Recently acquired a circa 1992 #6-1818 Southern Railways 4501 steam locomotive with Railsounds. Previous owner claims that it was only run one or two times before being put back in original packaging. It sure looks like it.
Had terrible time getting the cable from the loco the tender plugged in.
Put the thing on a test track. 1033 transformer. Move forward and back very nicely. Whistle didn’t work.
Maybe I ought to read the manual. If I read it correctly, the whistle should work without the sound activator(10-5906) installed.
Pulled activator that came with the loco out of box and after puzzling the wiring out, connected it up. Interesting, the activator is labeled 6-5906. Probably not significant.
Pressed the button on the activator and got…nothing.
Tried the whistle and got nothing.
After running the loco back and forth on the test track a number of times, got erratic steam chuff.
Tried the whistle again which intermittently set off the bell. Manual says to reverse wiring on activator. Haven’t done that yet.
Still getting no response from the push button on the activator.
Would poor contact from the pick up on the tender be the mostly likely reason for partial sounds? Or sitting unused for 30+ years cause the Railsounds module to go bad?
Another thing. The manual says the volume can be adjusted by turning the slotted screw under the rear tender truck CW/CCW. Which way increase the volume? The only screw that I found under the truck is a Phillips head. It seems to be in the location shown in the picture in the manual.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
I have the same engine in Frisco livery. You will get your best response with clean pickups and track. And a 1033 is approaching its capacity with that engine.
My RS module did go bad–not just sitting around but also from a moderate amount of running time. (I had it converted to TMCC using ERR hardware.) The sound pot screw isn’t really a screw so much as the end of a shaft with a slot in it.
The engine is worth tweaking: it will pull everything in the yard and then the yard out along with them!
I don’t have this engine to actually confirm this hands-on, but in general volume potentiometers are installed such that CW=raise volume, CCW=lower volume.
Update.
Changed to LW transformer. Now have no sound of any kind. No chuff, bell, or whistle.
Don’t have the ability to test with an LW (mine needs a new breaker). Do you have the transformer wired correctly, the right rail to the right terminal?
More update:
Finally found the volume control. Well hidden under the front truck. Turned all the way down. Turned up and now have sound. Whistle button sets off bell. Activation button does nothing.
Palallin:
The illustration in the manual shows the left wire(red) of the activator to power post of transformer and the right wire(black) to 1 post(Power) of lockon. I presume the power post is supposed to be the throttled power,not fixed power. Aside: opened up activator to see what is in there. NC switch and a string of resisters(?).
Manual further says that whistle and bell should work without the sound activator being installed. ??? Haven’t tried that yet.
Another question. The chuff sound is generated by a Hall effect sensor reading a small wheel on the axle of tender. Produces one chuff per rotation of wheel. Wondering how the wheel is constructed. Gap in wheel? Embedded strip? Possible to modify to get 2(or more) chuffs per rotation?
Use “A” post(1033 common) to Lockon clip 2, “U” post(1033 hot) to center rail Lockon clip 1 for proper whistle activation.
Here is the diagram to add bell activation to a 1033/1044/4090:
Here is the diagram for the LW, use “A” post(LW common) to Lockon clip 2, “U” post(LW hot) to center rail Lockon clip 1 for proper whistle activation.
ADCX_Rob:
That is exactly the way I have it set up.
Did you draw those up or is there info from Lionel that i don’t know about?
I edited the Lionel drawings to be transformer specific as there is so much confusion around which posts are the designated “common/ground/outside rails” on single throttle transformers.
The convention is “A”, this can be confirmed by studying schematics of the transformers.
Even Lionel got it wrong in their instructions for the 1033.
I think I have Gremlins lurking here.
Pushed the activator button and the headlight dimmed for a few seconds, then came back up and the bell started ringing. Subsequent button pushing started bell without dimming light first.
Whistle button still rings bell. No whistle. Going to guess that there is something wrong with the electronic stuff in the tender.
Took activator button out of circuit. Whistle button turns bell on. No whistle.
Took the tender apart to see what electronics are hidden inside. Hoped to find some identifying info.
Only thing i found was Lionel part number 6-12-5000-110, “0 gauge trigger” Rev c on the board on top off the triple stack of boards held together with a zip tie.
Couldn’t find any numbers on any of the other boards. Is any of this stuff available?
Google comes up empty.
Doubt it. QSI is OOB. I have the old boards removed from my Mike when it was converted to EER TMCC, but I don’t think they are of any value. If you want them, i can send them to you.
How many power drops do you have to the layout?
Not on layout yet. Just a ten foot test track.
I’m a bit rusty on acronyms, OOB, EER,TMCC?
Most generous offer. Private message sent with my address.
OOB = Out of Business.
EER should have been ERR = Electronic (electric?) Rail Road, a company that makes aftermarket TMCC conversion boards
TMCC = Train Master Command Control, Lionel’s proprietary command system.
Been spending way too much time scouring the internet for info about my loco. One of the questions that had arisen in my feeble mind regarding the steam chuff. One was how the chuff signal is generated(magnetic?, optical?, mechanical?) in my model and if it could be modified to be more prototypical. Answer:First part is probably magnetic, second part, probably not.
Several people have taken this loco, replaced the entire electronics with some version of TMCC and added a “cruise commander” kit, “electric railroad railsounds commander” kit, chuffing mechanism and fan driven smoke generator. Some of these items being described GRJ’s stuff. Took awhile to figure out that GRJ refers to gunrunnerjohn who designed several.of these things and, I think, markets as JW&A .products.
The articles I found are 10 or more years old. Is this worth persuing?
The conversion? I wouldn’t have had something else not interfered. 4-chuff isn’t critical for me. I have no problem with transformer control. The bell/whistle issue is a different story. If it’s there, I like to have a whistle.
Honestly, however, I can run my soundless trains and bee happy, too.
IOW, what’s important to you?
I believe gunrunnerjohn is a member here and posts to the forum. You could PM him with detail questions.
Do you have an ‘encoder’ band on your flywheel? You could use a count from that to control/trigger chuff reasonably synchronized with the wheels…
