Help! My Lionel J3a 5433 is having speed and direction issues.

The engine has Odyssey which uses a magnet ring for sensing speed. It may be a broken magnet or simply the radio board needs to be reseated. Given the symptoms I would suspect the radio board first. The shell comes off fairly easily. Worth taking a look.

Pete

Thanks for the suggestion. Is there any way of telling that the R2LC (radio) board is bad without replacing it first?

First just reseat it, it may be loose or the contacts are dirty. Also make sure the antenna wires from the handrails have a good connection and the handrails are going into plastic bushings in the pilot deck. Sometimes the bushings are lost and the antenna gets shorted out.

If all that checks out then you have to swap out the radio board. If you have another TMCC engine use that one first before spending money on a replacement.

What does the headlight do when you first apply power? If it blinks continuously then its a signal issue.

Pete

When you do take the shell off a cracked magnet will be easy to spot on the flywheel.  Not sure if you still can get those if that is your issue. If not it can be converted to ERR cruise M easy. 

Thank you for the quick replies. I have an R2LC board from ERR's tmcc upgrade kit. Will that work?

The ERR board will work even though the newer ones are actually a special form of R4LC.

Pete

I do not recall the headlight ever blinking. I bought this set new a few days ago and it had never been run before other than the seller saying that they bench tested it.

Magnet rings and replacement flywheels are readily available, I keep a couple in my spare parts.  You will have to pull the old flywheel if the magnet ring is broken as you can't put the ring on from the top.  The "fix-it" flywheel has setscrews to allow you to easily glue the ring to the flywheel and then install the flywheel on the motor.  Make sure the spots on the magnet ring side face away from the sensor board.

Thank you all very much for your ideas and help. I ended up taking the train to a person nearby who did repairs on Lionel trains. He found that some insulating screws weren't long enough causing the engine to go at full speed. I would have never found this myself, so props to him. Now I can control the engine's speed!

The only thing that I am dissatisfied at the moment about is the Rail Sounds 4. So I did some research on upgraded Lionel Rail Sounds boards for NYC Hudsons and I came across 2 options:

1. The Lionmaster Hudsons #5418, item # (6-38045), and #5422, item # (6-38085). They both have Rail Sounds 4e boards with road number specific dialog.

2. The Century Club 2 separate sale PT tender item # (6-38097) made to go along with the Empire State Express Hudson #5429, item # (6-38000). It has a Rail Sounds 5 board with road number specific dialog.

I actually quite like the separate sale PT tender and am wondering, even though it has Rail Sounds 5 boards, could I put the Lionmaster Rail Sounds 4e board from 5422 in it. Then I would renumber the J3a loco and pt tender to 5422. If I did this, I would most likely get another boiler shell for 5433 so that if I want, I can turn the engine back into 5433.

To have proof that this is a realistic combination. Here is a photo from canadasouthern.com of 5422 as built with cylindrical Elesco feed water heater and straight running board. The locomotive is also pulling a PT tender behind it.

So does anyone know if putting the 5422 4e board in the 5.0 PT tender will work?

If it does work, does anyone know where I can find a Lionmaster 5422 Rail Sounds 4e board from? They do not sell the part at Lionel Support. The part # is (691RS4E031).

Why not just buy the pt tender and renumber the loco?

No need to swap sound boards or anything. Just hook the pt tender drawbar to the loco and away you go.

I believe all of the  prototype ese hudsons were originally "unstreamlined".  Streamlining was added , then removed again later in their operating carreer for ease of maintenance .

Hudson experts please advise.

RS4 sounds are pretty basic. Usually the sound that most like or dislike is the whistle. Have you heard the whistles on the generic steam Railsounds boards? Lionel has a couple available as well as all of the ERR Railsounds. Being generic there is no reference to roadname or cab number. That would save you the task of renumbering your engine.

Pete

RickO posted:

Why not just buy the pt tender and renumber the loco?

No need to swap sound boards or anything. Just hook the pt tender drawbar to the loco and away you go.

I believe all of the  prototype ese hudsons were originally "unstreamlined".  Streamlining was added , then removed again later in their operating carreer for ease of maintenance .

Hudson experts please advise.

RICKO,

That would work, (just putting the pt tender behind 5433 and renumbering it 5429), but 5429 was never de-streamlined with a PT tender and is therefor un-prototypical. I know that seems a little crazy but I want to be as prototypical as possible. I am way too crazy for my own good about the NYC Hudson.

-Cole

Norton posted:

RS4 sounds are pretty basic. Usually the sound that most like or dislike is the whistle. Have you heard the whistles on the generic steam Railsounds boards? Lionel has a couple available as well as all of the ERR Railsounds. Being generic there is no reference to roadname or cab number. That would save you the task of renumbering your engine.

Pete

Pete,

Does ERR or 3rd rail have a generic RS5 board? If I could I would like to upgrade completely to RS5. The only reason I don't want to use the PT tender sound board is because it's road number specific. If there is a generic RS5 board, could you point me in the right direction?

-PS.          I would still need to at least re-letter the locomotive because the loco's 1930s as-built roman lettering would not match the tender's 1940s gothic lettering.

-Cole

J Class Hudson Fan posted:

Norton posted:

RS4 sounds are pretty basic. Usually the sound that most like or dislike is the whistle. Have you heard the whistles on the generic steam Railsounds boards? Lionel has a couple available as well as all of the ERR Railsounds. Being generic there is no reference to roadname or cab number. That would save you the task of renumbering your engine.

Pete

Pete,

Does ERR or 3rd rail have a generic RS5 board? If I could I would like to upgrade completely to RS5. The only reason I don't want to use the PT tender sound board is because it's road number specific. If there is a generic RS5 board, could you point me in the right direction?

-PS.          I would still need to at least re-letter the locomotive because the loco's 1930s as-built roman lettering would not match the tender's 1940s gothic lettering.

-Cole

Keep in mind, 5429 will appear on the rear of the PT tender too....along with the tiny inscription “cenruty club II” .........Pat

All ERR boards have no mention of road name or cab number. The current ones have both intelligible crew talk and tower com. They are not however direct plug in replacements for your current audio board. You will have to run a wire from the current audio motherboard's serial data to the ERR RS board along with power in and speaker out. You should be able to go to the ERR web site and hear clips from the various boards. 

Pete

After doing some searching around on Lionel Support, I found that they had some Rail Sounds 4e generic steam boards (Berkshire/mikado) in stock. Does anyone know how good those are and will it just plug into the 5.0 PT tender?

(691RS4E046) RAILSOUNDS 4E / GENERIC STEAM (BERK/MIKADO)

The bottom of the image says 4.0 but it's actually 4e.

-Cole

Yep, plug it in and away you go.  However, I have no idea what those boards sound like.

J Class Hudson Fan posted:

The only thing that I am dissatisfied at the moment about is the Rail Sounds 4. So I did some research on upgraded Lionel Rail Sounds boards for NYC Hudsons and I came across 2 options:

1. The Lionmaster Hudsons #5418, item # (6-38045), and #5422, item # (6-38085). They both have Rail Sounds 4e boards with road number specific dialog.

2. The Century Club 2 separate sale PT tender item # (6-38097) made to go along with the Empire State Express Hudson #5429, item # (6-38000). It has a Rail Sounds 5 board with road number specific dialog.

 I actually quite like the separate sale PT tender and am wondering, even though it has Rail Sounds 5 boards, could I put the Lionmaster Rail Sounds 4e board from 5422 in it. Then I would renumber the J3a loco and pt tender to 5422. If I did this, I would most likely get another boiler shell for 5433 so that if I want, I can turn the engine back into 5433.

So does anyone know if putting the 5422 4e board in the 5.0 PT tender will work?

If it does work, does anyone know where I can find a Lionmaster 5422 Rail Sounds 4e board from? They do not sell the part at Lionel Support. The part # is (691RS4E031).

What don't you like about the RS4? Upgrading to a RS4e board doesn't change the functionality at all. The main purpose for the "e" -- enhanced -- was to eliminate some of the background hissing that was an artifact of the sound compression. This is mostly visible at rest, and once a locomotive is in motion, you can't really hear any difference over the usual layout sounds.

If you can find a RS5 board and chipset (but not Legacy 5.5 or 6) that you like, this could be added to your RS4 loco. There's one small quirk in doing that, as the transistor that powers the tender back-up light on the RS5 board will be destroyed, but the function will still work because of the AD20 in the tender. This really only becomes a problem if you want to put the RS5 board back into an RS5 loco (and is repairable if you needed it to be).

Lastly, you cannot add a RS4e board to a RS5 tender, as you won't have anything to control the back-up light and rear coupler. This is because an RS4 system uses an AD20 board for those functions. The AD20 was eliminated with RS5, and that functionality was added to the RS5 board. Without either an RS5 audio or an AD20 board in the tender, you lose those functions.

J Class Hudson Fan posted:

After doing some searching around on Lionel Support, I found that they had some Rail Sounds 4e generic steam boards (Berkshire/mikado) in stock. Does anyone know how good those are and will it just plug into the 5.0 PT tender?

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Yep, plug it in and away you go.  However, I have no idea what those boards sound like.

No, for the reasons mentioned above.

TRW

PaperTRW posted:

If you can find a RS5 board and chipset (but not Legacy 5.5 or 6) that you like, this could be added to your RS4 loco. There's one small quirk in doing that, as the transistor that powers the tender back-up light on the RS5 board will be destroyed, but the function will still work because of the AD20 in the tender. This really only becomes a problem if you want to put the RS5 board back into an RS5 loco (and is repairable if you needed it to be).

There's nothing connected to pin 7 of the 691-PCB1-038 motherboard to cook the lamp driver, so why would it be damaged?  FWIW, I plug RS5 boards into my little test rig with a similar motherboard all the time, and the backup lamp and rear coupler function work when they're placed back into the proper tender.