# Lionel 8050t tender whistle stuck on when track is powered



## robertkara (Dec 22, 2011)

I'm a newbie here. Was given a Lionel Pennsylvania Flyer set several years ago, which I set up for the kids each Christmas. Each year when we first set it up, the whistle tender is stuck on. Any power to the track and the whistle starts blowing. After fiddling around, cutting power, etc - it somehow eventually works properly; but not this year. Searching for assistance, saw this on another thread:



tjcruiser said:


> ... put a multimeter on my modern CW80 trasformer and watch the DC output when I hit the whistle button. To my expectation, it was around 2.4 V DC...


So I hooked up a multimeter to the CW80 transformer and can't seem to get a normal DC reading with or without the whistle button pushed. I get a stream of readings, some positive and some negative; and pushing the whistle button doesn't seem to affect the readings. Maybe I'm using the multimeter incorrectly, but I don't think so. Have knob set to 20 DCV, COM (black) going to the black terminal on the CW80, and V/ohms (red) going to the red terminal.

Can someone point me in the right direction on this. I'd like to first rule out a problem with the CW80, then turn my attention to the tender.
Thanks.
Robert


----------



## robertkara (Dec 22, 2011)

decided to test my multimeter, and got some strange readings when checking DC on batteries. I replaced the 9v in the multimeter, and the DC readings on batteries were now correct. I thought maybe I'm making some progress here, but when I again checked the CW80 output I got the same results. Continuously changing DC readings, most around 1v, occasionally jumping up to 1.8 or even 2.0, but no higher. The AC output reads a consistent value that is somewhat affected by the throttle position. DC reading is same jumbled mess regardless of throttle position, or status of whistle button. Maybe I'm looking at a bad CW80?
If that is the case, I'm puzzled as to why the tender whistle would continuously blow only when the throttle is > 0. That doesn't appear to have any effect on DC readings, which I thought is what caused the whistle to blow.
Deeper down the rabbit hole...
Robert


----------

