All Trains Start At Once

Make sure your legacy base is plugged in an getting power, this issue is a symptom of the layout not having a legacy signal. If I remember correctly all later model legacy locos will start in neutral because of the possible catastrophe that could happen when all your locos start up in forward at full power.

Your Cab-2 has nothing to do with this. Your engines are waking up in conventional with no command signal. Check your connection to the base. I went through this a while back, and in my case it turned out to be the connection to the U post was loose on the inside of the base. However there are a number of other things that could cause this.

Thanks Matt,

The power indicator on my CAB2 has wild fluctuations with the power level going from one bar to full power immediately with the hand held is inserted back into the cradle and the recharge starting up. You are spot on in stating the trains are not receiving the signal from the CAB2. The CAB2 has been back to Lionel twice over the last year and has had major upgrades. I am running two Lionel Legacy trains and three Sunset on the layout. The Sunset are on the spurs and they are ones that 'take off.'

I will clean the track and reboot all systems to see what happens.

I too enjoy my layout.

Pete

Thanks Elliott,

I will check all of the connections, clean the track and reboot all of the CAB2. I agree that the engines are waking up to conventional.

Pete

You're welcome Pete, but let's be clear on some terms. The Cab-2 is just the hand held remote associated with the Legacy system. The Legacy command base has the remote charger and is what generates the signal that goes to the track.

There are 2 different radio signals involved with making the system work. There is the remote to base signal, but I forget the frequency. That has nothing to do with your problem.

Then there's the 455KHZ track signal that the base generates. That's your problem based on the behavior you've described. You don't have to worry about cleaning the track, it didn't all get dirty suddenly.

Think about anything you might have changed since the last time it worked properly.

Thanks again Elliot,

Thank you for the advice and the information, much appreciated. Good to hear about the track cleaning because I have 600' of Ross mainline and spurs. The issue started last week after a major open house session for O Scale West out here in California. The battery power level as indicated on my CAB2 hand held is acting erratically. The whole system has been back to Charlotte twice for power issues, batteries running down, CAB2 becoming hot. This is what happened; The CAB2 when taken out of the cradle shows one bar for the battery power level. I put the CAB2 into the cradle and turn on the recharge switch on the bottom of the cradle and the CAB2 immediately shows three bars. I turn off the recharge. I turned off the whole system, wait a  few seconds and then turn on the power to the cradle and then the power to the ZW-L. Then the trains started running.

Again, thank you.

Pete