GE Demo 610-8226-010 railsounds II board capacitor 15

Its the dark blue one with the gold stripe in the attached picture that says Japan on it. Totally missing from the board. 

After zooming in on some more pictures it looks like a 1000 uf 35V capacitor. Can anyone confirm this?

Doug,

I checked my back stock of RS 2.5 boards (that's my post you linked to) and can confirm that C15 is indeed a 1000uf, 35v polarized cap.

I hope this helps.

TRW

That is a huge help thanks! I might be asking how much for a "back stock" board in the near future....

IMO this is one of the best sounding "early RS" engines Lionel produced.  I have it and the startup and shutdown sounds are excellent.  I hope you get it going.  I only wish it had can motors.

Given the fact that a capacitor is missing, it's pretty likely that isn't the only issue with the board.  You can transplant those RS chips to a RS4 board and use the Lionel Powered Motherboard for the repair and maintain the sounds.

Yeah, I am afraid of that too John. I got some caps today and will try the simple fix first. If that doesn't work I will just buy another diesel and lash'em up, haha.

So I soldered the cap in and all I got was a static sound that went up and down with track voltage changes. I noticed the RS chip was not seated all the way so I pushed it down and it didn't make a difference. So it would appear something else on the board is bad like potentially the chip socket got hosed at some point. At least sounds came out of it after adding the cap. I think I will remove the chip looking for bent socket areas and reseat it before buying a new board.

MartyE posted:

IMO this is one of the best sounding "early RS" engines Lionel produced.  I have it and the startup and shutdown sounds are excellent.  I hope you get it going.  I only wish it had can motors.

Amen to the can motors. I am trying to lashup two of the exact same diesel and they want to fight each other to the point it trips the CW-80 and the bigger transformer I tried. One has some run time on it while the other is brand new and seems "tight". I took the new one apart and lubed it but it seems like it needs some run time to loosen up to the point where it will play nice with the used engine. Think I will try running it in to see if it gets better.

OK, so I reseated the chips and resoldered a purple wire I accidently yanked while getting the chips out. I burnished the chip edges with 4000 grit sandpaper while they were out to make sure I would get some connection. Fired it up and got full sound. However, when the engine moves it makes god awful noises out the speaker and seems to be in time with the pickups from the eccentric (3 sided wheels). If the loco stops in the right spot the sounds all work and everything is normal. If it stops somewhere in a spot where its receiving signal from the 3 sided wheels I get no sound. So whats my next move? Just disable those proximity switches and live without the RPM change from the engine? Open to ideas, feel like I am close now.

I'd start with checking the wiring from the cherry switch (that activates with the oval-shaped wheel on the one truck) to the RailSounds 2.5 board.

Here's the parts breakdown along with the wiring schematic:

https://www.lionelsupport.com/...8226-000Complete.pdf

TRW

Thanks for the schematic. As an interesting point the battery leads were missing from this board and they solder right next to the cherry switch leads... Also, the potentiometer won't control sound volume but that is minor in the grand scheme as the Aux 4 command lowers the volume.

The battery leads on those boards are somewhat fragile -- they were hardwired versus everything else being connected via those white Leoco-style connectors.

The lack of control via the volume pot again points me towards a wiring problem. The pots usually don't fail in that manner.

TRW

PaperTRW posted:

The battery leads on those boards are somewhat fragile -- they were hardwired versus everything else being connected via those white Leoco-style connectors.

The lack of control via the volume pot again points me towards a wiring problem. The pots usually don't fail in that manner.

TRW

Spot on! After thinking about the symptoms further and closely examining the schematic it turns out one of the previous owner(s) or Lionel... plugged the volume pot into the cherry switch slot and vice versa. Flipped those plugs and got full, clear sounds! So in summary I did the following to get it working:

1. Replaced C15 capacitor (it was missing) with a 1000uf 35 volt cap

2. Pulled chips, cleaned edges, and reseated them gently towards the top of the seat 

3. Found the reversed volume pot/cherry switch leads and switched them

Hopefully this will help someone searching in the future. Feel like I deserve a badge for getting this one, or at least a beer...

Doug,

Glad it worked out. 

Cheers!

TRW

Nice Doug! Glad you got the sound working. 

So the plot thickens.... something smoked again but this time I can't tell what. Sound is dead again and engine was not responsive to TMCC commands (intermittent). Turns out someone had soldered a longer lead onto the antenna and then soldered the lead to a small metal plate at the front of the engine that would periodically touch the engine frame and ground out. Removed that kaka and the engine responds perfectly now but the sound is still dead. Strongly considering a tether to hookup dual 16 ohm speakers from my good Dash 9 to get sound into the other unit. Just glad the control board didn't die from the antenna grounding out. 

Bite the bullet and replace the sound board and move your chips over.  You may be too late at this point if you toasted the chips, but hopefully not.

Starting to see this wit older stuff.  Repair rate at component level does not always work.  TMCC, PS-2 5V fall into this category.  Maybe change all the capacitors.  But I am with John, go with a new board.  G

Thanks guys. Do you think the antenna shorting out was the root of all evil? I don't want to put a new sound board in there and fry that too. I like to think the capacitor replacement would have (it was for a while...) been effective if the antenna wasn't shorting.

The antenna is an input so shorting to common should not hurt. I would suspect other  human errors.

Doug Kinsman posted:

That is a huge help thanks! I might be asking how much for a "back stock" board in the near future....

I just noticed your follow-ups to this thread from a week ago.

I still have a few loose RS2.5 boards available -- shoot me a note at papertrw@aol.com if you're still interested.

TRW