Legacy steamer lost sound

Take the tender by itself and put it on the tracks and power up.  If you don't get any sounds that way, something died inside the tender.

Does the coil coupler fire ?

Okay,  I removed the locomotive.  I get some sound from the tender (turbo-generator/banging noises) no whistle or bell.  The coupler does not fire.  When I couple the loco to the tender I lose all sounds.  When I uncoupled the loco from the tender and separated them a few inches I got a clicking sound from the tender, but no other sounds.  When I moved the tender away from the loco (around a curve) the turbo sounds came back, but no whistle or bell.

Tom

Can you get the whistle/bell if you use the transformer controls with the tender separated from the locomotive?

Have you tried it conventionally?

I forgot to mention that I am operating with TMCC, not Legacy control.

I disconnected the TMCC (disconnected the power to the command base and disconnected the wire to the track) and tried it conventionally.  Everything works fine.  (That was an interesting experiment.  I forgot how many locomotives were on the layout.  They all came to life in conventional mode!)  Only seems to be a problem in TMCC mode.  I even held my hand over the loco and tender to check for ground plane issues.

Tom

@Tom Densel posted:

Okay,  I removed the locomotive.  I get some sound from the tender (turbo-generator/banging noises) no whistle or bell.  The coupler does not fire.  When I couple the loco to the tender I lose all sounds.  When I uncoupled the loco from the tender and separated them a few inches I got a clicking sound from the tender, but no other sounds.  When I moved the tender away from the loco (around a curve) the turbo sounds came back, but no whistle or bell.

Tom

IIRC the tender IR needs to "see" the engine for chuff, whistle, and bell in command mode.

If it runs perfectly normal in conventional mode, including the proper chuffing, then I'd suspect something going on with the locomotive.  If you have other Legacy steam, you can mix-n-match tenders and locomotives to see where the issue is.  This is one of the first steps I take for flaky sounds, it's easy and doesn't involved any disassembly.

I just checked things out again.  It runs fine in conventional mode.  The bell and whistle work from the transformer in conventional mode.  I do not get any chuffing in conventional mode. ( I initially thought I did get chuffing, but discovered I had a flat spot boxcar in the consist)

This is the only Legacy steamer that I have.  My uncle has several, so I can try it out at his place.

I have 042 curves on my layout.  Could the tight curves have caused a wire to come loose in the drawbar wireless tether?  I find it odd that there are no sounds when the loco is coupled to the tender, but ancillary sounds when disconnected.

Tom

No chuffing suggests that the IR link between them is not working.  Next question.  Is the smoke chuffing normally when you run?  Did you consider trying the mix-n-match I recommended to narrow the issue down to either the locomotive or tender?

I seriously doubt it's the O42 curves, I believe this locomotive is actually rated to run on O31 curves.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

No chuffing suggests that the IR link between them is not working.  Next question.  Is the smoke chuffing normally when you run?  Did you consider trying the mix-n-match I recommended to narrow the issue down to either the locomotive or tender?

I don't have access to another Legacy steam locomotive at this time.  My uncle has several and I will take this over to his layout in the near future.

The smoke is chuffing normally in TMCC mode.

Tom

Well, I can't figure this one out at all.  I just hooked the TMCC back up to the layout for the second time.  When I powered up the layout I had full sounds, chuff, bell, whistle...everything!  I'll keep an eye on things to see if it acts up again.

Thanks for everyone's help!

Tom

Hard to say what's going on.