operating mth loco on legacy control

You can use TMCC/Legacy remotes to control variable voltage power supplies like the PowerMaster, TPC, or a remote control ZW to operate an MTH locomotive under CONVENTIONAL control.  You can not control a PS-2 or PS-3 loco in their command environment without using DCS.

Hi Chuck, Thanks for the info, really appreciated, am i right in thinking that the MTH loco's get their commands through the track power where lionel trains get theirs through the airwaves.

Regards, Chris

Close enough.  

DCS overlays the command signal on the center rail and uses the outer rail as the return path of the signal wire.  On larger more complicated layouts it works best with balanced pairs of wires for the power feeds.  The usual means to achieve this is to use a wiring technique called "star wiring".  Traditional toy train layouts use "bus" wiring which doesn't have the needed matched length of the hot and return wires that DCS needs.

TMCC uses RF but not like a classic radio control vehicle like a model car/boat/plane.  The system uses the outer rails as one side of a transmitter and the ground wires of your homes wiring as the other side.  Your homes wiring is supposed to provide an "envelope" that the receivers in the engines, accessories, etc can "see" the command signal that is radiating between the track and the "envelope".   

The main issues with TMCC signal propagation has to do with side effects of the frequency it operates in.  Lionel chose to use a carrier that is actually below the classic AM radio band which has an insane wavelength (approx. 1/2 mile for a single wavelength) which places the system deep in what is called the near field.  To operate successfully this assumes that a) the house is wired properly (all ground wires are actually tied together at the load center and the tied to a good earth ground) and b) there are no large ungrounded metal objects in the area that can absorb the signal and re-radiate causing interference.  If there are issues with interference on the layout they can be overcome by placing a secondary reference wire to "clean up the signal" in the problem areas of a layout and tying these back the pin 5 on the command base's serial port (thank you Dale Manquen for figuring that out) of by adding a wire off of something known to be tied to earth ground (the dover plate of a properly grounded outlet or a cold water pipe in the house).

There are two excellent areas on the forum in the command control "tab" where you can post specific questions.  One for  DCS and one for TMCC/Legacy (there is even one for DCC which uses yet another means of signal propagation and has it's own issues.

Hi Chuck, Thank you very much for that insight, of course being a newby its gone a little over my head, I am planning on building a layout in my garden, I have mostly lionel loco's, A ZW transformer with 2x180 watt powerhouses, a legacy 990 controller, But because i live in England i have to have a drop down transformer that plugs into my 230v wall outlet and drops the voltage to 12v dc, I then have to hook up a pure sinewave inverter to the dropdown transformer so that it changes the frequency from 50hz to 60hz in order for the train sounds to function properly, I'm just hoping that when i come to wire everything up outside its all gonna be OK.

Once again thanks for the info.

Chris

I'd suggest looking at some garden railway sites that have had experience with use of TMCC outside.  Since there is no "envelope" for the other half of the transmitter they have come up with other means of getting proper signal propagation.  Good luck with the project.

http://www.familygardentrains....mcc/tmcc_outside.htm

That link Chuck provided should be very useful to you.  Aside from what's listed there, I know of very few O gauge outdoor layouts equipped for TMCC.  

Is it not a good idea then to use legacy outside, Its just that i'm limited for space indoors.

Chris

If you are going to using the Legacy system with Legacy locomotives, then both the Legacy system and locomotives work fine on 50Hz power, so you don't need to worry about using an inverter, just a step-down transformer. (I have found that the Tacima range of step-down transformers are perfect for this purpose.)  Trainsounds equiped locomotives do not like 50Hz, but the more recent Railsounds systems work fine. I run with 50Hz power for all of my trains, apart from one locomotive with Trainsounds, which I normally run with the sounds switched off. If I do want to run that locomotive with Trainsounds on, then I use my inverter to supply power to run it under 60Hz with a regular transformer instead of my Legacy system.

Hi, Thanks for the info, i forgot to mention that the inverter also changes the voltage to 120vac as our voltage is 230v.

Chris

Hi, I have a double wall socket outside that is connected to the main circuit breaker for the house, The armoured cable runs around the edge of the lawned area (see pic, At the back of the wall runs another armoured cable that powers up the lights, would the loco's antennas be able to detect the earth from those cables to help with the radio waves or am i barking up the wrong tree, (I did warn you all that i was a newby)

Chris