Joe Fermani posted:The DC commander should work fine but this board does not have cruise control. If you get the Cruise Commander instead, you will get cruise control (the board does cost 40 more). Both boards control lights, couplers, and smoke. I do not know much about MTH smoke units so I do not know if anything extra needs to be done to connect it to either board.
Either board works on both conventional or command. The board will auto detect the command signal when it powers up. If the Legacy/TMCC command base is on, powering up the engine it will go into command mode. If the command base is off, the engine will power up in conventional mode.
The program run switch is used to program the engine so it knows its ID and feature set.
I contemplated the Cruise Commander, but since I don't actually have a static layout, and it'll rarely be ran with any other trains, the added cruise capability didn't add anything for me to justify the additional cost. I can certainly understand its appeal under other operating circumstances.
The smoke unit seems to be wired in to the AC wiring in the engine, and has an on/off switch underneath the cab edge, so I'm assuming there's no need to actually wire it to the DC commander as long as I don't want to control it remotely (saving running an extra pair of wires back to the tender).
That's really neat that it'll automatically configure between command/conventional. At the moment, I don't have a command base hooked up to my "test track", but do have one and will probably use it when I set the trains up for Christmas.
I do need to see if I can source a replacement "backup light" for the tender, as it was one of the items that was missing when I got it.
