K-Line Cruise Versus Lionel

Can't comment specifically on the details of K-line Cruise but it was the motor driver boards that differentiated the 3rd parties from Lionel. TAS, K-line, and Digital Dynamics all had their own proprietary designs. They did use, by license agreement, the R2LCs and audio boards from Lionel. K-Line did use Lionel non cruise motor drivers though.

Pete

Pete, Thanks.  Yes I just added K-Line Cruise to the K-Line Allegheny.  The R2LC, Mother Board and DCDR where all Lionel parts.  The Motor board and the Cruise board are not Lionel.  Caught me off guard when the motor driver harness is discarded during the upgrade.  The kit also included a Steam engine instruction set and the cruise has 32, 128 and 256 step capability.  G

G, how does the Allegheny run now?  I have one of these and have toyed with the idea of trying cruse, but have shied away because of stories about and videos of jerk starts.  Mine now can start and run slowly, but it does speed up and slow down depending on the conditions.  Do you feel it's worth the $100 price tag?  And is there a why to uninstall it if I don't like it?

K-Line cruise requires swapping out the motor as well as the motor driver. If you don't like it and want to go back you can keep the motor in place if you want. Its easily reversible. K-Line Cruise came in various versions I think Ver 4 was the last and best. I have ver 3 and have not had any problems. Its about as smooth as early Odyssey and maybe slightly better.

Forum member Bob Karas has a lot of expertise with K-Line cruise and knows the commands to get them running right.

I would say try it and if its not right either restore to original or contact Bob.

Pete

Really Nice,  Had it at a crawl while I was doing some admin stuff and it hadn't hardly moved, but was.  You can get the K-line kits for a lot less.

My kit was a Ver 4.  The other difference is the speed steps.  32, 128 and 256.  Far more control than Odyssey or Cruise M.  Less depended on the R2LC.  Only takes serial data, no motor control data.   Seems like K-line was on to something here. 

Plus as Pete mentioned comes with a motor, so you have a spare.  G 

It's not clear to me how not receiving the PWM speed signal from the R2LC improves it, can you explain that?  I'm currently working on a project decoding the serial data stream from the R2LC, and determining speed from the serial data is actually somewhat complicated for relative modes like the CAB1 or the R100 mode for the Legacy controller.

I have both K-Line cruise and ERR CCM equipped locomotives, both offer excellent low speed performance as well as great speed control. 

Where do you get the K-Line cruise kit for "a lot less" than the ERR CCM?

I did not say it improves it.  I said it is less dependent on the R2LC.  The K-line cruise board does all the calculations and has all the speed data.  The only input from the R2LC is serial data.  It does not need the R2LC direction and phasing data that comes from the R2LC via the mother board 4 pin connector.  Not even used.  Plus a pretty simple method to change speed steps from 32, 128 and 256 which is more variety than Odyssey and Cruise M.

I went back an looked at ERR inst on Cruise M, it gives some hints about the variations in t R2LC with respect to the C11 and 13 boards.  I suspect, the K-line cruise doesn't care which R2LC is uses since serial data for throttle increment and direction are common.

Ebay and forum members.  No body pays MSRP for K-line stuff.  About $50 for kit which includes motor and mother board and all installation harnesses.  The RS385 motor is worth $25 in itself, more considering the tach and flywheel.   G

I never viewed the dependency on the R2LC as an issue, and I've never had any issues with the version of the R2LC.  The only "dependency" I see in the CCM document is they added a shortcut to the later versions of the R2LC to select speed steps.  I always use the standard selection, and it's never failed on any of the R2LC versions mentioned.

I've actually found that the 128 step mode for the K-Line cruise works better than the 256 step mode, so having the extra selection doesn't do much for me. 

Another question someone might have the answer for, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the K-Line Allegheny cruse kit was also the kit for the K-Line Big Boy.  Is this correct?  And was there a cruse kit for the K-Line GG1s with factory TMCC/RS?

Yes the Allegheny kit is the big boy kit too.  Had separate instruction lines added when there was a difference between the 2.  Mostly about how to disassemble the big boy.  G

I haven't checked them side by side but would suspect the only difference in the kits is the gear on the motor.

Pete

Pete, If your comparing Allegheny to BB they are the same kit.  If GG1 to Allegheny I think more than just gear.  I think the Cruise board retains the speed curves.  Bob had posted a method for changing the data in the boards way back.  G

G, my only cruise kit was for the Scale Hudson. I know that is the same kit used for the Mikado. I can imagine the articulateds have a different gear ratio but without seeing them next to each other thats only a guess. Someone intent on using the K-Line kit could swap gears from the motor thay are taking out if in fact the gears are different.

I had my kit for a few years before ERR started offering their cruise. I decided to try it anyway despite hearing about the some failures and if mine failed I would just install a ERR cruise M. 

Pete

I am not sure you can just change the motor gear.  The axle worm wheel would have to change too, plus the driver size are different.  I imagine the pic is loaded with a specific profile and responds accordingly, similar to what MTH does with flash and sound files.

The Allegheny and BB are the non scale and I bet are the same wrt to drive wheels and gears.

The Scale Hudson and Mikado are probably the same too, hence a kit that can service 2 models.

It really is neat to me, it looks like K-line used the basic design and than refined it.  Similar to the improvements they did with the Power Chief transformer.

Did K-Line have a school for Techs and a service manual.  The instructions Bob posted before they were removed had detailed method for changing the parameters of the K-Line Cruise board.   G

G, while I wouldn't recommend swapping gears you could take the gear off of the non cruise motor that you removed from the engine and put it on the cruise motor. 

Pete

Have you actually tried removing and replacing those gears?

Yes, sucessfully, but thats why I don't recommend it unless someone has the ability to make the pullers and jigs to reassemble.

Pete

My point exactly Pete.  Not many people will be able to apply that solution.

>>>"Seems like K-line was on to something here"

The only thing they were "onto" was a failure to operate in Consist (Lash-up) operation.  Without the PWM for direction steering(not in the Serial stream) , it won't operate as expected.  Single units are OK though.

Jon,  Thanks for the post but what do you mean by "direction steering"?  The K-line instructions state to go to 32 step mode for Consist.  I don't have another K-Line cruise to test with.   G