K-line Plymouth-Upgrade advice?

There's no way any of the current DCS stuff would have a chance of fitting into the Plymouth!  You could tow it around in a car behind it and probably do OK.

I have one that I'm also going to upgrade, I'll be using the ERR MiniCommander 2 with smoke control.

I'm guessing I may have to do some "creative" alterations to the cab configuration to fit the board in.  I'd like to have sound, but I think that's a total pipe dream from looking at it.

Could there be a chance of modifying the hood for the electronics, e.g, make it taller? Or would that require too much hassle? 

That's for you to decide.  I will hasten to point out, the stock fan driven K-Line smoke unit consumes much of the space under the hood, it's pretty large.

Dan, Thanks for the like on my old upgrade post! I'm sorry I didn't shoot any photos during the upgrade. I gutted the cab of figures and stood the board up vertically. I used a piece of card stock to insulate the back side and shield the solder side from view. I left the smoke unit in, but not wired for command control.    I'm certain the unit would need a different heat element as is smokes to much at command track voltage. My key factor for success was patience. I spread this out over a few weeks and limited my time to an hour or two work sessions. The worst part of the experience is that I knocked it off my layout a month after finishing it. I was lucky with minimal damage and have since repaired it. If your ever in the Niagara Falls area, shoot me an email and your welcome to stop by and see it.

Actually, the TMCC board will provide it half-wave track power, and it works fine that way.  The same smoke unit is in the K-Line Porter, and I upgraded that and wired it's smoke unit directly to the smoke output of the MC-II board.

For the Plymouth, I'm seriously tempted to replace the smoke unit with the MTH HO smoke unit and try to fit the MC-II in the body and sound in the cab.

i had mine done by train america studios many years ago it runs great with smoke but the inside of the cab is were the electronics are and they put new lights in the loco due to the voltage they send me the inside of the cab were the enginneer is i get alot of people loving what they done just wish they still sold the parts i want to do more of them

Did they put sound in yours?

no sound just tmcc i could turn off the smoke unit and fire the rear coupler and turn off the headlight

I want to figure out how to get sound into it.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Actually, the TMCC board will provide it half-wave track power, and it works fine that way.  The same smoke unit is in the K-Line Porter, and I upgraded that and wired it's smoke unit directly to the smoke output of the MC-II board.

For the Plymouth, I'm seriously tempted to replace the smoke unit with the MTH HO smoke unit and try to fit the MC-II in the body and sound in the cab.

GRJ, Good to know about the half wave. Thanks. However, I think the bd. I used was feature set for a blinking strobe as it came from a Trackmobile. I can't remember if it had an extra output to do smoke or not. Good luck on your plan!

I have no idea about the trackmobile, I know that's a very small board.  I prefer something that will be able to pull a few cars without risk of burning up the board.

i have one of those that was upgraded to TMCC years ago by Train America before Mike Reagan joined Lionel.  It runs very nicely but no sound, and the smoke unit was removed.  Now, years later, I lost the TMCC ID number and I haven't run it in a long time.  Like the prototype the engine isn't very stron and can only handle two or three cars.

Paul Fischer

There should be a RUN/PGM switch to set the TMCC ID, so losing the old one shouldn't be a big issue.

I have no intention of removing the smoke, I think having it run command with smoke would be very cool.

mine has a program run switch under the unit i love running it with smoke i also found me another brand new smoke unit for the switcher just in case i needed it again