I am completely new to model railroading. I got my fastrack and ordered a lionel engine with legacy features… it’ll be here Monday. The other day I got a great deal on an mth railking dash-8 locomotive with a lot of cars with it. No transformer though. The guy I bought it from said that the mth would be compatible with Lionel. Well… I got my cw-80 transformer today in the mail. The engine will go move… most of the time, the horn works but doesn’t sound all that great, and if I press the bell button on the cw-80, nothing happens. My question is, when I finally get my legacy controller, will it work with the mth engine? All I really want to do with the mth engine is use the sounds and electric couplers. If the cw-80 and legacy will not work for mth, what if I buy an mth transformer and use it with legacy? Will both locomotives work then? Any help will be GREATLY appreciated, as I would love to keep the mth locomotive and rolling stock. Thank you so much for any replies!
The MTH engine will not do well with the Lionel CW-80 transformer. Get an MTH Z-1000 if you want to use MTH & Lionel engines together. Legacy should work with the Z-1000, however you will not be able to use the command control features of an MTH engine with Legacy or TMCC. You must have the MTH DCS/TIU set-up for MTH PS-2 or PS-3 engines.
The exact model of the MTH locomotive would be useful here. Is it the original ProtoSound or is it ProtoSound 2/3?