StarSwitcher TnA (and others) repair thread

[ripley802]

I have got James as well as the rest repaired. Just need to do D10 (he may need some new terminals) and then take another look at the speed issues with Gordon and possibly James. The non TnA "c" engines needed new motors with exception of the white one which was only the gear. More soon...

You really are a magician Ripley, I'm amazed seeing all of these come to life.. I think D10 worked last time he was here, was just really slow.

[ripley802]

You really are a magician Ripley, I'm amazed seeing all of these come to life.. I think D10 worked last time he was here, was just really slow.

Thanks. Yeah D10 seemed to maybe have had some leakage at one point. This is t a very good pic, but you can see the under side of the terminal is a bit rusty/coroded. The bad thing is with these specific terminals on D10 is they are unique and not like any of the other ones. Although I am thinking the regular terminals may work. I have cleaned the terminals but they still seem like they could be compromised.

Well, I couldn't help myself, and opened up everything today. I'll post pics of everything later. A bit p i s s e d, the majority of the trains don't work, and have zero cash to ship out anything. Does anybody have any tutorials on how to fix the Talk N Action engines? Those have weird problems. Gordon will (barely) work, no sound. Thomas talks and sings, but his wheels barely move (solved, the white axel is loose). Henry does barely anything and doesn't talk. James works great with a little help of a back engine. Diesel 10 frankly enough worked the best, and apparently had the worst corrosion of battery I have seen in my life.

That was the worst of it, yet still worked. Any help on any DiY repair with any Tomy and the TNA engines would be appreciated!

Found a pic I posted in one of the older threads- that's the D10 in your hands when I unwrapped it.

[ripley802]

Wow. Yeah that's no good... but sadely that's how a lot of mine had arrived from japan as well.

It definitely looks better now than when you received it. I will do my best to make it look as close to new as possible.

[ripley802]

D10 has some 2 new battery terminals installed in the middle. And all wired back up.


I forgot about Mavis (which was in a bag, has a bad axel gear.). It takes a larger axel gear which I need to look for but have some in order since they are very cheap. I may Bev some somewhere though.

I am hoping to still find a solution for the slowness but am not all that optimistic. I did put a bolt meter on the D10 while I had it apart and it shows 2v going to the motor both before and after the capacitors. 4.5 volts comes into the board.

[ripley802]

Mavis is back up and going. I found a spare set of wheels and working gear out of a "c" style Diesel.

Regarding the TnA engines and slowness. I am getting closer I think.

So I had a spare James that had sound issues. I have tried various speakers but still the sound is no working or not vary well. So I decided to expieriment on him a bit.

I traced the path from where the wires come in from the motor to the circuit board. I see where it comes through two spots on the board through various components. The small 3 prong "transistor" on the left in the pic below was what I thought it was at first. So I tried to short out (laid a piece of metal across all three prongs) and low and behold it was instantly faster. I shut it off and tried it again but even with the switch in the off position it was coming on and running full power. So I knew that would not work. I did also not that if shorting the first two prongs it would be slow, but if I chose the opposite side it was fast.

So on to the circled capacitor below. I tried the same thing on this, and it was faster when shorting it. So I shut it off and tried again, which it did nothing...Awesome!!! Since it was off that was expected. So I soldered the two prongs together and turned it on.. Success!!!

But....

I need to A) test with on that has a speaker to make sure there is nothing crazy going on there. B) make sure that it still functions over track where the action is to speed up. And C) try and make sure there are not any long ( or mid-long) term effects.

What I would like to also try is to find the capacitor and replace it with a new one, or maybe a larger/smaller size depending on what it may need (Hoping Tramp may chime in here).

Dang Ripley, you never give up! >

So now we found out what makes it go faster, hopefully these experiments you're doing can lead to an answer that might be beneficial to all members with Talk N Action's that need assistance. Keep it up man!

[ripley802]

@StarSwitcher,

I took another look at Gordon and realized that after what I found with Muddy's D10 (and James) that was the issue (or one of them) with the Gordon.

But....

I did not have anymore spare gears like to one needed. . Luckily the one that was cracked was the larger one. (See below). The other one seemed to be ok. So what I did was put a dab of super glue in between the two gears, notice the notches on the gears. It acts as a clutch I believe so the drive gear doesn't get stripped. With this glues I put him all back together and he works but is a bit noisy. I hope this will be ok for you but this type of gear along with the other are probably going to be impossible to locate.

The expieiment to increase speed were short lived. I am not sure on what causes the slowness on these. It doesn't seem to be the capacitors or transistors.

I see, thank you for the fixup nonetheless! I await to see these trains running again (also, that giant box from Japan came in... the Toby and D10 work great (of course D10 is slow for some reason, but I guess that's just mass). My American Talk N Action Thomas is completely dead in the motor, so I'll look into sending that along with my dead motor 2nd gen Gordon and James when the time comes.