1989 B6 RailSound... Repair or Replace?

The sensor could be mechanical or magnetic.  If magnetic there may be magnets, recessed, the flange side of a wheel where the sensor is positioned,  Wired to a chuff sensor input on the electronics board.  

The magnet is part of a third wheel spinning on the tender axle.  The sensor is mounted to the truck above the wheel.

Jon

I think you can still get the hall effect sensor boards.  I'd check and see if any wires are broken, you can easily check if the magnet is still working, the remaining item is the sensor.

Check for metallic debris on the magnetic 3rd wheel.  I would also open the tender up and make sure the foam insulation pad hasn't disintegrated, causing a short between the sound board and tender frame.  That train is 30 yrs old!!

As I recall the chief complaint with these was low sound volume.  Hence the next generation Railsounds 2 got a volume control.

The Lionel hall sensor has a 1/2" square board soldered to the leads coming from the sensor. The board is supported entirely by the leads coming from the hall sensor. This board has solder pads that the leads to the RS-1 board are soldered to. These leads tend to tug on the board a bit and since this board is only supported by the leads coming from the hall sensor it is free to flex and eventually breaks the leads coming from the sensor. If you are handy with a solder iron it is possible with a small iron to solder these leads back together.  THEN, use some hot glue to stabilize the board.  OR, if your sensor / sound is still working use some hot glue to keep it from breaking. Just happens that I am in the middle of installing TMCC in a B6 and have the tender apart. Attached are three photos of how I fix the sensor to keep the leads from breaking.  I remove the three 24 gauge wires and replace with 32 gauge which is plenty big for handling the signal from the hall sensor to the RS-1 board. Then I route the wires through the mounting lug in the center of the truck. You can see I drill a hole in the lug and then I glue a piece of 1/8" heat shrink in the hole to keep the fine wires from rubbing on metal. I also chamfer and polish the top of the hole in the lug to help keep the insulation on the fine wires from wearing if there is any rubbing.         j

Ted S posted:

Check for metallic debris on the magnetic 3rd wheel.  I would also open the tender up and make sure the foam insulation pad hasn't disintegrated, causing a short between the sound board and tender frame.  That train is 30 yrs old!!

As I recall the chief complaint with these was low sound volume.  Hence the next generation Railsounds 2 got a volume control.

Ted,  The RS-1 boards sat in a plastic frame that unlike the foam does not die.  RS-2  also got an additional amp and it is far too large to get in the slope back tender.  However if you move the speaker back as far as you can you can get a RS-2.5 board in it.  When I'm finished I'll post pix of the B6 I'm working on.          j

Nice repair John, very slick.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Nice repair John, very slick.

Thanks John.  Been bogged down on that B6 for months now.          j

Well I checked for obviously loose wires or debris, and didn't find any.  As mentioned above, there's no foam pad to go bad. 

Question: how does one test the magnet wheel for loss of magnetivity?  Could this happen through the use of an uncoupling track?

Jon

Interesting thought, have you just taken a screwdriver and see if the axle magnet is attracted to it?  You should find a couple of spots around the circumference of the magnet with a pretty strong attraction to the screwdriver.

I'll check that today!

Jon