Multi-Locomotive Lionel Trains Lash-Ups Without Command Control

Hello again, this is Mike with Toy Train Tips and Tricks, and in this episode I'm going to respond to some questions I had from folks about the last video, episode 71. And I've had this question before, I've seen it on some online forums, and that is how in conventional mode, how in conventional mode do you run multiple locomotives on the same train? And so the answer to that, well there's more than one way to defer a V line, as they say. So there's multiple methods, I'm going to show you a couple of them here, but it's easy to do, probably easier than you think, and just a few things to keep in mind as you put it together. But here I'll show you a couple of methods, and so starting with the train that was running on the inside loop in the last video, still running on the inside loop here. And let me tell you, in this one I've got my Union Pacific so-called Jeep 9, which is really a Jeep 7, and the Rio Grande Lionel Jeep 7, here together. I'll tell you up front that I cheated on this one, and if you know your MPC catalog numbers, a few of you, you already know how I cheated on this, so I'm going to turn this on and show you the secret to this one. Reverse, neutral, forward, okay, so we cycle through the E unit there, and the secret to this one is the Rio Grande unit is a dummy. So I cheated, there's two motors in the front unit, none in the second unit. Okay, that's the cheating way to do it, I didn't do anything special, I just put a powered and an unpowered locomotive on here. So let's get these guys out of the way, and I'll show you how to do it with two powered locomotives. Bye-bye! Another pair, all right, there we go. So here we have the two MPC locomotives, we've got the 8359 quote-unquote GM50 Jeep 7, and we have the 8470 U36B, both MPC products, both from 1974. And here, this is my preferred method, yes, both of these are powered, both have a single motor, they run really good, really well, I'll use more gooder English there, they run really well as a pair, having the two motors in the two locomotives. So how do I do this? Well, with this, this is my preferred method, which is figure out what direction you want the train to go, and lock out the E unit lever. So here we have, this has a three position reverse unit, and let's pretend I haven't done anything to it, and you cycle through, neutral, there, let's get GM50 off of there, okay, neutral, reverse, neutral, forward, okay, forward was my last position, so now I take it, throw the lockout switch, put it back on the track, test it just to make sure, yes, it's in forward, okay. Then I do the same thing with this locomotive, and I'll save you doing that on the video, but that's exactly what I did with this one, picked a direction, locked it into that direction, put the two together, and they run just fine together in that one direction. This works best when you've got matched locomotives, so here we have two Lionel units from the same time period, and actually, the Jeep 7 and the U36 have identical pickups, identical motors, identical gearing, pretty much everything except the shell is the same, and in fact, these two units were made in the same year, 1974, and they both have comparable running time, which was very little, I bought both of these, well, I bought this one this year, and this one was a Christmas gift about two years ago, both of them have very little run time on them, so they run very, very well together, almost the same speed. Now, you can do this by not syncing the E units and having them cycle through. Couple of tricks with that. One, you need to make sure, first of all, the better matched the units are, the better. Second, make sure they both have the same type of E unit, whether it's two cycle or three cycle. Three cycle is forward, neutral, reverse, neutral, forward, neutral, reverse, etc. Two position is forward, reverse, forward, reverse, forward, reverse. You need to have them the same so that they stay in sync. Also important, you need to be able to trust your track, that it's clean, and you don't have a lot of dead spots that will trigger an E unit in one or both locomotives, and you need to be able to trust that your E units are functioning well also, that you don't have one of the two units that sticks one way or the other. So here's how we're going to do this. I already know that both of these were set in the same direction, so if I reactivate Getting harder to see these days! Reactivate the switch. In theory, they should still be in sync with one another, and if not, I will need to change it real quick. Let's try the first neutral. Now, as you cycle through, give them extra time, more than you necessarily would for an individual locomotive, just to make absolutely sure the units cycle together. And there we go, now we're going in reverse. Neutral, both units. Forward, both units. Let's attach to a train. We'll be back in a second with a train. Bye-bye! All right, well, let's give this a try. Power on, and we're off to the races. Oh, and you see what happened already. The second unit popped into neutral coming around the corner. I guess there's a dead spot, or something momentarily lost power. So that's the problem with doing it this way, is that, well, maybe they... Yeah, see, the units are out of sync, and the two units are working against each other. So that's why my preferred method is to lock out the E-unit, and operate them together as one, and just not worry about changing directions. All right, so now what do you do if you have locomotives of different eras run different speeds with different drives? So, in the front here, we have a more modern era. This is a late 90s, early 2000s-ish GP38, quote-unquote, which is really a GP39-2, which I've talked about in another video. But anyway, it has an electronic E-unit and twin CAN motors. The CAN motors don't draw nearly as much juice. Even though there's two of them, it draws less power than the traditional pull-more motor, and so the locomotive tends to run faster at any given speed. So, what do you do? Simple. If you've got one locomotive that runs faster than another, put the faster unit in the front so that it is pulling the slower locomotive. If you put it trailing, you get it pulling the train and pushing the lead locomotive, and you get more likely to have derailments that way. So, put the faster locomotive in the front. And boy, my dog is not happy with somebody out there. So, anyway, let's take this for a spin and show you how it works. All right, we're going to do take two on this. I found out what my track problem was. It was actually the ground wire, the common wire on this mark signal came loose, and so there was no common going to that section of track. But anyway, three, two, one, here we go. Let's give it a little more juice. And here we go. So, we have a late 90s, early 2000s CAN motored Lionel running just fine with a 1974 MPC Lionel with the standard open frame motor. So, again, put the faster locomotive in front, have it pull both, and it works just fine. And again, theoretically, I could try to sync these up with the three positions, but more often than not, I find in the most inconvenient spot on the layout, something will interrupt power to one locomotive or the other and will lock out one of the E units and then they get out of sync and derailments happen. So, when I'm going to be double heading, I almost always lock out the E units so that they will run together better. Let's go one more time around. By the way, the same principle works with steam locomotives, provided you have a front coupler. And I have a previous video where I was running double headed steam here on the fun lines. There we go. Come to a stop. And so, that's how you do it. You can run multiple locomotives in conventional mode on the same track, on the same train. All you have to do is synchronize your reverse units, lock them out into forward, and away you go. When one unit is faster than the other, put the faster unit to the front, so it's pulling both the train and the slower locomotive, and everything works hunky-dory. So, as always, I hope you liked the video. Like it, share it, subscribe, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, and keep the trains running. We'll see you next time on the... We'll see you next time on Toy Train Tips and Tricks, and I need to go find out why my dog is so unhappy. Until then, keep the trains running, see you next time. Thank you.