I hit the jackpot

General Rule: Don't mess with electricity until you know the equipment is in good shape.  Spend the money to find an electrician to check out your transformers for safety's sake.

With respect to DCS, do you have the whole system?  If all you have is a TIU, that system can't be run.  Not a total loss, though, because quite a few engines with advanced electronics will still run on older transformers.

With respect to engines, learn how to open them up and how to identify what's inside; this includes tenders of steam engines, too.  Look around for batteries or battery packages and if you see any, replace them before applying power.  Search the internet with engine information (manufacturer's part number would be best) including engine #, road name, and any other characteristics you can determine.  Info found there might help you get better answers here.

Actually attaching pictures to your posts would also help.

Chuck

The only thing I disagree with PRR1950 is don't be opening up engines if they are fine. If some of them are modern engines (2000 and up) There are oodles and oodles of fine wires that could be pinched in the frame when re-assembling and electronic disaster could happen. But the older postwar trains are pretty bullet proof. Have you found remotes for the TIU yet?

Chuck - yes I have the remotes.  One is for TMCC and the other is for the DCS system.   As for the latter, I have good batteries in it, but no joy with anything on the screen.  Still researching.

Byron

Jeeez, Byron. Lucky you!!! Maybe you can tell us how you fell into this jackpot on a later post.  As for the ZWs, definitely inspect them before hooking anything to the tracks. Make sure the cord isn’t frayed or that there isn’t any obviously broken plastic. The handles should move freely.  Since you have command systems from both manufacturers, you certainly have some command control engines. The ZWs should not be hooked directly to the track without some sort of fast break fuse when running an engine with modern electronics.  Search this forum and you will see what many have used with ZWs with modern electric trains (and DCS in particular).  The in line fuse does not need to be used for post war or other conventional engines without electronics.  This is why you are right to try and determine which type of engines you have.  If you turn them over, the command control engines will usually have a sound pot, charging ports, or some type of sticker that gives it away, like “ps2” or “PS3” for mth engines.  Command control engines will also have wires connected to the couplers so they can be opened and closed via command control (you won’t likely see this in conventional engines). The underside should also have some identifying sticker or marking denoting if it is MTH (which uses the DCS TIU) or Lionel (which uses TMCC/legacy). If any engine appears conventional, once you’ve assessed the condition of the ZWs, you can hook the transformer up directly to the tracks without installing any type of quick fuse and have some fun running them, since they lack delicate modern electronics and should be able to withstand a derailment short.  Good luck and congrats!

Make sure the batteries are good in the DCS remote, then hold down the S5 key for several seconds and the remote should wake up.

Byron, a couple resources for you. Randy’s Roundhouse in Lincoln is great on repairs and has multiple gauges in his shop.

http://www.randysroundhouse.com/

Also for general questions and help, Nebraska-Iowa Railroaders has a club in the Oak View mall in west Omaha. ( I forgot about a couple moves!) They are generally open on Saturday.

https://nebraskaiowarailroaders.com/

Byron,  perhaps if you make a series of photos of all the locomotives you have we can help you identify them and what electronics might be in them.  Always nice if you can make the photos against a solid background  (white) without a lot of clutter so we don't have to strain our eyes.  Fill the frame with the subject.  Perhaps 2~ 3 locos per day.           j

Some good shots of the bottom of locos / tenders and any switches there will be a big help.    j

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Make sure the batteries are good in the DCS remote, then hold down the S5 key for several seconds and the remote should wake up.

See also, for follow-up:

    DCS remote works great | Byron Hurder

M.

First, congratulations on your acquisitions.

Second, all good advice above, especially about batteries!

I'm going to presume the engines are boxed and in their correct boxes. That said, when you take pictures, please include a shot of the end flap with the description and catalog number. That will go a long way towards providing you with proper information.

BTW, if you find any MTH engines and open them up to find a WHITE battery, do NOT apply power to those engines w/o first changing the battery! 9v NiHM are an excellent replacement. We can discuss BCRs at another time, but this will keep you from potential damage for now.

Speaking of pictures, please post a shot of the bottom of the TIU. There are several versions. Information on the bottom will tell us which one you have.

Chris

LVHR

I agree with others, with the transformers, even if they look good (cords don't look disintegrated, handles move fine, seem in good shape visually) it is worth getting them checked over, may cost a bit, but worth it from a safety perspective.

In terms of track power, agree with others, you at least will need a fast blow fuse/breaker inline with track power. If you do a search, there are many posts on here about putting a tvs (transient voltage suppressor) between the common (U usually) and the power output as well as the breaker. This is to protect any modern equipment you have.

With the command control engines, they usually have batteries in them. You best bet is as someone else posted, get the model number and look them up online. That will tell you what the engine is, what kind of command control it has and things like do you need to worry about batteries, if it has them.  I agree with others, if engine has a battery in it prob best practice is to replace it, either with another rechargeable battery or a bcr (basically a fast charging capacitor device, with a battery if you don't pre charge it using a charger through the charging port, you have to leave it on track power for an hour to charge (that is with MTH engines running PS 2.0, IDK about 3.0, BCR it is like 5 minutes on track power)

Wow - you folks are just the best.    Talk about helpful responses.  Thank you!

I'm headed to the boneyard with camera in hand to see if I can spot something of value to ask you.  Oh wait, that  would be all of the engines maybe...

Sounds like a nice haul. Please post some pix of the goodies so we can all drool. 

Yup- post pictures, and of course if you got any boxes, pictures of the label would help us get you going that much faster.

Well the HOs have quite a few of the original boxes, alas, the O doesn't have a one.

And they are quite dusty and dirty.  Lotta fun work ahead.

The backstory of the spectacular 'gift' of all this was that a family (friends) about  11 miles from here had these two layouts but had never been able to find a spot in their house.  My garage was elected!

That's most, but not all of my O27 locos.

Drooling's allowed; just not on my photos.

Byron

A couple of you had asked to see the bottom of the TIU.  Lemmee know if you can't read it.  Never knew there were different versions.

Byron,

looks like you got a lot of cleaning to do .  If you add the pictures as attachments to your posts they are much easier to increase the size for us to drool, sorry see, what it is you've stumbled into.  From what I can see you've got several different era's of items there, which is what most of us have.  Looks like a very nice haul indeed once the grunt and discover work is done.  The modern steamers will have electronics in the tender so those will be matched sets.  I see what looks like one or two older diecast lionel steamers which will run fine by themselves even if you mix and match tenders.  There are what appear to be some higher end pieces mixed in there, such as that larger steam loco with the orange running down the sides. This was the Southern Pacific "Daylight" scheme.

With the variety you have there you should have a great amount of enjoyment out of this.  I look forward to watching you pick through and getting them rolling.

Another obvious point given the condition, besides cleaning them up, you may also want to think about lubrication. There are plenty of threads on here about lubrication and given these have been sitting a while, it might make sense. On cars it is putting a (tiny) drop of oil on the axles and on things like the pickup roller axle. On engines it means looking up the engine and following what you see (there are generic ones for lionel postwar). For engines  with the old pullmor engines if you feel comfortable take off the shell, and remove the brush plate (carefully!), and take out the armature and see what the grease looks like. On modern engines they have specific points to do that, prob can find it on any number of places.