I won an auction for a #421 0-8-0 Lion Chief engine with remote last January for a good price. It had no Lionchief board so I waited until November to catch the ½ price sale. Got my board from Lionel pretty quick, plugged it in and found everything worked except for the goforth and comeyonder twisty knob had no effect - no forward, no reverse. RMA’d it back to Lionel, finally got the new one today, plugged it in and … perfect. Ran it around the small oval for a good 10 minutes, puffing smoke, going hither and yon, talking guys on board were yakking and the clang, clang thing worked. Then I put it in reverse, got goin’ a bit too fast and ZAP! Derailment, tripped breaker, now have a short every time I put the engine on the tracks. So is 10 minutes a record for smoking (or desmoking) a board?
I took the board out, ohmed the MOSFETs, found two of them dead shorted (one each, FR024N and FR5305) and had to remove (desolder) the daughter board the MOSFETs were mounted on just to get to them, then removed them. Unfortunately, in my haste I forgot to note where each of them went ………………. my usual. So basically I have a 50/50 chance of putting new ones in the correct spots…. Pretty sure I know, but maybe I should order extras in case I get it wrong!
So here’s my question – anybody got a Lion Chief board, good or bad they could photograph or at least look at and tell me if the daughter board looks like this:
(parts temporarily replaced for photos)
or like this:
Or if you have one that is known bad, and are willing to part with it for a nominal fee, let me know! Email is in my profile.
One last thought, if you want to see just how old and shaky you’re getting, try desoldering and resoldering a few surface mount components without causing any collateral damage!! It was touch n go, but I got lucky, this was one of my steadier nights, so no other parts were harmed during the surgery!
So..... these things don't happen to Conventional engines!!!
Thanks for reading my adventure story!
George
