Maybe it is your layout/track after all? Would it be possible to run these on other layouts? Has the friend whose loco you have mention anything about the squeaking on his layout?
Too many facts contradict that possibility.
1. No other engine I own does this on my layout
2. This engine made this noise on my previous layout
3. My friend's engine make the noise on
his layout, which is Kato Unitrack code 80, whereas mine is Atlas 55.
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Victor:
None of the drivers on these two S-2's have any vertical freedom to speak of. I certainly cannot get any of them
off the railhead without lifting the whole engine. The engine also makes the noise quite regularly
running straight through a switch, running on the straight, not the diverging, route.
The rear traction tire driver on the S-2 is geared, but not pinned to the siderods. Drivers 2-3 are geared and pinned.
Driver 4 is pinned only. When I removed drivers 1 and 4 from mine, and ran it only on 2-3 (the two center drivers,
which are pinned and geared), it still made the noise.
I hear what you are saying about uneven speeds: perhaps there is a moment where a driver gets a little hung up
and it drags along for an instant. I would be be pretty hard to see this. But I have already eliminated
the traction tire driver as the problem by running without the whole driver. It could be a forward sliding thing,
but it seems to me it must be a sideways slide that causes this. That would explain it happening coming
out of curves and going through frogs (where the guard rails pull the drivers left or right to align them through
the switch).