Dave Garman: To answer your question; The antenna wire that plugs into the circuit board is only one (1) wire ANT. No ground (Gnd) wire is used at this spot.
As regards the two wires from the shell and the single wire to the circuit board; yes, they get tied together. Lionel did this in two ways, either with a plug taking the two wires from the shell/handrails, and fitting them into a connector and the wire from the circuit board with a mating plug and plugged them together. The alternate way was to use a wire nut and splice the three wires together.
A word of caution - be sure that the connections that the two wires are made to (usually the loco's handrails), are insulated from the body; otherwise the signal will be lost/messed up. In some instances, the body shell was the antenna and it was insulated from the chassis. I don't remember about yours. If the two wires are screwed to the boiler body, then the chassis needs to be insulated from it. If the two wires go one each to a handrail, then be sure that the handrail passing through the body and all its supports are keeping the handrail away from the body. Be sure to do a reset of the radio board as this unit may have been sitting for a while without power or use and could need to be reset to factory default. Hope this helps , Dennis M.
