Is there something wrong with my RC motor?

[Carefree_Dude]

A few weeks ago I bought the RC cargo train deluxe.Right away I had a problem with it; the train motor struggled to pull the full length of the train. I had to give it a push to get it going, but even at full speed i could tell that the wheels were spinning a lot faster than the train was actually moving. Is this normal? I've tried all kinds of things with the motor but nothing seems to work. The wheels just spin in place at high speeds, and sometimes the train starts moving as well.

Today, the Emerald Night I ordered arrived. The PF stuff didn't arrive yet though. I put it on the tracks, and tried to move it using my cargo train engine (all my 9V stuff is packed away). The Cargo Train engine could barely budge the Emerald Night, even if I took everything away except the engine.

So, are the RC motors just that poor of quality, or is there something wrong with mine?

Also my Emerald Night came with a bunch of stickers that were just numbers. what are these for?

Edited July 27, 2010 by Goldenmasamune

[Modulex Guy]

At the last show our club displayed at, we had the new passenger train working.

We have also noticed that the wheels spin and the train cannot pull a large load, we think, and looked at it a bit and realized these trains are very light and the motors have a problem getting grip.

Add a bit of weight and a fresh set of batteries and see if that helps.

[Yoshi648]

Problem seems to be the wheels don't have enough friction with the track. Your best bet is to read this article to give your wheels more friction with the track.

For the Emerald Night, make sure you followed the directions for the driving rods (the things connecting the large wheels) exactly, people seemed to have made them line up on both sides (instead of quartering them) which greatly effects the performance of the engine. As for the extra stickers you received, those are for if you built extra cars to go with it (since it only comes with one), you would have the appropriate stickers to match the first one.

Edited July 27, 2010 by Yoshi648

[Sir E Fullner]

I, too have tried moving the Emerald night with a Remote Control engine. It also was a flop. If you take off the tender from the Emerald Night it budges a little, but not enough.

[Carefree_Dude]

I went ahead and made my cargo train into powerfunctions rather than the old RC. I bought a PF motor on bricklink, but it had no wheels. I used the wheels from the RC motor...

The motor sounded more powerful but still slid in place! So, for kicks i traded out the wheels for the Emerald Night wheels with the grey friction bands (the current one had black only). Surprisingly, it worked perfectly! I looked on bricklink and apparently the band color is random. But it seems that the grey has better friction than the black.

Does anyone know anything further about this?