If it receives power before the TMCC track signal is available, it'll drop into conventional mode, maybe that's what is happening?

Well I did what folks told me to do and that's hit tr1 turn up power and then addressed engine... it works but now the engine sounds distorted.. really bad... it's an atlas gp-7 maybe it has a volume control?

Hard to say, but I have had a number of engines that have sat for a couple of years in the box develop poor connections to the chips on the RS board.  My cure has been to use a PLCC puller and reseat the chips.

Are you sure you are providing enough power to the track. TMCC may function with 10 volts or so on the track but the sounds may not work correctly. The a and d handles of the new ZW come up as a variable voltage starting at zero and will only go to the handle setting. Make sure your a handle is all the way forward for maximum voltage. The b and c handles come up to the handle setting right away when addressed. Make sure the b handle is set to the maximum then try moving the track power to the b post and using TR2 to turn on the power and see if that makes a difference. If the sound works OK then the problem is you are not turning the power up high enough.

Ron

Thanks guy... Ron I will give your idea shot when I get home.  It seems to run fine just sounds so distorted when you hear crew chatter and when it powers up and takes off!  Lionel customer service said 18 volts for TMCC, but I heard other folks say 13 to 15 for TMCC.

It should run correctly on 18 volts, though some folks run at lower voltages.  If it's distorted running on the design voltage, I suggest that lowing the voltage is not the way to fix it, and I doubt it'll have an effect anyway.

Well maybe I'm getting accustomed to using the remote but it ran great Monday evening. Silly me the distortion was the Atlas cab talk because they make it distorted.  The tower talk is clear as a bell.  I really appreciate everyone's help in setting this up.  It's great to run two Legacy's on one loop without setting up any blocks... it really rocks!

Yep, RailSounds 4 cab chatter has always been distorted, I guess that was so you could pretend it was anything.

I can see you're totally hooked on command/control, easy to do once you have it running.