LGB U series and switches

I don't have a recent 2071, but the earliest ones with metal trail truck wheels had an overly strong spring in the trailing truck assembly which meant that often only the front driving wheel and the trailing truck wheel made reliable contact with the track.... making the loco a long wheel-base four wheel loco in electrical pickup terms (instead of the 8 wheel pickup loco it is intended to be). For running on tangent track this wasn't a problem, but it definitely did cause troublesome performance over any special work.

I wrote up the whole discovery/fix process for the G Scale Society Journal many years ago, but once you are awaware of the problem it's not that hard to fix. Just take the loco apart to the point where you get to the trailing truck spring and shorten it.... IIRC mine is now running with about 50% of the original spring length.
 
Dan said:
Is it possible that the point moving rails don not always have power? I have added solder braid to some troublesome switch/points.
Click to expand...

Dan. We have already determined that it is not stopping on the movable point rails. It is over the frog with some of the drivers lifting off the rails.
Th fix is to either ensure the point track section is perfectly flat and/or add some extra rear pick-ups as on the early models or as Greg suggested make sure the decoder has enough grunt to get over the problem area of plastic frog as the OP's second late model U class can do. The spring tension on the centre driver (late models only) or the rear trailing wheels is also something to consider. The source of problem is likely to be a combination of things.
 
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Again, perhaps the power interruption is happening to the other loco too, but that decoder has enough stored energy to get through. I'd add the power buffer to begin with, since the physical problem has not been determined. (I am not convinced that there is not a position where pickup to one rail is interrupted)

Greg
 
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I think I have to give up on the power buffer idea. This lot was all factory installed and bears no relationship to any diagrams in the Massoth instructions For connecting their mini booster.
 
Thanks to everyone who has contributed suggestions. I think we have successfully exhausted the topic and I am left which much to ponder.
 
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