ALCO

60051 x2 motor placement

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So, good haul at Christmas this year for me. Among other sets, I was given 60051. While I never would have gone out to buy that set myself, now that I have it, I want to get a second one to make into three additional coaches. This would make this set 6 car-bodies including the locomotive. Have any of you done this and added a second motor? I'm wondering if it makes sense to modify the locomotive to take the second motor or run PF extension wires and have the 2nd motor at the end of the train. What are your thoughts of having one motor at the front and the other at the end so one pulls and the other pushes?

What has the experience been of one motor pulling at the front and the other motor pushing at the rear?

 

Thanks

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I built an identical end to the main engine and have a battery box and motor on the other end.  They are on the same channel so I just point it in the general direction of both and it works 95% of the time.  I have 6 carriages and one club car so it’s a large train.

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My Son just had the 60051 set for Christmas too, while I got 10233, Horizon Express (now I need a second one!).

I had the same idea a while back with 7938 and added a motor to the rear locomotive along with a battery, switch and IR receiver. Running the two locomotives together seemed to work well, except when the signal would miss one of the receivers and the two would get out of sync. I had a few derailments in corners where the rear loco would push the train clear of the tracks as the front loco was slowing or stopped. I think you'll have better luck running extension cables as long as the set won't be played with by children. I have yet to try the extension cable design as my own son is too young (3) to understand not to separate the carriages.

I will do this with my own Horizon express though when I get a second set. Probably 2 motors in the lead loco and one in the back on an extension cable or two.

Edited by Toxic43
Changed "car" for "locomotive"

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5 hours ago, ALCO said:

So, good haul at Christmas this year for me. Among other sets, I was given 60051. While I never would have gone out to buy that set myself, now that I have it, I want to get a second one to make into three additional coaches. This would make this set 6 car-bodies including the locomotive. Have any of you done this and added a second motor? I'm wondering if it makes sense to modify the locomotive to take the second motor or run PF extension wires and have the 2nd motor at the end of the train. What are your thoughts of having one motor at the front and the other at the end so one pulls and the other pushes?

What has the experience been of one motor pulling at the front and the other motor pushing at the rear?

 

Thanks

I found 2x 60051 doesn't have quite enough pieces for 4 carriages and found myself getting another unpowered engine to get the requisite pieces to make the 4th carriage (only because it was much cheaper than another carriage). You might then find the carriages look disproportionally short compared to the "engines" so I then extended mine to 28 studs long.

Edited by kungpo

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All, thanks for the replay and info. I would like to keep it all in one receiver so that is why I am thinking about the extension wires. It sounds like having one motor pull and one push works well so that is good news.

2 hours ago, kungpo said:

I found 2x 60051 doesn't have quite enough pieces for 4 carriages and found myself getting another unpowered engine to get the requisite pieces to make the 4th carriage (only because it was much cheaper than another carriage). You might then find the carriages look disproportionally short compared to the "engines" so I then extended mine to 28 studs long.

I thought about doing this as well. However I want to keep it as stock looking as possible. If I were to extend the locomotive a bit, then I might as well but both motors in the front. But that would also mean I would have to extend the rear "locomotive" too. I think running the wires will be fine. Once I get a second 60051 I will just Bricklink the remaining parts I need to turn the second set into 3 carriages. 

 

Now, any thoughts on the lights? I have Brickstuff lights on my Big Boy and I love them. But I would rather not have more than one wire going along the train...So I was thinking the Lego lights for the front, rear and carriages because they just plug on the PF wires and are not affected by the speed selector. I could mount them on the bottom of the roof with 1x2 technic bricks.

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I believe the passenger train engine nose piece has openings for mounting the LEGO PF LEDs.   It should be as simple and plug and play.

 

 

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5 hours ago, dr_spock said:

I believe the passenger train engine nose piece has openings for mounting the LEGO PF LEDs.   It should be as simple and plug and play.

 

 

Yep. There are two Technic beams in the nose that the PF lights attach to. There is even a 2x2 brick shaped recess in the floor behind the driver to mount the splitter brick into. It's the same in the unpowered locomotive too. 

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brickstuff sells a PF power adapter for their lights.  that is how i get power to my maersk and CoNO lights.

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20 hours ago, ALCO said:

I thought about doing this as well. However I want to keep it as stock looking as possible. If I were to extend the locomotive a bit, then I might as well but both motors in the front. But that would also mean I would have to extend the rear "locomotive" too. I think running the wires will be fine. Once I get a second 60051 I will just Bricklink the remaining parts I need to turn the second set into 3 carriages. 

 

I didn't extend the locomotives - just the carriages. The Lego LEDs fit in the nose ok.

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I think that the best (and expensive) solution is to buy two SBrick: one for the front locomotive and one for the last car.

The bluetooth has a better quality than the PF infrared receiver and you shouldn't have problems with synchrony of the signal

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On 1/2/2018 at 1:11 PM, ALCO said:

I thought about doing this as well. However I want to keep it as stock looking as possible. If I were to extend the locomotive a bit, then I might as well but both motors in the front. But that would also mean I would have to extend the rear "locomotive" too. I think running the wires will be fine. Once I get a second 60051 I will just Bricklink the remaining parts I need to turn the second set into 3 carriages.

If you can get both motors under the lead unit I'd suggest doing that solution. I tried doing a trainline through multiple cars using the old 9v connectors and that just proved to be too much of a hassle to deal with. With the harder to disconnect pf connectors I could see it being a real pain. However, if you don't plan on taking the train off the tracks too often then this hassle isn't really an issue.

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On Wednesday, January 03, 2018 at 9:12 PM, zephyr1934 said:

If you can get both motors under the lead unit I'd suggest doing that solution. I tried doing a trainline through multiple cars using the old 9v connectors and that just proved to be too much of a hassle to deal with. With the harder to disconnect pf connectors I could see it being a real pain. However, if you don't plan on taking the train off the tracks too often then this hassle isn't really an issue.

Good thoughts. I think in the short term (while my son is too little to play with Lego trains) I would like to do the trainline, medium term (while my son is interested in crashing Lego trains) both motors in the locomotive, and long term (when my son thinks he is too cool for Lego trains) back to trainline. Guess, at this point I've got a couple years at least to figure this out.

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