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Older 3rd Rail steam locos used Lionel Railsounds cards mounted to Train America Studios (TAS) motherboards.  One tender truck wheelset has a magnetic disc at its center and a Hall-effect sensor mounted adjacent to that disc, to drive the Lionel chuff feature.  I converted my 3rd Rail NYC Niagara to ERR Cruise and Sound (Daylight).  I replaced the Hall-effect sensor with the ERR reed switch, which switches on and off as the poles inside the wheel disc pass by.  DMM measurement confirms that the switch works as intended.  Yet the chuff sound isn't working.  I'm wondering if there are too many poles in the disc, causing the chuff scheme to stay in the "off" state continuously, and I should instead mount the little magnet on the wheel and sense that, as ERR intended.  Has anyone else been down this road?

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@Norton posted:

I haven’t reversed engineered the TAS board but would think the hall device may not be directly connected to the R2LC pin 17. If so have you connected the reed switch between Pin 17 and Pins 3/4 as required?

Pete

Pete, the TAS mobo and Lionel RS boards were removed, replaced by ERR Cruise Commander and ERR Daylight Sounds.  Per ERR instructions, the reed switch is connected to the Commander, not the Sounds board.  Steering diodes isolate the smoke fan and Commander "chuff inputs" from each other.

I think Pete may be onto something, if you're grounding pin-17, you should be getting chuff.  If you have the diode the wrong polarity, it won't pull the chuff to ground and generate the chuff.  Perhaps a diagram of how you wired the steering diodes?

Both diodes' cathodes are connected to the reed switch, the other side of which is connected to common.  One anode connects to the chuff pin of the 3rd Rail smoke unit, the other anode connects to the chuff input (X2) of the Cruise Commander card.

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