Getting back into Toy Trains

Classic Toy Trains Forum
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Hi Everyone,

I have been absent from the hobby for 12 years, and it is now time to get back to it.

I have been a Lionel collector/operator in since 1959, when at age 3, Dad bought me a used 1953 set. I can’t remember the number. It came with a 685 engine, tender, three freight cars, a lighted caboose, two big boxes of track, several switches, a 275 watt ZW, and a assorted Plasticville buildings. I still have the ZW, the track, and the train set.

By the end of the 60’s I had added assorted O guage pieces, and inherited my father’s and uncle’s standard guage trains.

Caught the train bug big time in the early 90’s. Have been a CTT suscriber since 1994. Bought and sold trains all through the 90’s and filled out my own collection to over 100 locomotives, 150 passenger cars, and 400 freight cars. The layout in those days was 15 ’ x 19’ Plasticville was replaced with Dept 56, Lemax, and other ceremic structures and people. I bought the first version of the Lionel Trainmaster remote control system and was running eight transformers and eight powermaster units in pairs of two before Lionel knew that they could be successfully be paired.

A divorice, kids leaving for college, successful treatment of a brain tumor, remarriage, new wife suffering a heart attack, and successful by pass surgery, completing my Master’s degree, moving to another state, caring for the new wife’s ailing parents until thier deaths all put the train hobby on the back burner.

Now it is time to unpack it all, and start over. 11 grandchildren are anxiously awaiting. The new train room and layout table is built. It is 15’ x 17’ The trains were cleaned and repacked in thier original boxes back in 1998. They have been kept in an air conditioned room all these years. Even so, I am sure that I am in for some unpleasent surprises when unpacking them. I am going to

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Charles,

[#welcome] to the asylum forum. Generally you can get an answer to most any question, except maybe the winning lottery numbers. A lot of friendly folks here.

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Charles,

Welcome aboard !

From a reading of your bio, you have been through more than enough to start a new reality TV program.

Most will love you because you are fond of Lionel.

The rest of us will forgive you for this indiscretion.

Rich

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I was active in 3 rail for quite awhile during which I bought a LOT of postwar and MPC. I spent quite a bit of time building shelves to display and store them with many boxes also of trains stored. I also have the benchwork, roadbed, and one loop of open grid layout finished and stopped for 17 years to work on hot rod cars. Now older than I want to be and retired I have almost stopped with cars and am back to my layout. It has stood the test of time, I still like what I have done and my track plan. I have many engines and don’t want to pay the extra for command control so it will be dual cab conventual.

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Thanks for the welcome! Sorry that first post was so long. If it makes you Flyer people feel any better, the standard guage/wide guage trains that belonged to my dad and uncles are all Flyer. And like V8 Vega, I am a car guy also, mainly old Trans Am’s. Seems like many train people are also car people. Maybe it is the same gene?

As for Command Control it has it’s merits, however I am also electing to stay conventional control. I only own one locomotive capable of command control operation. The remote control feature of the original version of Trainmaster appealed to me because my train room is actually a doublewide mobile home that I had custom built. The structure is 24’ x 56’, and has a 24’ x 28’ train room, a bathroom, an office and a room for exercise equipment. And yes I had the mobilehome/trainroom moved from Georgia to NC when we moved.

Part of the layout stradles the marriage wall in the middle of the structure, and trains pass back and forth from one side to the other through tunnels. I use video cameras to provide an image of the blind side to TV’s located on the other side. At first running the layout with ZW’s was tricky as 50% of the time the trains were on the other side of the wall. The Cab One allowed me to follow the train, and made operation much easier.

My locomotive collection is Lionel, MTH, Weaver, and Williams. In the 90’s compatibility was a problem, and I doubt if it has improved much, as all of the manufacturers seem to want to reinvent the wheel. It would cost a fortune to retrofit each locomotive to operate with command control.

Here I go with the long post again…[:D]

Charles

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Hi Charles and welcome. Lots of good info in this forum. As one who started using his trains again after they had been packed away for nearly 30 years I can say that lots of the post war stuff is darn near bullet proof and all mine needed was a few minor repairs, cleaning and proper lubrication.

Good luck and here’s hoping you have lots of fun!

Mike

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Charles, With the addition of TPC’s to a TMCC set-up you can operate your conventional loco’s thru your CAB-1 without doing individual upgrades to the loco’s. Generally they work quite well and with some of their features you can feel fairly comfortable when younger operators, (re: grandkids, visitors), are at the controls.

We use them almost exclusively on the club layout when the “Kids Club” is running.

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[#welcome] to the forum Charles, and welcome back to the hobby. I think that your dad and uncles were very fortunate to have Flyer trains as their playthings. Even prewar trains are pretty bullet proof.

Many of the Flyer trains in my collection are now 80 years old and they work like a charm.

I hope that you enjoy your return to the hobby as much as many of the other folks here on the forum do.

Enjoying the World’s Greatest Hobby

Northwoods Flyer

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Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and the warm welcome! Train people are the best! When the layout is back together, I will give some new ideas a try.

I am not concerned how well my postwar pieces have done in storage, but am more concerned about the mid 90’s stuff with the electronics of that time. I have already tried a couple of MTH loco’s, and have found that they suffer from scrambled programing.

As for Dad’s family being fortunate, I had not thought about it, but you are right. Grandpa was not wealthy. In the late 1920’s he was a fireman on the New York Central, based out of Indianapolis. I guess he thought it was important for his boys to have toy trains, because they sure didn’t have much else. Those trains were well played with and are in pretty rough condition. It is amazing that they have lasted 80 + years.

Charles

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Charles —> [#welcome] We’ve been expecting you.

Sounds like you have everything you need to get up-and-running. Be sure to post some pics of your progress on Sunday Photo Fun.

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[#welcome] Charles,

Sounds like you have a huge collection of trains. I thought that I had a lot of trains, but you have me beet by a mile so to speak.

I have some postwar Lionel and two prewar Lionel and they still good run but need some maintance work at times. Also have some Williams engines and four MTH engines. I am running three PS-2 engines with the DCS unit.

You will do better with a TPC 300 or a TPC 400 and run your engines in conventional mode. As for getting command control abilities the price will keep you away as Lionel & MTH versions of command control are not fully compatible so you would need at minimum TMCC by Lionel and DCS by MTH and a hook-up cable that goes to the two base units. Estimated cost for both TMCC & DCS is around $575.00, then there is the new Legacy by Lionel(don’t know the price). The new Legacy system is mainly for use with Lione Legacy equipped & TMCC by Lionel equipped engines and not for use with DCS or PS-2 or PS-3 by MTH. Then there is also the cost of adding remote control units for operating your switches by remote as well, most add-on units are at least $85.00 and can handle up to ten switches and accessories.

Lee F.

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Charles,

With the MTH engines they are probally PS-1 and need new re-chargeable batteries installed that must be charged before installing. There is also a re-programming chip available by MTH for about $25.00 that will allow you to reset the circuit board settings provided that the board isn’t fried just scrambled.

Just for your info my grandfather worked for the Reading Company in Berks County PA as a building maint person and got a very good retirement from the Reading Company until he died in 1992. He bought my dad two trainsets that I still have, one a passenger set(1941) and one a freight set(1939) by Lionel in O gauge. Parts are hard to get but both trainsets still run and look decent.

Lee F.

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Thanks to Everyone for the Valuable Tips and the warm welcome.

It makes me want to move faster getting this new layout up and running. Unfortunately I have a few honey-do projects to complete before I can start laying track.

To Lee F. the MTH engines are PS1. I am hopeful that the problems are all related to dead batteries, as all of the engines were functioning normally when packed up. I remember reading something in CTT about the re-programming chip available to reset the circuit boards after a battery goes dead.

Sounds like your grandfather did well for himself. You are lucky to own those sets from 1939 and 1941.

Our Flyer trains are from 1927.

My grandfather was a fireman, and had low seniority in his division, so as diesels replaced steam, and union contracts expired, he was laid off from the New York Central. By the time he was called back to work, he was working for P.R. Mallory Co., as a production supervisor. He never returned to the rail road. By the time WWII started, the Mallory Company became very busy building radio equipment for the armed forces. He retired from the Mallory Company sometime in the late 50’s, and died in 1972.

Charles

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Is there a low cost option for converting PS1 locomotives to be compatable with the original Trainmaster system? Back in the old days, I would power up the PS1 locos with one of my ZW’s, to fool the circuit board into working, then bring the Powermaster online, drop out the ZW, and the PS1 equiped loco would function normally with the Trainmaster system. Both MTH and Lionel did not recommend this method, however no circuit boards burned out from 1994 to 1999.

I figured that in 11 years, someone would make a an electronic gizmo that will allow operation of a PS1 with a Trainmaster. My other option is to change out the controls in all of the PS1 equiped units to something simple and compatable.

Thanks in Advance,

Charles

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Charles, I went through this issue with a PS-1 Dash-8, first it scrambled the chip, was fixed professionally, ran fine for a few years, and then my ZW finally fried the board. I replaced all the electronic guts with a Williams 6-amp reverse board and a Tru-Blast sound board, and it runs better now (conventional) then it did from the factory. Good luck!

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The PS-1 by MTH is basically a sound system with reversing abilities thrown in, there is NO command control electronics in any PS-1 engines. The battery is there to provide back-up for the circuit board, and to provide a small amount of memory back-up power.

To change a PS-1 over to anything else is very expensive as PS-1 don’t use anything that PS-2 has inside because they are totally different systems. What Taranwanderer did with his PS-1 engine is probally the easiest and most cost effective way to go. The Williams 6 amp circuit board and sound system should be close to $85 for both, have to go to Bachmann Trains website www.bachmanntrains.com Williams wasbought out by Bachmann.

Lee F.

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To Lee F. and others have have offered suggestions,

Thanks for the information. I own some Williams products from the 90’s. They are good runners. In those years the Williams sound systems although reliable, were pretty basic. Steam sounds were nothing more then interupted static. Maybe they have improved them some over the years. I had updated some of my Williams trains with QSI sound and control boards with great results.

I hate to lose some of the neat features that my MTH PS1 equiped locos and QSI equiped locos have, such as brake squeal, auto station stop/start, station sounds and cab chatter. I will probably buy the new batteries, and the reboot kits to get them back up and running, and hook up everything as before, with the ZW’s and Trainmaster phased and connected together. As curcuit boards fail, replace them with newer alternatives.

So far the Lionel Railsounds and Railsounds II locos have all worked well. The batteries were removed when they were stored. Fresh batteries and a little oil, and they are ready to roll. The Williams locos and post war stuff just needs a drop of oil, and so far they have all functioned as before their long nap.

I understand the advantages of command control, but am unwilling and unable to scrap everything that I have invested in the collection and start over.

CharlesS

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Charles, Check out this link for running non-command trains in a command environment, plus there is a lot of other good info in it.

http://www.coilcouplers.com/tmc/noncom.html

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Wow, you’ve been through a whole lot. At least you didn’t sell your trains. I have the train bug also, 17 steam locomotives and counting. I am a collector and operator as well, and also gradually working on my layout, the Berkshire Junction. Now finally I have made money by working part time jobs and right now at least enjoying the fruits of my labor. I think your trains will be fine. They might just need a good look over and some lubrication and they should be ready to go. Well I hope you have loads of fun with your trains, you certainly deserve it.

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Mr. Flyer: Can you tell me what kind of engine you have in the picture below, shown pulling 2 red passenger cars on an elevated section, at about 2:00 in the foto. It looks like it has small pantographs.