All About Lionel Uncoupling And Unloading Tracks - UCS, 6019 and More!

Hello again, this is Mike with Toy Train Tips and Tricks, and today we are looking at Lionel's 027 track profile uncoupling and operating tracks. One of the neat things about Lionel trains since the 1930s is the ability to unload and to uncouple cars by remote control using special tracks, both in the 0-gauge track profile and the slightly lower 027 profile. Remember that 027 track has the same gauge, the same width as 0-gauge track, but the profile is a little bit shorter and, to my eye anyway, it looks a little bit more realistic. So I prefer 027. We are looking at the 027 uncoupling tracks that have been available by Lionel. And so the first one, there we go, is the 1019. The 1019 was first available in 1938, was still in production up through 1949, of course with the gap in production from 1942 to 1945 because of World War II and the end of military production. So this track and the 0-gauge companion, which was the RCS remote control section, are distinguished by their five rails. We have the three standard rails, the outside, the center hot rail, and then these two additional control rails. And what these do in the 1019 track is, in cars that are equipped with a special pickup shoe underneath the truck, they activate first the uncoupling mechanism. Here you can see the little pickup shoe in the diagram and when the rail is activated, this shoe picks up the current, brings it up here to where it activates a solenoid, which releases a plunger inside the coupler and allows it to uncouple. So when hot power is applied to the both control rails, then this coupler at this end of the car and this coupler at this end of the car would both disengage. This is grounded through the truck itself to the outside rails. So hot power here, common power there. But if you put these rails on opposite polarity, with this one being hot and this one being common, then operating cars such as the dump car, the milk car, the operating merchandise car, and others can then have an electrified dumping or unloading mechanism. The current gets picked up by the shoe in this truck, runs through whatever motor operation is going on in the car, and then is grounded here on this control rail. And these come with a two-button controller, one button for unloading, one for uncoupling, and the necessary connections are made by the buttons that you press. These are set for track power and all these connections are here. Now we will show you later how you can do these on accessory power and actually do this with this view as two wires going to your controllers, but we will talk about that later. So the next uncoupling truck that came out, a little bit simpler, a little bit less expensive, the number 6019. First cataloged in 1948 in the version you see up here on top with the aluminum finish, and then from 1949 to 1969 there on the bottom with the black finish. Ignore the colors of wires that are coming out of those. These have both been rewired. The original wires would have been all black. And yes, these are pre-wired at the factory. The O-gauge version has four screw terminals that you do it yourself. The 027 is pre-wired. That saved the Lionel the cost of four screw terminals and four additional solder joints. So I guess a few cents savings on each piece. So the 6019, as you see here, pre-wired to its controller. This is an original controller here. And these, even though the control rails are shortened, it still is enough to activate all of the coil type couplers and all of the operating cars that use the pickup coils. But it also operates the new, in 1948, magnetic couplers. And the magnetic couplers require this magnet in the middle. That was a new way of uncoupling cars. It was easier and less expensive. Instead of having a solenoid here inside the coupler, first you had a metal plate. Later that became a metal thumbtack-like device that went over the magnet. And the magnet was energized. It would pull it down, as you see here, releasing the spring and opening the coupler. So now you had a way, a much less expensive way, and easier to maintain, not having the solenoid inside every single coupler. Now you just needed a spring device with a pull-down plate. Similarly, a new type of operating car came on the scene that, instead of using electrical current from the control rails, it operated using the plunger, a spring-loaded plunger, over the magnet. The magnet would energize. It would pull this plunger down. And whatever action would happen, in this case, a man pops to the door. The door opens on the operating box car. This could also be used for certain dump cars. Later in the military series, the missile cars were activated using the plunger. Again, it's a much easier, much less expensive way of producing the action, and easier to maintain. So the 6019 track is kind of universal. The O-gauge version of this, called the UCS, or Universal Control Section, the 6019 does the job in 027. So later, as we get into the 1950s, Lionel decided to cheapen the product still a little more. Remember, the 027 line was the budget line. This was for beginners and those who couldn't afford the nicer O-gauge trains. So they were always looking to cut prices as much as possible. And they came up with the 6009 and the 6029 in the mid-50s. And the first thing you notice is they look a lot like the 6019, except the control rails are now gone. These are magnet-operated only. So there's no mechanism there to operate any of the old coil-type couplers that started phasing out in 1948, or the coil-type operating cars. There were still a few of the pickup-shoe-type operating cars being made, such as the milk car. Those would come with their own special track section that still had the control rails. They would come with the 6019. Other cars, if you just wanted uncoupling, would have the 6009 or the 6029. The only real difference between these two catalog numbers is that the 6009 was pre-wired from the factory. The 6029, there were two screw terminals underneath the track and you would wire it up yourself. Otherwise, they were identical. And so from 1953 to 1963, these were available. And there's a little overlap with the number 6149. So this came out in 1964. First of all, ignore the color of the rails. These rails have been painted for use on my layout. The rest of the black, these would have been in the regular track color of the shiny metal. Made from 64 to 69, except for some reason there was no production in 1967. And then this design was picked up in 1970 when Model Products Corporation, MPC, which is General Mills, took over Lionel train production through a licensing agreement. And this type of uncoupler continued production all the way up to the end of 027 track production in the early 2000s. There were several different catalog numbers along the way, but these are all virtually identical. Again, these are for the magnet type couplers and plungers only. No coil couplers and no shoe mechanisms work with these tracks, but they're very simple and easy to work with. And so as we look at wiring, we're going to start with the 6149 because it is the easiest. These come with a single wire. When they come in the package, there is a single wire, or actually two wires. There's two wires, a push button. One wire attaches to the track. There is a screw terminal right here underneath the center rail. The common side of the magnet is pre-wired for you. That is this bar right here that goes to the outside rails. That provides the common. The hot comes from this screw terminal. You attach one wire to that, one wire to one side of your push button, and the other wire from the push button to your power source, whether that is a lock-on for track power or your transformer for track power, or whether that is for accessory to give you constant power to the magnet so that you can turn it on even when the train is stopped. So again, for track power installation, you connect one from the under track contact to one side of your momentary contact push button, the second wire from the other side of the push button to your track center rail power, either number one on the CTC lock-on or transformer where the center rail connects, or for accessory power, if you're using common bus wiring, this is the easiest way to go. And I also like it because, again, I can activate the uncoupling magnet even if the train is stopped. It's regardless of the speed of the train. Makes it a lot easier to do switching. So then you connect the wire from the under track contact to one side of the momentary push button, just as before. The second wire from the other side of the push button now goes to your hot accessory power, either the accessory on your main transformer, if it has an accessory feed, or to a separate transformer if that transformer is in phase with your regular track transformer. That's the easiest way to go. And that's the 6149. Two wires and you're done. Similarly, the 6029, you have now two connections under the track. One of them is connected to the center rail. One is connected to the hot side of the magnet. Again, the common side of the magnet is pre-wired for you to the outside rails, so you don't have to worry about that side of the circuit. So there's two connections. One goes to the center rail. One goes to the hot connection on the magnet. So to wire them up, if you're using track power, there are the two connections under the track. Each connection is wired to opposite sides of your momentary contact push button. It picks up the track power. You are ready to go. If instead you want to use accessory power, find which one of those connections is the hot from the magnet. You can pretty much find this by turning the piece over and seeing which one is hooked to the magnet and which one goes to the middle rail. So take the one from the magnet, attach that to one side of your push button, the other side of the push button to your accessory power. That other connection, you have an option. You can either ignore it like it's not even there and it'll work fine, or what I like to do is take that extra connection since it goes to the center rail. I then use my uncoupling track as an additional track power lock on and I run a wire from that to my center rail track feed from the transformer. I think there's no such thing as too many power connections to the track, so I use every available opportunity to attach either the common or the hot from the track to the appropriate connections just to help keep electrical continuity on my layout. It's optional, but it's something that I do while I'm under there wiring it. I just do it. For the 6009, it's identical. You take the pre-wired connections, they go to either side of a momentary contact push button. For accessory power operation, again, you take the one that comes from the magnet to the push button, push button to the hot accessory power. The other wire, again, you have the option of doing nothing with it or attach it instead to your center rail track power feed as an additional power lock on. That was easy enough as well. Now, we get to the complex one, the number 6019. Now, before I start this, keep in mind that even though the 6019 looks very much like the O-gauge UCS track section, they are not wired the same. So, these wiring schematics do not apply to the UCS, the O-gauge version, only for the 0276019 version. There are some internal wiring, even though they use the same controller and even though they look the same, the contacts are different. So, let's look at how this 6019 is wired up. If we look at the wires, as they come from your original controller, there are four wires. And from left to right, from the controller, excuse me, the first wire from the left comes from your controller and makes a connection to the ground to the common on your outside rail. The opposite outside rail grounds common, gives common, to the coil of the magnet. So, left wire, wire number one, goes to the common rail. The second wire that we see on this schematic here kind of goes around there, and it goes over here to our left-hand control rail, and it is also connected to the hot side of the electromagnet. So, this controls the power going to the control rail and the magnet. This will always be a hot delivery, whether it is from the track or from the accessory, this is hot side, because common is over here. The third wire loops over here, and it goes, it loops over there too, it goes to our other control rail. This one, depending on whether you are unloading or uncoupling, can be either hot or common. If it is hot, like this one, if it's wired the same, then it is for uncoupling. If it is common, opposite of this one, then it is for unloading. So, this one can be switched either way, depending on the function. The fourth wire loops over here, and it connects to the center rail. So, when you're hooked up, as it comes from the factory pre-wired, the power comes from your track feed, it goes into the controller, and then depending on which buttons are pressed, the power can go here, and it may go here, or depending on how your buttons are set up, common may go here, and your common is here. So, it is pre-wired for track power, not accessory power, pre-wired for track power. However, a lot of times these, after 30, 40, 50, 60 years, the wires become brittle, they become frayed, the insulation is gone, these need to be rewired. Or sometimes you need to splice it so that you can attach the track farther away than what the pre-wired connections are to the other side of the layout, and add into it. So, it's good to know how these set up the controller, and also how you can make your own controller, if you want to take up less space on your control panel. So, that's the way it is wired from the factory. Now, the first change you want to make is, do you want to make it wired to accessory power instead of the track power? Now, if you have all of your connections from the factory, the wiring is good, and you're still using your controller. If I can make that piece go away, you'll notice at the bottom, I don't want to move the cursor because it's going to obscure it. You'll see that the fourth wire coming from the controller is no longer attached to the center rail. Instead, they have run that power to the hot feed of your accessory transformer. By doing that, and keeping all others the same, you have your factory wired controller, and now you can operate the track using fixed accessory power instead of track power. So, again, the first wire still goes to common, the second wire still goes to the left control rail and the magnet, third wire still goes to the right control rail, the fourth wire goes to the accessory power hot. Not, not the actual connection from the track. If you wire from the track to the accessory power, it's not going to do anything for the controller, because now you've attached your accessories to your hot track feed, and you bypass the controller, and that's not going to help you at all. So, in this case, it's from the controller to the power back to the transformer. So, here is an alternate, so that's an alternate schematic, but, excuse me, if you don't want to use the pre-wired controller, or your controller is shot, and you, for whatever reason, if you want to create your own controller, you can replace it with a simple double pull, double throw, momentary contact toggle switch with a center off. Double pull, double throw, momentary contact, center off. That one switch can replace both buttons on the controller. It's much smaller, and I like it because it's much neater on the control panel, and, and it's easy to do. It's easy to do. I'll show you here. So, again, the first wire from the left, you can ignore it. If you, if you're using accessory power and a double pull switch, you don't have to attach that, that wire from the track to anything if you don't want to. In my case, again, I like to use it as an extra track feed. So, I will attach that wire to my common bus wire that is used for the layout, but all the outside rails, the common grid accessories, all of that stuff goes into one big common bus wire that runs under the layout. I'm going to attach that there to provide an additional common feed to my track. Again, that's optional. You could just disconnect it and not worry about it. The second wire now goes, as it goes to the left control rail and the center magnet, I'm going to attach that to one side of my double pull, double throw toggle, and I've got a diagram coming up here in a few slides to show you exactly how to do that. The third wire is going to go now to my control rail. It's going to go to another part of the double pull, double throw toggle, and again, I'll show you how that works. Those are the only two wires that need to go from the track to this new toggle switch. The fourth wire, you can leave it alone. The fourth connection, you can get rid of it completely, or you can run it to your track power if you want track power for some reason, or you can run it to the accessory line. You can do either. I'm sorry. Let me rephrase that again. It goes to the track power, not the accessory. It goes to the track power. Sorry. That one is, again, I'm using it as an additional power lock on for my track. So the same wires that I would run, same part of the transformer that supplies the hot power for my center rail, I'm running it to that, or you can ignore it. You can take it off. It won't affect the operation of the switch at all using the toggle. So again, for accessory power, this works the same way. So here's what it looks like when I do it. This is now upside down, so our connections we were talking about, one, two, three, four, are now backwards because we're upside down. This is now one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, but we're going to discuss the wires from left to right. Our red wire connection, which connects right here, goes to the center rail. I use the red wire because my red wire is my track power connection throughout my layout. Again, if you're using my toggle system, you can ignore this wire completely. You don't need it, or you can use it as a track power feed. I figure while I'm rewiring the thing anyway, I might as well put in an extra lock on. It takes a few, you know, another minute to make two more solder connections, and I'm ready to roll. So if you want, if you want to use, feed it into track power, you're going to attach it to your nearest CTC lock on, on the number one section back of the transformer, or wherever your power feed is coming from. The yellow wire is now, this is going to the right control rail. Again, this was number three as we were looking at it before from the controller. This wire is either hot for uncoupling, or common for unloading. We're going to have to switch this one back and forth, depending on what we want to do. That's why you need a double pole, double throw switch. This one will have to be able to be switched back and forth. Our orange wire connects here, and if you'll notice, this black wire goes to the magnet. That's the original Lionel supplied black wire, and so those are connected together. This goes both to the magnet and to the left control rail. This was wire number two as we were looking at it on the other side. This is going to go to the hot feed from my accessory power. Hot feed from my accessory power. That's where that one is going to go. This one, when it's energized, is always going to be a hot feed, always going to be a hot feed. I don't need to switch it back and forth. Again, I'll show you the diagram with the toggle, how this works. The fourth wire, the blue wire, again, this goes to the outside rail. This was wire number one as we looked at it in the previous slide, but again, we're upside down. The blue wire goes to common. It's optional. If you're using the new control switch, you can hook it up to your common rail bus, or you can forget about it completely and have one less wire to solder. Here's what it looks like. Here is our double pole, double throw, momentary contact, center off toggle. That means when we push it up, as soon as we let go of it, it returns to center and turns off. When we push it down, as soon as we let go, it goes back to center and turns off. That way we're not burning out our electronics by keeping them constantly on. We're not going to burn out the magnet coil or anything like that. It will turn off as soon as we take our hands off of it. These toggles will have six contacts on the bottom. Two at the top, two at the bottom, two in the middle. These two in the middle will attach either, depending on which way the switch is thrown, this contact will be attached either that or that. This one will be attached either that or that. So, from my piece of track, again, we have the red wire, which is optional. I can run that to my track hot power, or I can ignore it all together. My orange wire from the right control rail is going to go here, and either way, it's going to get hot feed. Whether I throw it up to uncouple, down to unload, it's always going to be the hot feed for my accessory power pack. Okay, always hot. The yellow wire, the left control rail, you see here, if we go to uncouple, it gets the hot feed. If we go to unload, it gets the common feed. So, by switching it back and forth, basically we're changing the power polarity, if you will, even though this is AC and we don't talk about polarity. It might be easy to think of it that way, of what's going to the left rail to change the function. The fourth wire, again, is optional. If you want to use it here on the track, you do it up to the common bus, which is the same place you're going to attach this connection on your toggle tube. Okay, so again, you've got your accessory power from your accessory transformer, or the accessory feed on your main transformer. You get your common bus wire, or the common to your transformer, and here's how you wire it. On this side, this one wire connects to both connections on this side, because it's connecting hot to both. On this side, hot to one, common to the other, and then orange wire, yellow wire, attach them to the appropriate spots on the track, and now you've replaced that large two-button controller with a single double-pole double-throw toggle. It's neater, it's easy to work with, and it takes up a lot less space on your control panel if you have a lot of input. So this is the way I like to go. It's smaller, bulkier, and once you get the hang of it, it's pretty quick. And all together with components, your double-pole double-throw toggle, depending on how many at a time you're buying, they're usually less than five bucks, so not a lot of money invested in this either. Okay, okay, one thing that I did not mention is if your 6019 track, if you don't want the unload function, you don't have any cars that unload that way, you just want to use it as an uncoupler, that makes it even simpler. Instead of a double-pole double-throw toggle, you just need a single-pole momentary contact switch, and all you do there is you then wire number one, I'm sorry, number two and number three are wired together. That's your magnet, and both control rails goes to one side of your switch, your button. The other side goes to your accessory hot, so you have hot to one side of the push button. You have two and three, the orange and the yellow, also wired with the magnet to the other side of the push button. That supplies your hot. The common is hooked up on the other side. It's already grounded through your track on the rail, so all you need is that. You can ignore or use number one the way we did before. You can ignore or use number four the way we did it before, and since you don't have to worry about running common to this, it's always going to be hot. All of these connections are wired together, and you have an uncoupling track, if you so choose. In my case, I do have a couple of the operating cars, but I figured while I'm rewiring anyway, I have one additional wire. I might as well wire it up that way while I'm at it in that way. If in the future, I get more cars to use it, then I'm already wired up for it, and it just takes an extra moment or two to do it. Okay, then lastly, the 1019 is wired up exactly the same with the same, with the double pull, double throw toggle. It's wired up exactly the same. The only thing you're missing is the wire from the magnet to the control rail, because the magnet isn't there. You still have both uncoupling and unloading functions controlled by the double pull, double throw. In this case, if you want to make it just an uncoupling track, it'll only uncouple the sliding shoe, the coil type couplers. It will not uncouple the magnet type, because there is no magnet there. So if all you have is late pre-war, early post-war coil couplers, and you just want it to uncouple and not unload, you can use the same push button trick as I explained with the 1019. So there we go. These are the 027 uncoupling and operating tracks that Lionel made from 1938 to the 2000s. These things can add a lot of operating interest to your layout. You can use the uncoupling on spurs and in yards, and you can use the operating sections to fire missiles or to throw packages, to load cows, and to unload milk cartons, milk cans, all kinds of things with the various Lionel operating cars. So with the 6019, that's the all-purpose having the five rails. If you just want to uncouple with this, or if you don't need the center magnet, you've got this. So that's what's available, and that's the way to wire them. I hope you found this video useful and informative, and if you like it, please like it, comment, share, subscribe, but share with your friends. Tell them all about it. This is how to wire up your Lionel 027 uncoupling and operating tracks. Remember again, if it is O-gauge, if it is a RCS, or sorry, a UCS, the RCS is wired the same as the 1019. The UCS is wired differently from the 6019. Essentially, the third and fourth connections on the UCS, which would be here, there's a magnet there, wires three and four are backwards for some reason on the UCS than they are on the 6019. Otherwise, you can wire them all the same. So I hope you have a great day. I hope you have some happy railroading, and you're going to go out, go to your next train show, pick up a couple of these uncoupling tracks. Maybe they're in bad shape. Maybe the wires are in bad shape, and they're selling them for two bucks a piece. Pick them up. Now you know how to wire them up and use them on your layout. Don't be afraid. It's an easy job to do. Thank you very much for watching, and have a wonderful day.