RS3 Command Upgrade Questions

ERR and Lionchief won’t lash up. They have different speed steps. Your best bet is to buy two Lionchief engines and swap shells with the one you want to upgrade.

Pete

@Norton he’d did say it would be a LC+ 2.0 engine witch is TMCC. I believe the TMCC technology is very similar to what ERR uses. So I would think you’d be pretty close. Of course I’m no expert but I imagine the gear ratio can still part even if the electronics speed steps are similar.

Its a 20 year old single motor engine. The odds they have the same gear ratio are slim.

Its questionable if its worth investing ERR in this engine. His choice if he wants to invest in it.

Pete

I would not bother trying to lash-up these two locomotives.  It’s hard enough to get two identical TMCC engines to run well together, let alone two from different eras with different gear ratios.  

The ERR Cruise does have a nudge feature that allows adjustments to get two engines better matched in speed, but in my experience it can still be tough to get things matched up.

As for sounds, I think the Alco PA would be close.  The PA had a 16 cylinder 4 stroke 244 diesel, and the RS3 had a 12 cylinder version of the same engine I believe.

That's a lot of money to upgrade that locomotive, it was a $69 locomotive when new!

@Norton posted:

Its a 20 year old single motor engine. The odds they have the same gear ratio are slim.

This engine uses the wimpy K-Line design truck mounted motor, I would think it couldn't get out of it's way with only one motor!

Lionel RS3 6-28822 Parts

I'm going to stick my neck out without evidence and say they don't have the same gear ratios. The original gear ratio is all speed. It has very little pulling power.  That's why I think I'll need to figure out a way to upgrade to a modern motor. The truck designs don't look that different so I might be able to stick them on the old chassis. That just leaves the control system to get matching speed steps. It might not be possible to combine ERR with LC+2.0. That's the topic of discussion now haha

Here's a question: Could I attach two more modern motors to an LC+2.0 board? I think the answer is no because I'm guessing the boards aren't rated for that much current/voltage depending on how you make your connections. But maybe somebody knows the power ratings for the boards. This way I could tether the two locomotives together and run both (4 matching motors and trucks) via one board.

@rplst8 posted:

As for sounds, I think the Alco PA would be close.  The PA had a 16 cylinder 4 stroke 244 diesel, and the RS3 had a 12 cylinder version of the same engine I believe.

Thanks for the tip! I'll go with that if ERR is the solution.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

That's a lot of money to upgrade that locomotive, it was a $69 locomotive when new!

This engine uses the wimpy K-Line design truck mounted motor, I would think it couldn't get out of it's way with only one motor!

I bought it new! I bought it from TrainAmerica when I was a kid. I think Rich was the guy at the counter. That was the first layaway purchase I ever made. I think I must have been around 11 or 12. Cut grass and shovelled mulch all summer to buy it! I'm not sentimental about many things but this is one of them and there isn't a price on that. If I could get the speed matched, I'm interested in the upgrade.

It can't get out of its way though haha it is a terrible puller. It would win a drag racing competition on its own and that's about it. The gear ratio is all speed and no torque. That's why I'm looking into the upgrades. The alternative would be to yoink the motor and horn out of it, add a smoke unit, add some lighting effects maybe, and make it a dummy locomotive. That's much more cost effective but a lot less fun! I recognize the cost thing but I'm finding I enjoy these upgrade projects. The other upgrade I'm doing has been slow because I'm learning on the fly but I have definitely enjoyed figuring out how to fit everything. Maybe I'll become a repair/upgrade tech as a side gig someday.

Since this has the truck mounted motor, you'd have to replace the whole truck, there is no way of improving the motor or changing the gear ratio. Adding a modern truck with a vertical motor would be major surgery, been there, done that.

If I wanted to improve this one, I'd probably look for a more modern chassis to mount the shell on.

Truthfully, your idea of turning it in to a dummy so you can still use it it probably the best idea.

@BillYo414 posted:

Maybe I'll become a repair/upgrade tech as a side gig someday.

There us a real shortage of competent repair people, and many of us are getting long in the tooth, so there's certainly an opening there.

I got that handy new Dremel 8220 specifically for major surgery though!

Nah we'll see what goes here. I think the hole pattern on the old chassis is just a single hole for the truck to rotate on and a little slot to limit the rotation. I thought I could just trace the hole pattern from a new locomotive onto the old chassis and cut accordingly. I saw some donor locomotives online for less than I could buy all these parts for but those were LC+. I don't know if I can lashup an LC+ with an LC+2.0 via Legacy. Plus there would be just 2 rev levels (although I could probably turn sound off).  A donor would include that dual motor chassis though and the cab interior plus boards. Swapping over the shell would make more sense than swapping all this stuff to my chassis at this point, like you said.

My only hang ups about making a dummy locomotive out of this:

1) How do I hook up the smoke unit so that it isn't on non stop? There wouldn't be a command board in there to direct the smoke unit off.

2) Same question as above but for the lights. Or did dummy locomotives often not have running lights?

I almost get the feeling I should be patient and wait for the new LC+2.0 RS3 to arrive so I can see what's inside.

@BillYo414 posted:

I was under the impression ERR is a doppelganger for TMCC. I also think it has different speed step options. I did NOT know LC+2.0 is TMCC technology. Is that really true?

ERR is TMCC but there are 57 varieties of TMCC. Lionel had a few, maybe three or four, then there are TAS SAW and EOB, Digital Dynamics, and K-Line Cruise. Not sure any of them will run together even in identical engines but surely not in different engines,

That was one of the reasons Lionel developed Legacy, not only to add more features but so different engines could run together as MTH had been doing for years earlier.

Pete

Buy two LC+ 2.0 RS3's and move your shell over to the second one.

I got lucky with this one...

Kline RS3 with TMCC and a old MTH RS3 that had a blown 5 volt board . I added a ERR Cruise Commander  to it and wired it to start in reverse. I gave both units the same number number and they play nice together !

@Norton posted:

ERR is TMCC but there are 57 varieties of TMCC. Lionel had a few, maybe three or four, then there are TAS SAW and EOB, Digital Dynamics, and K-Line Cruise. Not sure any of them will run together even in identical engines but surely not in different engines,

That was one of the reasons Lionel developed Legacy, not only to add more features but so different engines could run together as MTH had been doing for years earlier.

One thing to note, I don't think Legacy guarantees smooth operation between powered units of different varieties.  There are several factors at play here.

1) The gearing of the locomotives:
From strictly mechanical perspective, in order to have the locomotives run well together over a usable range of speeds, they have to be close in gear ratio.  And what I'm really talking about here is volt-for-volt the motors, combined with gear size, and wheel size produce roughly the same maximum and minimum speeds.  The software in the motor controller can correct for some, but not extreme values of this.

2) The motor feedback system in use:
MTH PS2 and PS3 units use a tach strip and sensor to measure RPMs.  The original TMCC locos without Odyssey may have used some sort of feedback but I don't think that was the case.  TMCC with the first version of Odyssey used a magnet and reed or Hall effect sensor on the motor, this allowed the motor controller to know pretty well whether or not the motor was stalled and/or not keeping up.  This allows for it to increase or decrease the voltage/current to adjust the speed of the motor.  Whether Lionel used this in their motor controllers for matching speed between locos in a lash-up is really unknown, but I think it was a entirely passive system.  This means that it only worked in a lash-up if the loco at a specific speed step to track speed ratio and just relied on each unit adjusting the speed independently based on their own measurements of their own motors.  Legacy brought the advent of Odyssey II which uses a similar tach strip based method (though instead it's a plastic "fence" that wraps around the motor below the flywheel with an IR sensor to measure the RPMs.  This has an advantage over the magnet method as instead of just one or two data points between revolutions of the motor, you get far more, just like the tach strip.

ERR (and others) measure electrical characteristics on the wire driving the motor.  Things like voltage, current, and maybe the phase angle between the two (AKA power factor).  This can be used to determine the load on the motor and possibly the speed, though not as accurately as the tach strip method or magnet methods.

3) Communication
For MTH locos, it's possible that they they could talk with one another if programmed in a lash-up - I don't know if they do, but they could since they can both transmit and receive.  Even if they don't, they definitely DO communicate back to the TIU and remote.  Therefore depending on how MTH implemented the protocol, they could wait for a reply from BOTH engines before issuing the speed change command.  Or both units could listen for the "acknowledged" signal from each other.  Additionally, I think they send specific speed commands and not just up or down.

Until Bluetooth engines came a long, TMCC and Legacy were never capable of any communication other than "receive".  Therefore if the commands being sent were relative ones (CAB-1, CAB-2 in CAB-1 mode, R100) there was no way to know if BOTH engines received the command.  For this reason, they send the command multiple times, and I guess the TMCC electronics ignore commands for a half second to a second after receiving one.  Even still no guarantee, and engine 1 may be on speed step 10 while engine 2 could be on speed step 8 because it missed the throttle-up command on say step 4 and step 9.  The absolute 32 step mode fixes some of this.  At least then, when you roll up the throttle, if it missed step 9, when you click step 10 it gets another chance to "sync up".

Bluetooth allows the engines to talk to one another and sync their speeds.  I only realized they might be doing this when someone said that they noticed with their recent Legacy E7 (or E8) they had two powered A-units and the second one would not run without the first unit on the tracks.  My guess is that they are doing some speed matching between engines (or at least confirmation) with that.  Like unit 1 says "Hey unit 2, I got a command to speed up one step, did you?" and unit 2 says "Yep, let's do it."  Or maybe it says "No, I didn't." Then unit 1 says, "well, let's do it anyway" and unit 2 responds "OK, your in the lead so I guess you win."

4) Software compensation
Do the boards have any sort of scale speed compensation in the form of a scale factor?  From the reading I've done, and the work Mark DiVecchio has done with ADPCM, MTH definitely puts in a "scale factor" of some sort to adjust an locomotive's wheel size and gear ratio to the drive train in use.  This is pretty evident in the fact that if you take a sound file from a high-wheeled E6s Atlantic and put into a cheap RailKing 2-8-0, the chuff no longer matches up and the speed ranges are much different.

I don't know if Lionel did this with TMCC, but I'm guessing they do it with Legacy because by putting a different board in to a Hudson with the five chuff issue it could be remedied with no changes to gearing or the motor.

Legacy engines that have a tach sensor have the scale factor programmed in by Lionel. PS2 and PS3 have the scale factor programmed in the sound file. Changes can be made by the user by changing sound files or altering the tach strip. Changes to the Legacy scale factor can only be made by Lionel. Legacy engines that don’t use a tach, rather use back emf, do not run with other Legacy engines but those are a minority.

Pete

My experience has been that virtually all the Legacy locomotives with the Odyssey II tach sensor match speeds very well, including different gear ratios.  I've run switchers with road engines, etc. and in all cases they had no issues matching speed.  As Pete says, the few Legacy locomotives with the back-EMF board do not play well with the standard Odyssey II equipped locomotives.

PS2/PS3 factory locomotives all seem to match speeds well, PSx upgrades of non-MTH locomotives are hit or miss.

Someone else posted before about upgrading a non-MTH engine with PS 2/3 and making a custom tach strip.  I think that would be very feasible to do, and get the locos to match speed.

Yep, I even have a complete set of tach tape images with all different spacing.