4-chuff trigger magnet for lionel 18005 Hudson

I'm still looking for it, but I think OGR printed an article back in 1992/3 of how to adjust the chuff rate on RailSounds 1 locomotives when they were comparing them to QSI electronics. If anyone has that article or knows what run it was in, that would be really helpful.

Thomas - I recall that too.  There was a diagram of the PC board in the issue and there was a solder joint that had to be de-soldered, which doubled the chuff rate.  I did it to my Hudson and it was an improvement. 

rjsmithindy posted:

Thomas - I recall that too.  There was a diagram of the PC board in the issue and there was a solder joint that had to be de-soldered, which doubled the chuff rate.  I did it to my Hudson and it worked well.

Rob,  I just happen to have a RS-1 board on my bench from a 18000 B6. My brother has my first B6 with ERR and a can motor and I want it back so I am putting an LCRU2 board in one I bought on ebay hoping I can get my good one back without a struggle. I did not know of this mod but got to looking close at the board and the only connection that looks like solder might be bridging two solder pads is the one my arrow points to. Since you have done the mod I thought this may jog your memory.          j

JOHNACTON, I’m not certain if that is the correct solder joint or not. Hopefully someone on the forum with better knowledge (or better memory) can chime in?  Otherwise I’ll open up my Hudson tender to see if I can find it. 

If you trace the wires from the trigger switch to the board, clip the wires to isolate (and forget) the mechanical switch, then get a magnetic reed switch and some rare earth magnets (ERR; e-Bay, etc), mount the reed switch on a tender truck (or next to a driver), wire it into the board with the old switch wires, mount (with CA) a couple of magnets on the tender wheel, or 4 around the driver, and you should have 4 chuffs (approximately 4 on the tender wheel setup). As the chuff is generally initiated by a make/break circuit, this should do the same thing as the mechanical switch. The magnets must be mounted with even spacing, of course, or the Hudson will wind up in the roundhouse for a prototypical valve timing adjustment....

I have not done this on my 18005 yet, unfortunately. Hope it works, because I intend to try it!

Actually, for reasons I haven't fully tracked down, some boards will exhibit a really odd ringing issue if you use a mechanical switch.  I think you may have to have a damping resistor across the switch or something similar.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Actually, for reasons I haven't fully tracked down, some boards will exhibit a really odd ringing issue if you use a mechanical switch.  I think you may have to have a damping resistor across the switch or something similar.

I was looking at this several years ago and looked up the data sheet. I "think" the data sheet on this hall switch shows a NPN transistor as it's output so it would look like a diode to the adjacent components, only conducting in one direction.  Perhaps a diode in series with a reed switch will stop the ringing.     If it doesn't turning it around before giving up may work. When tracing components on multi layer boards I get turned around, which way was I headed ?  I long for the simple time when boards only had traces on one side and traction tires were called Magnatraction.           j

That makes some sense, I never got very far with that quest.  As it runs out, I usually do command stuff and I run the chuff into the R2LC pin-17, so a simple switch or transistor does it fine.

Here ya go.

Thanks for the help, Chuck. Much appreciated, as always!

As far as the instructions go, only the earlier '89 RS boards should have jumper wires at the J1/J2 solder points? The RS1 locomotives I have right now like the scale Hudson don't have the jumper wires, just the solder.

Will this apply to rs2.5 as well?

I don't think so, they're a totally different board.