Skip to main content

Hello all, 

I have the subject engine and would like to convert it to the electric Railroad Company Electronics to make it TMCC. Has anyone done that to this engine? What do you think of packaging the electric Railroad Company Electronics in this engine? If anyone has done it please contact me if you would at jba435@gmail.com.  need all the help I can get as I have never done one of these before. 

Much thanks, Jerry 

 

Attachments

Images (1)
  • 20170916_132455
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

First you will need to replace the pullmor motor with a can motor. Timko offers a direct drop in with no modifications needed to the frame. It's a small motor but will still pull nicely. If you stay with the puffer smoke and original railsounds you can mount a ERR cruise lite in the boiler. I did this with the 704 warhorse Hudson. I only use the ERR for the motor driver for TMCC. I left the original LCRU mounted as is, but disconnected the two motor leads. The LCRU runs everything except the motor. You'll need to mount another program run switch. I made a mount and mounted it directly across from the other one on the gear box cover. Undo the wire connection connecting the two hand rails together. Use one hand rail side for the LCRU and the other hand rail side for the ERR. If you ever need to sell them put the pullmor back in and connect the two motor wires and you are back to the original. Obviously take out the ERR. If you want all the new stuff that GRJ offers then you will need to take the original LCRU out or send the engine to him for total upgrade. It sounds like a lot but it's a simple upgrade. Good luck. 

Rod Miller

You can use an AC Commander and keep the Pulmor. It might fit in the engine. If not there should be room in the tender for the AC Commander and Railsounds.

If it was mine that would be as far as I would go. Given the plethora of Hudsons if I wanted a nice TMCC one I would just get a K-Line Hudson and add a Cruise M or a PS1 MTH Hudson and add TMCC. The PS1 Hudson was MTH's answer to the 700E remake.

Pete

Last edited by Norton

As Norton stated, the AC Commander and RS installed in the tender is a very good and simple way to proceed.  I acquired a very nice, detailed K Line Hudson, 5344IM00045 K Line K3270-5344W NYC Hudson Scale O engine, and installed ERR AC Commander/RS.  The purchase of the Hudson and ERR products was very reasonable, the resulting TMCC/RS engine an excellent addition to any roster and well within budget.  Future enhancements will be easy to perform when needed, on a very well detailed and scale sized Hudson.  As for the MTH PS1 scale Hudson, I formerly owned one, and it is a nice detailed Hudson.  I have converted several PS1 engines to TMCC/RS with ERR products, steam and diesel.  It is not difficult and having more of my roster with Command Control is what I prefer, do not use the MTH control system, keeping all under one control method outside of conventional. 

Jesse      TCA

Attachments

Images (1)
  • IM00045 K Line K3270-5344W NYC Hudson Scale O engine
Last edited by texastrain

Like I said in another topic, you'll have to remove the big weight in the engine and find a way to insulate the handrails from the locomotive boiler to route as an antenna for the AC commander. That's the hard part. After that, all you need is the sound converter to control the old RailSounds with the commander and wire the smoke unit to the commander.

Can you get plastic stanchions?

Or can you plastiv bush & washer those?

Can you open a body's wire hole(s) and use shrink tube if your careful. And if you are more careful, maybe it might look like a heavy pipe collar. Easy to remove and try again too. 

  Rough sand the handrail area where you will insulate with shrink tube. Use a dot of rubber cement or innertube glue there and squeeze it out with shrinking., Slicone peels at the edges some, so slips easier than the stuff for rubber, which has gripped best for me on raw music/ piano wire ,(local hobby shop should have that) and that metal has better adhesiveness than handrails.

Guys, just because Lionel insulated the handrails and used them as antennas, doesn't mean that you have to do that.

A classic way to make an antenna is to insulate the tender body from the tender chassis and use the body as an antenna.

If the tender body has a plastic coal load, you can put a wire or stained glass foil under the coal load and use that as an antenna.

If the coal load is in a metal tray like some MTH steamers, you can isolate the metal tray from the tender body with thin plastic and use the tray as an antenna.

You could also run a thin, insulated wire out to the bell, pretend it is the bell pull cord, and use that as an antenna.

You could insulate the boiler front and use that as the antenna.

Use your imagination. Think outside the box.

Last edited by RoyBoy

As Roy stated, making use of the die cast tender body as antenna works great, as I have done with MTH and Weaver brass tenders.  Also, making an antenna with use of a "bell pull" insulated wire is an option worth looking into and giving a try, as John said, also.  Along with placement of an antenna under a plastic tender shell, to increase the reception, you can make use of the tender's wire made handrails, even making your own to use as antenna and add detail to the tender. 

Jesse     TCA  12-68275

The trade off with using the tender body as the antenna is putting the R2LC in the tender as well, else you have run the antenna wire through the tether. Putting the R2LC and motor driver in the engine reduces wires in the tether as well as giving more flexibility in controlling lights and smoke units.

Whatever works for you but if there is room in the engine I will put the radio and motor driver boards in the engine and insulate the handrail. Lionel has all sizes of plastic handrail stanchions and grommets. Its not that big of deal to insulate the handrail.

Pete

It's something I just started hand building for my upgrades to eliminate wiring a bunch of discrete components together, much easier to stuff a PCB.  It's a fairly simple circuit, but enough to do the job.  It works in conjunction with the Super-Chuffer and cuts the smoke volume down at idle when you're stopped.  I've also done a slightly more complex diesel model that monitors the motor voltage to know when you're stopped.

Steam Smoke Intensity Controller

Attachments

Images (1)
  • Steam Smoke Intensity Controller
Last edited by gunrunnerjohn

GRJ,

Just curious - when the relay is closed, the circuit use 4 bridge rectifiers to drop the voltage to the smoke unit when the cab light is on.  When the cab light is off, it looks like you're still using 2 bridge rectifiers to drop the voltage to the smoke unit.  Did you not want the full voltage from the R2LC smoke output in this situation? Is this for a 20 ohm smoke resistor situation?

Thanks!!

This was developed to use the 16 ohm resistor in the stock MTH smoke unit, so I needed to drop the voltage a bit to avoid excessive current.  Also, I did a version for diesels that I allowed some configuration so you could use several different smoke units and jumper to suit.  Since there is no Super-Chuffer determining if you're moving or stopped, the diesel design monitors the motor voltage to determine motion.  In the diesel version below, I used surface mount components to reduce the size a bit and also added a jumper field so you could select the drops or short out one or two of the bridges if you didn't want the drops.  For diesels, I typically don't want huge volumes of smoke, so I like to drop it off from max.  For idle, I can tune how much more the volume will be reduced.  This board is .75" x 1.15", and I fabricate them on .031" board stock to reduce the thickness as much as possible.

Here's what the diesel board looks like, and the schematic is below.  Note the red arrow, that's the configuration jumper field.

  

Diesel Smoke Intensity Controller [SMT)

Attachments

Images (4)
  • mceclip0
  • Diesel Smoke Intensity Controller (SMT)
  • mceclip1
  • mceclip2

Add Reply

Post

OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×