Thanks for the reply, John, but the Lionel Junction sets are DC, which limits you to using some kind of DC power pack. (I do have a couple of LionChief locos, love them, and they are fine with AC, like from a PW ZW.)
If I took your suggestion of using any cheap PW transformer, I'd need to first rectify the output to DC, requiring a separate rectifier module of some sort.
In the MPC days, we came across a few of the super-cheap sets back then that my son had to have, then eventually wanted to run on the main layout, and I simply installed bridge rectifiers internally to each engine chassis and they worked fine, though he lost any "reverse." (The original DC sets reversed the loco's direction by reversing the polarity of the DC output with the power pack lever moving past "zero" to the opposite direction.
Bill
