Model Railroading > Slow speed operation with Rapido’s SW1200

Has anyone encountered a lack of slow speed movement control with their SW1200? With the throttle set at 128, I noticed a lack of speed reduction from speed step three to 0ne. And the same when increasing speed. My other models with a Loksound decoder has fine control in the range and very slow speed operation in speed step one.

I just had a similar problem with a Rapido RS-11.  When cleaning the wheels I found the rear truck was not picking up power and not rotating so the front truck was pulling the locomotive along with a dead rear truck.  That accounted for the slow speed.  Rapido sent me a video of how to rmove the shell and a recommendation to check the wire connections of the rear truck.

Good luck, Gerry

SPB Wrote:
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> I just had a similar problem with a Rapido
> RS-11.  When cleaning the wheels I found the rear
> truck was not picking up power and not rotating so
> the front truck was pulling the locomotive along
> with a dead rear truck.  That accounted for the
> slow speed.  Rapido sent me a video of how to
> rmove the shell and a recommendation to check the
> wire connections of the rear truck.
>
> Good luck, Gerry
I hear removing the shell is quite challenging.

With my SW1200, I find it difficult to make slow speed soft couplings. 

Don't know about loose wires, but Rapido wheels require a thorough cleaning right out of the box. I cleaned wheels on a recently purchased RDC when it was not operating smoothly. They were absolutely filthy.

Do you have a LokProgrammer? There are quite a number of CV settings and features that can directly affect slow-speed operation. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/21 10:36 by tehachapifan.

MY SW1200 wheels are the most grungy wheel sets I have come across. I have tried my Kadee speedy wheel cleaner, and it is not breaking 50% of the crud off these wheels.

I thought it was just me.  The wheels on my RS11 had to be cleaned after 5 minutes of running,
and again after only one 2 hour op session, and my Texas & Gulf train room is clean and climate controlled.

Cheap Chinese metal maybe? May need to replace my wheelsets with quality wheels. 

The OP doesn't strike me as a wheel cleanliness issue.

tehachapifan Wrote:
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> Do you have a LokProgrammer? There are quite a
> number of CV settings and features that can
> directly affect slow-speed operation. 

no I do not have a programmer. I tried adjusting the appropriate CV's without success. If I run the model at moderate speeds and then operate the model in speed step one, the model runs fairly well. If I don't run the model for a while, then I get speed oscillations in speed step one and it fails to operate at a slow speed that I am familiar with models equipped with Loksound decoders. ????

Is this a traditional design with one motor and two drivelines to the trucks, or something else?

The idea of not having electrical pick-up and not having power in that one truck throws off typical ideas of how it's designed.
tia.

We've found this is affecting some of the units. One of the guys on the assembly line went a bit nuts with the grease in the gearboxes. 

If you open up the truck bottom you will find it's got WAY too much lube. Dump out the lube and that should fix the slow speed control. We've already had a big discussion with the factory about this. We're also looking at a new plating provider because I agree the plating is bunching up on the wheelsets and that can cause issues. It has for me - on several of my moself I've had to clean off the plating with a wire brush in my Dremel.

The lube thing doesn't affect all the units, but I'm really sorry if it affects yours. 

As always, if you need more attention please go to the web site and visit the warranty page. The guys will take care of you. 

-Jason
 

So Jason, is it safe to say that the up coming ski train units will probably have the wheel plating issue?

TomG Wrote:
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> So Jason, is it safe to say that the up coming ski
> train units will probably have the wheel plating
> issue?

I don't think so. We've had almost no issues from that factory. We use four different factories.

-Jason
 

Thank you big J.

Are you referring to the SW1200 or the RS11 also mentioned above.  I didn't see any notice on your product pages for either.  My SW1200 was very sketchy right out of the box, it wouldn't go very far without restarting.  I have since cleaned my track thoroughly and that seemed to help quite a bit but I wonder if it has the too much grease thing.  Almost all my other locos didn't have issues like this one did.