So I removed the capacitors that were connected to motor on k-line GS-4 and I have the 2 terminal wires hooked through the tether to the CC board In tender according to the instructions, There are two more wires from the motor terminals to the lighting board to J1 and J4. I assume those are ok to leave connected? Sorry for the newbie questions, this is my first hookup and do not want to damage anything.
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Hooked up to what? Lighting? If so, sure. As long as the connections from the CC are not parallel connected to anything driven by a CV board you are fine. G
Nothing but the motor should be connected to the motor terminals of the Cruise Commander. That's the MARS light board that drives that special two-filament bulb.
Thanks. Will desolder from the terminals to only have the CC connected to it. Is there a way to reconnect this board for these special 2 filament bulbs then? I think I can get the CC all connected but a little confused to get all these lights back operating (cab light, firebox light, Mars lights, etc.). Trying to learn something new without screwing it up. Hahaa.
That's going to be a bit of a project. Where were all the other lights connected before? Were they all going to the K-Line Cruise board?
Figured since I am quarantined better learn something new. Yes they were connected to the K-Line Cruise board in the tender and the Mars board in the engine. Took pictures and already removed the existing boards and got Cruise Commander and railsounds and speaker mounted. Need to get me a fan driven MTH smoke unit too to replace the piston driven smoke unit. Nothing like a difficult one for my first time. I do have lots of soldering experience though just never worked on one of these.
The CC-M has marker outputs, so you can use those for the LED markers in the tender. For the locomotive class lights, I typically wire them with the headlight circuit with a current limiting resistor and diode.
For fan driven smoke, I naturally suggest my Super-Chuffer II, and to generate the prototypical 4-chuffs/rev, the Chuff-Generator does a nice clean job. In addition, if you use the Super-Chuffer, you can have automatic cab light control and Rule-17 LED lighting. For the MARS light, I dispense with the rather lame K-Line board and use the Ngineering.com MARS simulator. For that one, I also use a small 8V regulated supply and run it from the headlight output of the TMCC package.
BTW, I hope you didn't rip out all the tender stuff, you can use everything with the Cruise Commander M board and not have to do mass replacements.
Thank you for the information on that Mars board and connection tips. I already had a cruise commander board. So just got the Daylight Railsounds board and I plan on getting the chuff generator and super chuffer 2. I thought about buying the cruise commander m board, but since I already bought a cruise commander that was going to go in different engine, I just ripped out all the tender equipment. I guess a mistake. Here is the state of the tender currently as of last night. Still need to find a smoke unit to replace this one too. Any ideas of which one to get for the least modification to use with your products?
You have plenty of room for a smoke unit, so any one will probably fit. The Lionel rectangular one or the MTH steam will both fit into that space.
Thanks. Will look for one on the MTH site. I just remember seeing a lot of options on their parts page and got overwhelmed to which one. I like MTH units since they seem to smoke better IMO.
The MTH AA-0000070 is the one I most commonly use. I swap out the two resistors for one 20 ohm one for TMCC use.
Thank you so much for all the information. I really appreciate it 
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