Requesting advice from my friends…
I am having difficulty in successfully running two new generation Lionel Legacy steam locomotives that I purchased NIB directly from Lionel in December 2019. Before I describe the details, please let me explain that my testing with several of my older generation Legacy steam and diesel locomotives proves that they run flawlessly on the same trackage.
The two new locomotives, that are having the problems are:
LIO 1931120 “Southern Legacy USRA Light Mountain #1483” and
LIO 1931350 “Legacy N&W J #603”.
The three older Legacy locomotives that I have used in my testing are:
6-18992 “Southern Pacific Alco S-2 Diesel Switcher #1440”,
6-38984 “Chesapeake & Ohio GP-35 Diesel Locomotive #3515” and
6-11127 “Southern Pacific GS-4 #4436 Steam Locomotive and Tender”.
I am assuming that there is an issue with the way in which I have assembled and wired my layout.
The current symptom of the problem that the two new locomotives have is that immediately upon the (wireless tether) physical connection between the locomotive and the tender crossing a joint between (some) two Fastrack sections, there is an audible “pop”, and the LRS sound level drops very low. The locomotive appears to continue running as I had commanded it to do; it appears that just the LRS was affected.
Pressing the “R” reset button on the CAB2 remote restores the locomotive/tender combination to the correct sound level – I believe that it is the sound level that I had set prior to the “hiccup”; however, even if it is different, at least, after the reset, the sound level is very high, which is what I had chosen on purpose as part of my testing..
There are currently four locations on my layout at which this problem occurs.
My layout is approximately 23 ft by 15 ft. The trackage is 100% Fastrack. It is currently powered by a single MTH Z-4000 transformer and (temporarily) wired from a single transformer throttle in a “spider web” manner. The wiring includes multiple electrical connections – maybe not every 6 ft, but certainly not any farther than 10 ft. The layout is still at the stage of track “just” lying on top of the flat layout (homasote over plywood).
Before I received these two new locomotives the layout was not sophisticated, but was still more complex than simple, as well as being fairly large… double track mainline, two reversing loops, and several yards and spurs. In an attempt to isolate what/where the issues might be on the layout, I disconnected all trackage and wiring except for the outer mainline. The current symptoms are occurring consistently on this (in effect) single large loop of track.
Background – the two new locomotives had much more serious problems in running on my layout before I got to this current stage of diagnosis and correction. On the layout prior to any disassembly of the layout, they consistently and very frequently would fall into a state in which they would not respond to any commands at all, and which could not be corrected without performing a full factory reset. In an effort to decide whether or not there were defects in the two new locomotives, I assembled a simple test layout on the floor – an oval of O96 and straight Fastrack with the Z-4000 and Legacy command base and remotes that I detached and removed from the main layout. Both of the new locomotives performed flawlessly consistently on this test layout – both separately and running together simultaneously (NOT lashed-up).
I look forward to your suggestions as to what I need to do differently in order for these locomotives to run flawlessly on my layout. I am equally very curious as to what the difference might be between these new generation Legacy locomotives versus my older ones, that seems to make the new ones more sensitive to track and wiring aspects.
Thank you!!!
