GRJ's Chuff Generator in a Lionel TMCC J, PRR Y3, and JLC Challenger

Excellent work, Norm. John's chuff boards make a huge difference in an already great locomotive.

Gotta love it! Nice job Norm!!

I ran into GRJ at York last October. He was demonstrating a steamer that had his chuff generator. It was smoking like crazy.

Excellent work.

Dan must be pleased. 

Bob

Looks good, I'm glad it all worked out cleanly.  

Now that I've done a few installations, I find the Chuff-Generator to be considerably easier to install and get working than the magnets. I've only had to use magnets one time since getting this product done, and I'm working on a solution to fitting it into tighter spaces.

Hey Norm:  When you did this upgrade, were you able to keep your engine specific crew talk/chatter?

On a different note, GRJ and Norm are two of today's greats in the hobby.  Happy to participate on this Forum with both of them.

Berkshire President posted:

Hey Norm:  When you did this upgrade, were you able to keep your engine specific crew talk/chatter?

No problem installing either the Chuff-Generator or the Super-Chuffer and retaining the original TMCC sounds, they aren't affected in the installation.

Berkshire President posted:

On a different note, GRJ and Norm are two of today's greats in the hobby.  Happy to participate on this Forum with both of them.

Stop it, you're making me blush!

As Lionel has intentionally left out engine specific crew talk in its latest, non-Vision Line locos......many of which are TMCC re-releases....upgrading a TMCC engine to four chuffs and the Super Chuffer while keeping the crew talk can actually yield a better end product, IMHO....at considerably less cost.

I'm shocked at how much I miss the loco specific crew talk....and how Whistle Steam has lost some of its appeal to me, especially when the whistle is placed right behind the smoke stack and can barely be seen while moving.

The more locos one has, the more personality and uniqueness each seems to have with the specific crew talk.  Visitors are always really impressed by this feature.

I agree.. I'd rather buy a nice TMCC engine for $500-$600, rebuild the smoke unit, replace the traction tires, add the Super Chuffer and Chuff Generator for another $100 ish. Then you have a really nice engine for half the price, many times less than half the price of these new engines which continue to come out with errors, and cut backs.

"I agree.. I'd rather buy a nice TMCC engine for $500-$600, rebuild the smoke unit, replace the traction tires, add the Super Chuffer and Chuff Generator for another $100 ish. Then you have a really nice engine for half the price, many times less than half."

I completely agree.  I have purchasing several older (2000 - 2005) TMCC Steamers to be upgrade with ERR Cruise M and GRJ's Chuff Generator and Super Chuffer.  The two that have been completed so far run / sound / smoke great!  Alex M has been doing the installations for me as this is a little bit out of my element.  He has helped me understand the whole installation process and in the near future I will complete my first install of (ERR cruise and Railsounds) on a Williams FA unit that I have.   

A Williams diesel is a good place to do your first install, pretty easy and all the stuff is in one place.

Thanks BP but John gets all the credit on this one. I'm glad he invented these. I have three more I plan on using for some Lionel and 3rd Rail projects. Since I am not using his Super Chuffer, the mini power supplies are very handy. The second photo shows it tucked away in black heat shrink tubing.

I am also a fan of early to mid 2000s Lionel TMCC steam. I think some of them even sound better than the Legacy reissues.

Norm Charbonneau posted:

The second photo shows it tucked away in black heat shrink tubing.

Hope it doesn't get too toasty in there.   Lionel manages to run a fan motor with the same regulator package, so I should be able to run a little PIC processor.

I agree with everything that it's honestly more fun and satisfying to take an already excellent TMCC engine (with engine specific radio dialog) and make it even better, than spend at most twice as much on a new Legacy engine, in spite of the perks of quillible whistle/horn and 200 speed steps.

There are so many instances where I prefer the TMCC sounds - especially the whistles - on engines versus the Legacy sounds on the same models, like the 2-6-6-2, the Y-3, N&W J,  and the EM-1.

I set up my PRR Y3 with GRJ's invention tonight:

Norm:  Layout and steam loco look amazing......but your lighting is out of this world.  Well done!

Thx guys. I've had this forever, bought on blowout not long after it came out, probably back in 2004. This is the first time it's been out of the box in five years. I still need to clean it up a bit and redo some of the weathering, then hang a Kadee on the tender. I hope Big Jim doesn't hear it though, because GRJ's CG can't fix the backwards simple to compound exhaust transition. I still like the sound though and wouldn't kick it off the layout for that. I think most of Lionel's Mallet articulateds in the TMCC era suffered from this problem and I don't know if it was ever corrected in the Legacy reissues.

BP, thx for the compliment on the lighting. I have been playing with it quite a bit lately. I am converting over to 3000K LEDs and 3200K CFLs to get away from the gold/yellow cast of my Halogens. I even repainted the backdrop last month to make it a little more sky blue vs. washed out overcast. 

Anyway, now I am trying to decide on my next victim. I have a TMCC NYC L2a that hasn't seen this layout yet and for some reason I want to break out my old JLC Challenger.

Well, Norm, in case I get a vote....which I don't....I'd nominate your JLC Challenger. 

FWIW, your lighting AND shadows are so good that I actually thought you shot this video outside at first......and was wondering how you were able to physically move your layout in order to do so.  

The time, effort, and money you've spent on your lighting is well worth it, IMHO.  I'm blown away by it.

Side bar:  I don't know how many times I read the OGRR article that Allan Miller did on your old layout right before you tore it down, including your final run session.  Your new, better layout is proof that sometimes, "out with the old" is the way to go......which is hard to imagine b/c your last layout was a master piece.  But you've somehow outdone yourself.  Well done, sir!

Bring on the Challenger ! and ditto to the many complements !

Norm, would you be so kind as to post a measured drawing of your coaling tower please ?

Regards Mike M.

I may hold off on the Challenger for now since I don't have a proper caboose for it anymore (stupidly sold off a nice MTH CA-1 and Lionel CA-3/4 years ago). I am thinking I'd like to put the Super Chuffer in it too.

Thx again BP for the kind words, glad you like my efforts.

Trainman, thanks, here's a thread on the coaling tower: https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/t...aven-coaling-tower-1

I set up the JLC Challenger with the Super Chuffer and the Chuff Generator last weekend. I have the cab light being run off the SC so it turns off at rollout. I may skip the Rule 17 lighting. I am thinking of controlling the ground lights too but may need to think about it a bit. These are run off the 6V output of the lighting board which also lights the markers and numberboards. It took a couple tries to get the right chuff rate due to slop in the drivetrain. I found it was better to put a little drag on the drivers during the adjustment process. Here's a quick vid:

Also reworked the smoke unit a bit. I have a bag of elements marked 27ohms from like 12 years ago. I think these were Lionel ones, can't remember. I swore off smoke but have been playing with it again. I also like to heat tape the board to prevent scorching.

Norm, it is indeed necessary to crank the motor in one direction enough to get all the slop out of the drivetrain and then start the calibration.  It usually takes me a couple of times to get it spot on, I think the flywheel springs back a fraction and puts another count in at times, at least that's my story.

I like the foil tape idea, but you have to be careful not to short the smoke heater wires.

Norm Charbonneau posted:

I set up my PRR Y3 with GRJ's invention tonight:

Is that black structure I see in your photo an ash removal set up? If so are they available somewhere?

Berkshire President posted:

As Lionel has intentionally left out engine specific crew talk in its latest, non-Vision Line locos......many of which are TMCC re-releases....upgrading a TMCC engine to four chuffs and the Super Chuffer while keeping the crew talk can actually yield a better end product, IMHO....at considerably less cost.

I'm shocked at how much I miss the loco specific crew talk....and how Whistle Steam has lost some of its appeal to me, especially when the whistle is placed right behind the smoke stack and can barely be seen while moving.

The more locos one has, the more personality and uniqueness each seems to have with the specific crew talk.  Visitors are always really impressed by this feature.

Agree 1,000%. 

As great a job Lionel has done in certain areas of Legacy Railsounds, I wish the engineers hadn't let the executive office bean-counters win the decision to do away with engine-specific crew talk.  The generic dialogs don't cut it anymore, and have become very tired-sounding... all because Lionel didn't want to pay for the voice-talent to rerecord specific dialog sequences on new products.

In many cases, the newest Legacy locomotives are overrated.  And folks would do well to upgrade a TMCC locomotive as their needs warrant.  Even if they did nothing but run the TMCC locomotive under Legacy hardware control, they'd likely notice improved slow-speed performance right there.  Then they could tackle chuff rates or GRJ's super chuffer as they feel comfortable doing those type of upgrades.

David

I'd like to use pin 6 on J3 on your CG board to run the ground lights. I need to see if the lighting board power supply ground is common to outside rail ground. I'm assuming this feature works the same way as the SC board. Is this a straight path to ground? Your instructions mention a diode that's all.

Norm, the G-G ground light output is a FET with a diode.  That's exactly what the Super-Chuffer uses for the cab lights, you are correct.  The FET provides a ground to light the lights until you get moving at around 10 scale MPH.  You can sink around 400ma to ground through the FET, it's a 1.2A part, but I'd be wary of the small traces.   My trace width calculator says they're plenty big, but they sure look small to me.   The calculator claims 700ma, but that's really pushing it.  I typically use LED's for ground lights, and indeed I have even created some little SMT LED boards to glue under the walkways.  I drill tiny holes in the boiler and wire these with #30 wire-wrap wire.

For most ground light connections, I just use track power, that's what I designed for.  Since the diode is there, the FET only sees positive current.  If you're using LED, just assume the track power is positive and you're dealing with 12 volts.  Size the resistors accordingly and it'll all work out.

Very good. I found the lighting board ground is floated so I may wire the ground lights in two series paths to J6. I have two on either side of the engine so this should work out well.

Are you sure the lighting board is totally floated?  Normally, they have a bridge rectifier, so there is no common ground.  The Chuff-Generator requires a common frame ground, so you don't have a ground reference.

John that is actually a mini switching power supply. Here are some pics.

I've actually moved away from Lionel in favor of 3rd Rail. I think the you bet a better model with more accurate and road specific details at a slightly higher price but considering what you get especially in the diesels it is well worth it. The things that made Lionel special are being cut out in a effort to increase profits but by cutting out the things that make them special they've turned off their customers and lost sales thus negating the change. 

Well, in any case, we now have lighting success here in this awful phone vid.

Norm,

can you build my my next layout?  You are a true artist 

Norm, your layout is beautiful and the weathering on that loco in amazing as well. GRJ has some good ideas from time to time. 

Cannot express how glad it is to see and read these posts, Norm and John.  Along with the ERR upgrades I have done, looking forward to do same has you have, Norm, on my two Challengers, in the future.  Your information and expertise to others is always a treasure and never taken for granted.  When the "other" chores are completed, or weather gets too cold, hope to get back to finish the Niagara and tackle more upgrades. 

Thanks much for the information and pics for assistance in making great engines all the better.

Jesse

Looking good Norm, glad it worked pretty simply.