Veranda PS3 Conversion

Pictures.  You sure this was not PS-2 3V with slave?  G

Positive they are PS3 board.

I can provide more pics later in the week.

Hopefully the photo comes through as I am sending thru my phone

If you zoom in on the top right of the photo you will see a black wire soldered to a lug on the top board. This wire in turn is soldered to the swcond board (on the bottom). The wire harness of the bottom board has been heavily modified (connector is the same, wires are different), while the top board has a typical PS3 harness.

Also, one thing that seems odd to me is that the hot and ground wires from one set of trucks is tied to one board, while the red & black wires from the second set of trucks is tied to the second board. In other words, all hot and ground wires are not tied together. No clue yet how well the engine performs over switches.

There exists a PS/3 slave board, though they're rare as hen's teeth it seems.  I happen to have one I ordered before the big MTH explosion, and ended up not using it.  If you look closely at the second board in your picture, you can see it is indeed a PS/3 slave board.

It probably looks a lot like this one.

@ScottM posted:

Also, one thing that seems odd to me is that the hot and ground wires from one set of trucks is tied to one board, while the red & black wires from the second set of trucks is tied to the second board. In other words, all hot and ground wires are not tied together. No clue yet how well the engine performs over switches.

       That makes sense.  The PS3 board drives one truck and the Slave drives the other one.

I have 2  PS3 engines with  slave units, but not in the same engine.

E-8 ABA  Union Pacific  20-20186-1   

DL109/DL110 AB Santa Fe 20-20226-1   

Both delivered in 2012

I believe MTH done away with the slaves about 2015 or so, if I remember.  

All the track power leads should be common, obviously the motors would be driven by their respective boards.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

All the track power leads should be common, obviously the motors would be driven by their respective boards.

I totally agree, yet the power leads from the front and rear sets are not connected. There is no continuity between the power rollers when the engine is not on the track. Not sure why it was wired this way.

I will be able to get more photos tomorrow.

Not sure why they'd wire them that way.  I can't imagine the benefit of splitting them, but I can see some definite disadvantages.

@ScottM posted:

I totally agree, yet the power leads from the front and rear sets are not connected. There is no continuity between the power rollers when the engine is not on the track. Not sure why it was wired this way.

I will be able to get more photos tomorrow.

Not good!   

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

There exists a PS/3 slave board, though they're rare as hen's teeth it seems.  I happen to have one I ordered before the big MTH explosion, and ended up not using it.  If you look closely at the second board in your picture, you can see it is indeed a PS/3 slave board.

It probably looks a lot like this one.

Looks like this engine has a hen's tooth!

Early ABA used it before MTH went to all PS-3 A and run as lashup.  I did this conversion stacked with PS-2 3V back in the day.  Neat custom upgrade.  It would also need two tach as PS-3 slave did monitor motors with tach.  Unlike PS-2.

Here is the PS-2 upgrade I did.  It mimics how the OEM PS-2 3V were made.  G

G,

Your work is a 100x neater than what I'm looking at!

All said, is there a way to slave a PS3 to a PS3? How did MTH handle this on their latest Veranda release?

As a side note, this unit also suffers from the warped motor plate which prevents it from going thru curves without derailing. I was able to get the last repair kit from Trainz, based on doing research on this terrific forum.

They had to be designed that way and have the proper flash code available that included code to talk to the slave board.  It is similar to how PS-3 steam works.  Boiler and tender board, and tender board tells boiler board what to do via the data line.

PS-3 diesel slave is the same.  Has data line to the slave board along with the power lines.

I do not know if MTH Veranda PS-3 did the same, but it must have since PS-3 boards only can run 2 motor from MTH.  Once you get to running 4 you need a slave, or make it a whole engine.

Otherwise for PS-2 or PS-3 it is run as a lashup/MU in DCS.  G