Banana Castle Failed
Not a post I wanted to be making but yesterday Banana Castle suffered a catastrophic failure while working at Oswestry Show. It was the first day that the loco was pulling passengers before now it has been running with just me.
What Happened?
Banana Castle has never pulled passengers before, I said that we wouldn’t be able to take many people, 1 Adult & 2 Children max, the first trip out was fine, we made it around the track without any issues, however on the second run, that is when issues occurred.
On the loop we have a slight incline on the far side of the track, as we made it to the top of that incline the loco lost power to the motors, ancillary power was fine, horn & lights still worked the locomotive would just no longer turn the wheels.
After diagnostics it was deemed that the 4QD controller has failed, but how did we get that that conclusion?
Diagnostics
The loco was stripped, the cab was taken apart and tested on site.
The two connectors from the motors, M + & M – were removed from the controller and tested by directly feeding power from the batter to the motors, we did this to confirm that the motors were not dead, they were not, they still turned without issue.
Next we confirmed that the controller was getting power from the battery, using a multi meter we tested the controller and it was indeed getting power, however no power from the controller was making its way to the motors.
Another problem we discovered was that one of the positive connections to one of the motors has corroded to the point it has become unattached from the motor, we are not sure if this has shorted against the locomotive body or if the controller has just failed after being under load.
The loco will now be in the workshop for a prolonged period while this is resolved, I may have to send it away to be repaired due to my lack of knowledge in electronics.
Given my hopes for the day it was a disappointing outcome, but not one that could have been planned for or expected, all we can do is fix the fault.