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First, I'd like to say, I'm new the Lionel 3 rail family. My brother and I had a 3 rail Marx set when we were kids many years ago. I graduated to N-Scale. But, when the eye sight started to go, so did the N-Scale. My dad had an American Flyer UP 4-8-4 since he was a kid. I did finally get that and that is when I get to re-live my childhood. He would periodically get it out and set it up and allow us to play with it. But, it's only been since last fall I purchased the Lionel LionChief Polar Express for Christmas, that is when I was bitten by the 3 rail bug.

I re-watched a DVD I have on steam trains, it has the history of the Chessie Steam Special on it. I remember this train coming through my home town back in Ohio before I joined the Coast Guard and moved away. I always liked the paint scheme and I'm a steamer fan at heart. So I did a search on eBay and found the Lionel Chessie T-1. I wanted an S-Gauge, but no luck.

I purchased this engine for $200 plus shipping. I got it and immediately took it apart and found some discrepancies.  The front boiler to chassis screw was missing, the firebox light was broken and red lens was missing, and I wasn't sure if the smoke unit worked or not.

So after placing an order to Lionel for some parts, I made a couple of modifications. This is were we take off. Hopefully the pictures and small video work.

I contacted Lionel Support for the diagrams and part numbers for the Chessie. I found that the smoke unit was no longer available.

I asked for the L-3 drawings, and received the L3A ones. These are for the NYC 4-8-2 Mohawk 6-18064. Looking at these drawings, This must be for an early TMCC system. But I did notice that most of the hard parts were the same but with different part numbers.

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Above is the 2 smoke units side by side. The green one is the OE smoke unit P/N 610-8006-200. This is no longer available. The silver one is the new one P/N 610-8064-200. These are the same. But the tops of the smoke units are slightly different. You can see that there is a hole in the vertical element support. I'm thinking this was put in to help with the problem of too much smoke fluid blocking off the air flow. So, I put one in the OE smoke unit, this is a 1/8" hole.

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Next I enlarged the hole for the smoke stack. This I enlarged to the diameter of the stack at the opening. You can see the differences below. I was going to block off the hole for the steam chest but decided to leave it open for now. Then, I removed the 27 ohm smoke element and installed an 18 ohm element P/N 691RS18OHM. I got a new smoke piston since the OE one was sloppy in the bore. The new one is better but not much.

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On the first test run of the smoke unit I noticed that the smoke lever was lifting up in the right saddle. So I made a couple of "caps" and JB Welded them to the supports. I didn't scrape off the paint so these should be fairly easy to pop off if I need to. The smoke lever now stays were it's supposed to.

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The last modification I did was to replace the front lamp and use an LED. If anyone is interested contact me and I can provide a drawing of circuit. You can see the light in the video.

After I got the engine reassembled, I shot this short video, I'm not to impressed with the smoke unit and piston, because there is a bunch of smoke coming from under the boiler due to the sloppy piston. I used an American Flyer 8B transformer to test run the engine, the CW-80 is on it's way. Since there is no load on the engine, the voltage is very low. You can see the amount of smoke pouring out of the engine.  I have considered trying to convert this engine to a fan driven smoke unit and TMCC using the Mohawk part numbers. But I not familiar with any of this technology and don't want to spend the money for it, currently.

 

Here's the link for the video.

 

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Last edited by Jayhawk500
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No video here with Win7 or Win10.  However, I can open it and view it if I download the video and open it with VLC Media Player, don't know why Windows Media Player chokes on the video.

For videos, I upload them to YouTube and then link to them, that seems to work much better in forums.

BTW, pretty good smoke for a puffer, nice job.

Last edited by gunrunnerjohn

If you need to find more information on the Lionel T-1 look up the Lionel number 18006 as the Chessie engine is an exact copy of the Reading Lines T-1, just has a different Lionel part number and paint job to the best of my knowledge. In real life the Chessie System either bought or rented the Reading Lines T-1 2101 and re-painted it for the Chessie System and gave it a tune-up or minor overhaul as well.

Lee Fritz

phillyreading posted:

If you need to find more information on the Lionel T-1 look up the Lionel number 18006 as the Chessie engine is an exact copy of the Reading Lines T-1, just has a different Lionel part number and paint job to the best of my knowledge. In real life the Chessie System either bought or rented the Reading Lines T-1 2101 and re-painted it for the Chessie System and gave it a tune-up or minor overhaul as well.

Lee Fritz

Any chance of getting a link for the 18006? The paperwork I have doesn't have any of the wiring with it?

Thanks in advance.

Chris

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Speaking of the 18006, I have one of those that I upgraded with all my stuff, ERR Cruise and sound, Super-Chuffer, Chuff-Generator, etc.   I used an MTH fan driven smoke unit, smoke like it's on fire.   For a couple of meets, it was my Super-Chuffer demo locomotive at York.

JOhn, I have the Reading and Chessie T-1 but with the AC motors. Want to update mine for me with TMCC/Railsounds, smoke unit and chuffer? :-)

Mine was a royal PITA, the tether was the sticking point.  They don't have any place to feed the tether out logically, so I decided to put it on the apron below the cab floor.  That spot is about 1" of SOLID DIECAST!  I must have worked on that at least an hour with a Dremel and a carbide bit to hog out a big enough hole to put my 10-pin tether connector, I'm not doing another one of those any time soon!

ZWPOWER13 posted:
gunrunnerjohn posted:

Speaking of the 18006, I have one of those that I upgraded with all my stuff, ERR Cruise and sound, Super-Chuffer, Chuff-Generator, etc.   I used an MTH fan driven smoke unit, smoke like it's on fire.   For a couple of meets, it was my Super-Chuffer demo locomotive at York.

JOhn, I have the Reading and Chessie T-1 but with the AC motors. Want to update mine for me with TMCC/Railsounds, smoke unit and chuffer? :-)

If, I go down that road, I'm theoretically thinking that the AC Commander will fit in the engine and the RailSounds in the tender. The fan driven smoke unit would be later. But then again, I typically a gluten for punishment, so I may stuff everything in the tender and "hog out" a hole for the connector. If I do, I'll post up how I do it. I also noticed that the  NYC 4-8-2 Mohawk 6-18064 has a IR link on the draw bars. If we put a set of the Mohawk tender trucks on the Chessie tender, power would be from the track and not the engine.

John, You have a source and part number for that 10 pin connector?

I've attached the 2 drawings for the Mohawk.

Chris

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Last edited by Jayhawk500

Thanks for the info John. I did a cost comparison with purchasing what I would need from the Mohawk and what Elec RR costs. It's about half. So I need to bridge the gap between the tender and engine. Its too bad that the existing harness on the engine has too fine of wires to supply the smoke unit. Does anyone know the manufacture of the tether connectors on the engine?

 

So I decided to pull the trigger and go all in with TMCC on this 4-8-4...As I stated  above I was able to get a Cab-1 system. It was sold as is and all I know for now is I need an antenna for the remote, should be fairly easy.

I had a Lionel fan smoke unit I bought to modify my Berkshire Jr Polar Express, but this mod would be sooo much easier. I did change out the smoke element to an 18 ohm for the PE, but since I want to add the Super-Chuffer I'm going to go with a 20 ohm as per GRJ. It was hard to strip the chassis down for the first time, but I saw how easily it was assembled, so I felt a little more at ease. I took some careful measurements prior to removing the OE smoke unit so I would be able to put the fan driven one in it's place. I still need to remove the smoke lever from the chassis but that'll be super easy. I had to file down the area directly below the fan motor for clearance. I also plan on adding a switch to shut off the smoke unit fan and element when I so desire or...  when I'm told to do so by the Boss.

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Part of the modification to the smoke unit besides the element, is that I cut the trace on the PCB separating the fan circuit from the element circuit. Part of the order I placed for the fan unit was extra connectors. So I added one strictly for the element. You can see the cut trace in the bottom right hand corner. I will also be enlarging the air hole to 3/16" when I change out the element. Just so you know...The stack is a sand blasting nozzle I had laying around. It fit in the smoke hole, so with some drilling out the nozzle hole and grinding the outside, I got it to fit up inside the boiler smoke stack. Since the boiler smoke stack is painted gray, I painted the smoke unit stack gray to match, inside and out.

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The smoke unit bracket is from an old grill I once had. This is a piece of stainless I was able to cut and use. I had to file down the LTI, Inc. on the front of the steam chest to get the bracket to slide between the mount for the OE smoke unit and the steam chest. One screw and nut holds the bracket in place. Sorry don't have a better picture.

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This is with the boiler on the chassis. The smoke unit stack plugs in nicely to the boiler stack and the paint matches. Its the perfect height too.

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Next up will be the tether and plug for mating the tender and engine together. That should be arriving any day.

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Last edited by Jayhawk500
gunrunnerjohn posted:

Yep, they already provided the traces to the connector.   I normally route the motor directly to the Super-Chuffer through a 2-pin connector.  Then I use the smoke unit connector for the heater.  This allows you to unplug the smoke unit and take it out for maintenance, you know that will be required at some point.

John, From what I'm reading, You bypass the circuitry for the fan motor and go directly to the S-C?

Spent the best part of the day re-designing the smoke unit to make it more clean looking. I removed the diode, Cap., and transistor which all were part of the 5v regulator for the fan motor. I received my 20 ohm resistors today, and bought a SPDT switch so I could isolate the smoke unit if the Boss gets agitated. Because of the way the headlight bulb is mounted on the boiler front I had to cut off over half of the switch handle. I also enlarged to air hole to 3/16". The smoke unit is ready to go. Now I need to get the rest of the electronics.

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No problem.  For reasons only known to ERR, the AC Commander got a duplicate antenna connection instead of the chuff switch input.  However, the chuff input to the R2LC is on pin-17 of the socket.  Instead of the chuff input, just tap into it there, it is the same as the other ERR products chuff input.  Wire it just like my diagram of the Cruise Commander with the exception of this one change.

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Jayhawks, great work on your mod. John can correct me on this if I'm wrong but thinking you have AC motor on this loco; believe the chuuf generator is designed for D.C. Motor with a flywheel for the LED reader; I had to use a reed switch magnet assy from. ERR to generate a chuff for my 18006 and 18009; mounted the assy on a tender truck; ERR manuals show to mount a reed switch.  Some folks have swapped to a D.C. Motor mod; did that also but I found the gear box is geared for an AC motor; did not work well for me; bottom line check with GRJ; he is a wizard on these upgrades. Falcon70

gunrunnerjohn posted:

No problem.  For reasons only known to ERR, the AC Commander got a duplicate antenna connection instead of the chuff switch input.  However, the chuff input to the R2LC is on pin-17 of the socket.  Instead of the chuff input, just tap into it there, it is the same as the other ERR products chuff input.  Wire it just like my diagram of the Cruise Commander with the exception of this one change.

Falcon70 posted:

Jayhawks, great work on your mod. John can correct me on this if I'm wrong but thinking you have AC motor on this loco; believe the chuuf generator is designed for D.C. Motor with a flywheel for the LED reader; I had to use a reed switch magnet assy from. ERR to generate a chuff for my 18006 and 18009; mounted the assy on a tender truck; ERR manuals show to mount a reed switch.  Some folks have swapped to a D.C. Motor mod; did that also but I found the gear box is geared for an AC motor; did not work well for me; bottom line check with GRJ; he is a wizard on these upgrades. Falcon70

Thanks for the info John. We'll make 'er happen.

Falcon70, I still have the a.c. motor. As per John (I've picked his brain a lot already) in another thread, The chuff generator won't work with the a.c. motor. No fly wheel.

I'll be doing everything by ERR instructions.

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