. The solution is to take a metal file and file the burr off. If you cannot figure out which side pick up is giving you the problem, take a piece of tape and hold back one of the four pick ups. This keeps it from hitting the track. There are two pick ups per side, so the monorail should still run. Eventually you should be able to find the offensive side pick up, unless there is more than one. If it is just one or two pieces of track giving you a problem, check to see if the tube in the track is sticking out away from the brass rail. Finally, if you have switches, the copper looking tubes that face the track part that moves should be smashed in a little. This seems to be done on most of the Schuco switches, but not all. If they are not smashed, the side pick ups or the top pick ups will sometimes catch on them. The solution is to simply smash them. 9. If your monorail drags over a track, this is probably a good sign that your rubber wheels are worn and the nose part is hitting the track. This will happen with either the front or rear car. You can usually see this by going eye level with the track and observing the monorail as it passes over the offensive area. However, sometimes you can overcome the dragging problem by banking the track a little or changing the sharpness of the curve. In the long run, you will probably have to change the wheels. Since the rear wheels do not need to grip the track, you may be able to use some old original front wheels you have replaced with reproduction ones. Other causes: It could be the side skirts are too low on the nose end. To discover if this is the problem, simply take off the bottom metal skirts and run the monorail. If the monorail does not drag now, then the skirts are a problem. To correct the problem you have a couple of choices: 1) You can bend the nose end of the skirts up. It does not take much pressure, so be careful! 2) When you rescrew the skirts on, make sure the nose end of the skirts are up against the light socket as much as possible. Then just tighten the screws. I have and other operators have had the rear car drag on certain curves. This can be very frustrating in trying to figure out why. Some seem to be super sensitive to the way the curve is twisted or banked. The cause can be from the metal guide pins underneath the unit. Somehow, they could be bent in slightly. You can try bending them out, but be careful as you can break the gray plastic. The guides are simply pins forced through the plastic. You could simply try turning the pins 180 degrees with a pair of pliers. Try this first. 10. Shorting out--You should be able to hook a transformer wire to the motor base of the monorail and the place where you hook the middle car; then the monorail should run. If you experience a short, here are some places to look. A) A lot of times the middle pick-ups rise too far and hit the side pick-ups, causing a short. Of course, when you put the monorail on the track, this will not happen, but does when bench testing as stated above. B) I get a lot of monorails where the metal bar running from the back of the motor unit to the front light bulb socket rubs against the motor bracket. This will cause a short. An easy solution is to put a piece of electrical tape between the metal bar and the motor. Later models used a wire instead of the metal bar. The main point is that the metal bar cannot be against any grounding point on the monorail. Later models have an insulated wire instead of the metal bar, so you don't have to worry about this one in that case. C) Someone may have rewired the monorail! Hopefully you have another to use as a template. If not, email and I'll try to direct you as to how the wires go. D) Check the soldier point on the left side of the motor (where the left brush is). This sometimes breaks. It would not cause a short, but a bad connection. E) Sometimes something gets into the motor itself, such as the nut that holds the side skirts. This will short out the motor or may wedge itself in the housing, disabling the motor. F) If your monorail runs fine during the bench test, but seems to short out when turning corners on your layout, check to see if the side weights may be touching the tracks or the side pickups may be touching the weights. Run the monorail around the track without the weight plates. If it runs fine, then this is the problem. The side weights shorting out can be tricky because one side can be shorting out and the other is not. You will only discover this when the monorail is pulling power from the side that is shorting out, so running the monorail one direction is fine, but when you take it off the track and turn it the other way, it shorts out! This has driven me crazy at times. Fortunately, an easy solution to this is to put a piece of electical tape across the inside of the weight, especially if it is the solid type weight. Later weights had holes in them to prevent the side contacts from ever touching the plate. 11. Finally my last and perhaps the most important tip is to buy a bottle of "Rail Zip." It costs around $5.00 at your local train hobby shop. You can use it as it says on the bottle, but here is what I do. 1) Every once in awhile, put one drop on the top rail and one drop on each side rail. Do this on a downhill part of your track. Let the monorail carry the Rail Zip around the track. 2) Or you can just take the motor unit off the track, turn it upside down, and put the Rail Zip directly on the contact points. Either way you choose, do not get too much liquid on the track as it will cause the monorails to slip. If you do get too much on the track, simply wipe the excess Rail Zip off the track with a clean rag. Run the monorail around a couple of times. Usually the Rail Zip will loosen some dirt off the track, and it accumulates on the center pick-up. Take the engine off the track and knock that dirt off the pick-ups. Except for perhaps the reproduction rubber wheels, the Rail Zip has made the biggest difference in the operation of my layouts. I have received information from a Texas collector that he uses the Rail Zip similar to what is instructed on the bottle. He takes a cotton swab and rubs the Rail Zip in the rails, lets it sit, and then wipes it off. He has had excellent results with this. Also, a California collector informs me that he uses WD40 like Rail Zip. He sprays the WD40 into a container, then rubs it on the track, and finally wipes it off. Though it may sound as if you may be making the track slippery, he says if you do not over do it, the results are wonderful. If you do get too much on the track, use a rag with Windex on it to take off the WD40. I need to mention that some collectors are using polishing creams with good success. A Canadian collector uses MAAS, and a Michigan collector likes FLITZ. Blinking rear light. The rear red light gets half of its power from the front end unit. That means it has to get electricity through the middle car. This usually is not a problem with three unit monorails, but becomes annoying to some who run 4 or 5 unit monorails. To help prevent a blinking red light, make sure all the connections between the cars are clean. You can do this with your Perfect track cleaner/eraser. There is a metal bar that runs to the rear light socket. Make sure this is still soldered in place and not just rubbing agains the socket. Finally, a Texas operator suggests that when using a bolster, you wrap a small strand of wire around the "washer/connector" of the bolster. This insures a good electrical connection of the washer itself. The wire strand should be thin enough as to not interfer with the connection and operation of the cars. MONORAIL BASICS The monorails run off of a DC transformer. The Schuco transformer #6333/150 puts out 29 to 31 volts with no load and around 21 volts with a monorail running at full speed (one monorail creates a one half amp load). The Schuco manual states the monorails run on 17 volts DC, but believe Schuco means 17 volts DC with a 1 amp load since this matches the rating on their transformer. If you are not going to buy a Schuco #150, buy a transformer that puts out at least 18 volts DC at no load. I have a transformer that is rated at 14 volts with a 1 amp load that runs the monorails very nicely. I am not an expert on the technology concerning transformers, but the big difference here is whether the transformer rating mentions its output with or without a load. My experience has been if it does not mention an amp load, then when you measure the voltage output with no load, it will be pretty close to what is listed on the transformer. When the rating on the transformer mentions voltage with a load, you will definitely get a higher reading when measuring the transformer's output with a voltmeter with no load. The question is how much? I know I was very surprised with the 29 volt reading when I measured a Schuco #6333/150 transformer (and I've measured 9 different ones, all with the same results). The switches run off of DC. Again the Schuco transformer fixed DC output is around 27 volts with no load. I would hook the switches to at least 18 volts DC with no load. The block signals run off of AC, but could be hooked to DC. In theory, bulbs last longer on AC current. The instruction sheet says to hook them up to 12 volts AC. The Schuco transformer puts out around 14 volts AC. BE CAREFUL! Most DC transformers have a fixed AC output of around 18 to 20 volts. If you hook up the block signals to this, you may melt the plastic and/or burn out the bulbs! Also, do not hook more than 5 block signals to the #150 transformer. CLICK HERE for special instructions on how to wire LED's to your Schuco monorail! |
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Everything you need to keep your tracks clean and your monorails running!
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