I recently completed a repair on an EOB equipped steam engine. This is my first experience with EOB. The smoke unit is a fan unit and emits smoke in a continuous stream. Is this the way in normally works or can it puff smoke in synchrony with the chuffs like a Legacy engine?
Pete
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What engine ,when was it built? Does the engine have EOB, or does it have a Saw Board?
Do you have any photos. Every one that I have worked on Puffs with the chuff. BF
The engine is an MTH PS1 NKP Berk that was converted by TAS. I had to do a repair on the mother board. Like I said, this is my first experience with EOB and not all that familiar with the options. Is there a key sequence that will initiate puffing smoke. I may have missed reference to it in the manual. It does respond to Aux1 8 and Aux1 9 to turn smoke on and off.
Pete
Timely post John. I was about to xerox the manual for the owner. Thank you.
Pete
I like having them in PDF, much easier to distribute. 
It took me a while to track these down when I got my first TAS unit and wanted to get it running. Hopefully, it's easier with the manual! 
I just compared my manual with the one John provided. Mine does not have page 37 that has the code to toggle Puff & Chuff (Aux1 Aux1 4). Entering that code (with Eng ##) has no effect regardless of the chuff rate chosen. I assume this was an earlier version of EOB that did not include Puff and Chuff.
Thanks everyone for your input.
Pete
There are a number of versions of the EOB boards, I have one that doesn't match my manual exactly either. I never tried the Puff & Chuff on mine, it's in a diesel.
Care to share details of what you did with the smoke unit board to sync with sounds?
John I fabbed a 12vdc power supply board. Then it was pretty simple. Used two reed switches, in the same location picking up the same mag trigger. Wired one to the RS4 board and one to my board. This pulses the fan unit on the lionel/TAS fan unit. The heaters are powered by my board also. It can be powered by the cruise commander if needed. Works like a charm.
One problem I am having issues with one cruise commander. No directional lighting in command control?
Any suggestions.
What smoke unit did you use? I'm about to convert an MTH SP Daylight locomotive with the MTH fan driven smoke, and I was planning on something similar.
I have no problem with the 12V P/S board, just wondering how you controlled the fan. I was planning on just breaking the connection to the fan itself and controlling that with the second reed switch. I may put a single shot on it to start it momentarily with each chuff, and also have a bypass to run it at low speed all the time to avoid cooking the wick.
The only thing that comes to mind with the directional lighting is that you need a load resistor on the lamp outputs to get correct operation if you're using LED lighting. I use a 470 ohm resistor across the outputs in that case. If the directional lighting doesn't work with incandescent bulbs, I'd say call ERR, the cruise commander is pretty simple in that regard. Oh, one other thing. The light outputs from the R2LC are negative in respect to frame ground, that is also a factor with LED lighting.
BTW, the URL in your signature doesn't work.
I had the wrong outdated url.
I just used the switch for pulse nothing to crazy. The output for the smoke heaters is controlled by the cruise commander. I have not had any problem with the wicks burning up. I put a switch on the heater power to turn off if needed.
The lighting is weird it works in conventional so it cannot be a wiring issue. Have an e-mail into ken.
I use a lionel smoke unit 610-8057-200. It works great!
Conventional mode runs AC out the lighting outputs I believe, and command mode runs half wave (aka pulsed DC). If you're using LED's, you can have them work in conventional mode but fail in command mode. Reverse the polarity of the LED's and they'll work in both modes.
I presume that solved the issue?
It is interesting to note that at one time TAS marketed a bi-directional lighting set that used the smoke output terminals of either a standard SAW board or an EOB board. I had done this to (4) diesel units. The normal Diesel reset code was AUX1 8. using this light kit attached to the Smoke output terminals the Diesel reset code changed to AUX1 7. Steam with smoke was Aux1 4, EOB use the Aux1 8 and further adjustment with Chuff rates, I assume for sound only. Were there any other codes that TAS used for specific purposes???
On some of the ERR stuff, the polarity of the lighting outputs change to allow by-directional lighting, I just installed the Mini-Commander (ENG) into my Tie-Jector to give it TMCC capability, I used it for the directional lights. It also has a strobe and remote control of the tie dropping mechanism.
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