Lionel Challenger Tweaking

by Robert Liberman

BUY IT HERE

Thanks to Bob Liberman for more details on Tweaking Lionel Challenger.

I received my Lionel Union Pacific Challenger, took it out of the box, put it on my program track and put it on the railroad! This locomotive weights 2lb’s and to my amazement the tender weights 1.25lb’s.

I ran the locomotive on my railroad as a caboose hop for a shake down run. Here is what I noticed about this run.

• The speed was just a little fast for my taste.
• The whistle had a little too much reverb, and not enough base. (UP Challenger & Big Boys had very low base saturated steam whistles)
• The locomotive chuff was a little bit too tinny and a little bit too loud for my ears.

I returned to my largest yard and backed up to a 25-car train for the second part of my test, pulling power. The train left the yard and ran pretty well, with a 2lb locomotive I did not expect much trouble with 25 3.5 oz cars.

The steepest grade on my layout 2.5% and it is 35 feet long and has a 40 deg radius curve on it. About half way up the hill the Challenger stalled to my amazement, I backed the train down the grade and took the locomotive to the shop.

In the Shop

• First thing I did was to remove the heavy spring from the pilot truck.
• Second I removed the tender shell and took out the weight from the back of the tender.
• I oiled all of the tender axles and all the axles on the locomotive.
• I removed the sound unit and took off the bar that holds the speakers and slid the speakers back far enough to insert a small amount of cotton in the bottom of speaker box to soften the chuff and add some base to the whistle.
• Reassembled the tender and prepared for my second attack of the hill.

Test #2 attack on the hill, this time the train went to the top of the hill with out spinning a driver and it now will pull 32 cars up the grade. The detail on this locomotive is amazing and the fidelity to the prototype is wonderful and this locomotive will fit in the scope of my railroad. If you need a UP challenger for your railroad this is a great locomotive.

Picture of Challenger.	Picture of the coal-burning locomotive.

Remove the weight from the rear of the tender.

CV changes

CV 3 changed to 70 (acceleration)
CV4 changed to 30 (deceleration)
CV 2 changed to 15 (start voltage)
Changed Whistle volume to 9 gives whistle more base
Changed break squeal volume to 15
Changed chuff volume to 9 softens the chuff and you can here the high tones and low tones better.

We welcome comments or suggestions from readers; please write or call.