6-18005 jie Hudson, convert to electric rr AC Commander, help

First you will need to replace the pullmor motor with a can motor. Timko offers a direct drop in with no modifications needed to the frame. It's a small motor but will still pull nicely. If you stay with the puffer smoke and original railsounds you can mount a ERR cruise lite in the boiler. I did this with the 704 warhorse Hudson. I only use the ERR for the motor driver for TMCC. I left the original LCRU mounted as is, but disconnected the two motor leads. The LCRU runs everything except the motor. You'll need to mount another program run switch. I made a mount and mounted it directly across from the other one on the gear box cover. Undo the wire connection connecting the two hand rails together. Use one hand rail side for the LCRU and the other hand rail side for the ERR. If you ever need to sell them put the pullmor back in and connect the two motor wires and you are back to the original. Obviously take out the ERR. If you want all the new stuff that GRJ offers then you will need to take the original LCRU out or send the engine to him for total upgrade. It sounds like a lot but it's a simple upgrade. Good luck. 

Rod Miller

You can use an AC Commander and keep the Pulmor. It might fit in the engine. If not there should be room in the tender for the AC Commander and Railsounds.

If it was mine that would be as far as I would go. Given the plethora of Hudsons if I wanted a nice TMCC one I would just get a K-Line Hudson and add a Cruise M or a PS1 MTH Hudson and add TMCC. The PS1 Hudson was MTH's answer to the 700E remake.

Pete

Thanks guys I always appreciate your help Jerry

If it was mine, I'd use the sound converter board and the AC commander. Good luck with the upgrade. 

As Norton stated, the AC Commander and RS installed in the tender is a very good and simple way to proceed.  I acquired a very nice, detailed K Line Hudson, 5344, and installed ERR AC Commander/RS.  The purchase of the Hudson and ERR products was very reasonable, the resulting TMCC/RS engine an excellent addition to any roster and well within budget.  Future enhancements will be easy to perform when needed, on a very well detailed and scale sized Hudson.  As for the MTH PS1 scale Hudson, I formerly owned one, and it is a nice detailed Hudson.  I have converted several PS1 engines to TMCC/RS with ERR products, steam and diesel.  It is not difficult and having more of my roster with Command Control is what I prefer, do not use the MTH control system, keeping all under one control method outside of conventional. 

Jesse      TCA

The AC commander is the best choice if you do not want cruise control. I was thinking cruise all along.

Rod Miller

Like I said in another topic, you'll have to remove the big weight in the engine and find a way to insulate the handrails from the locomotive boiler to route as an antenna for the AC commander. That's the hard part. After that, all you need is the sound converter to control the old RailSounds with the commander and wire the smoke unit to the commander.

Much thanks again all.

Thomas , please advise as how to insulate the handrails and how would you add an antenna to the handrails? Thank you very much, Jerry 

Can you get plastic stanchions?

Or can you plastiv bush & washer those?

Can you open a body's wire hole(s) and use shrink tube if your careful. And if you are more careful, maybe it might look like a heavy pipe collar. Easy to remove and try again too. 

  Rough sand the handrail area where you will insulate with shrink tube. Use a dot of rubber cement or innertube glue there and squeeze it out with shrinking., Slicone peels at the edges some, so slips easier than the stuff for rubber, which has gripped best for me on raw music/ piano wire ,(local hobby shop should have that) and that metal has better adhesiveness than handrails.

Guys, just because Lionel insulated the handrails and used them as antennas, doesn't mean that you have to do that.

A classic way to make an antenna is to insulate the tender body from the tender chassis and use the body as an antenna.

If the tender body has a plastic coal load, you can put a wire or stained glass foil under the coal load and use that as an antenna.

If the coal load is in a metal tray like some MTH steamers, you can isolate the metal tray from the tender body with thin plastic and use the tray as an antenna.

You could also run a thin, insulated wire out to the bell, pretend it is the bell pull cord, and use that as an antenna.

You could insulate the boiler front and use that as the antenna.

Use your imagination. Think outside the box.

I like the idea of the bell pull cord as the antenna, that's something I'm going to remember if I put the TMCC in the locomotive.

Thanks  again! Jerry 

As Roy stated, making use of the die cast tender body as antenna works great, as I have done with MTH and Weaver brass tenders.  Also, making an antenna with use of a "bell pull" insulated wire is an option worth looking into and giving a try, as John said, also.  Along with placement of an antenna under a plastic tender shell, to increase the reception, you can make use of the tender's wire made handrails, even making your own to use as antenna and add detail to the tender. 

Jesse     TCA  12-68275

The tender railings are usually SS and hard to solder, I've replaced a couple sets with nickel wire so I could use them as an antenna.  Most of the time, the TMCC stuff is in the tender and I just float the shell, job done.

The trade off with using the tender body as the antenna is putting the R2LC in the tender as well, else you have run the antenna wire through the tether. Putting the R2LC and motor driver in the engine reduces wires in the tether as well as giving more flexibility in controlling lights and smoke units.

Whatever works for you but if there is room in the engine I will put the radio and motor driver boards in the engine and insulate the handrail. Lionel has all sizes of plastic handrail stanchions and grommets. Its not that big of deal to insulate the handrail.

Pete

Since I use 10-wire MTH tethers for my upgrades, I always have plenty of wires for the lighting, smoke units, etc.  Also, I'm typically putting a couple of other boards in the locomotive, the Super-Chuffer and my Smoke Intensity Controller, so I have to leave room for those.

Like I said to each their own. With the R2LC in the engine a 4 wire tether will work. Serial data, ground, coupler, rear light. Many engines being upgraded come with 4 wire tethers so money and time saved not having to swap the tether out. 

Pete

I end up having a problem with the 4-wire tether used that way.  One of the reliability enhancements I like to use is to run power and ground from the tender to the locomotive to share pickups.  This is especially important for stuff with only two engine pickups, it makes a big difference in operation.

GRJ,

please share more on your smoke intensity controller.

thanks!

It's something I just started hand building for my upgrades to eliminate wiring a bunch of discrete components together, much easier to stuff a PCB.  It's a fairly simple circuit, but enough to do the job.  It works in conjunction with the Super-Chuffer and cuts the smoke volume down at idle when you're stopped.  I've also done a slightly more complex diesel model that monitors the motor voltage to know when you're stopped.

Awesome!  Thanks!

I can put the board up on OSH Park if you want to make a couple for your use.

Link to OSH Park PCB: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/Tj9UrKpv

Here's a BOM, it's basic as I didn't expect to have to document this one.  Should be sufficient...

Thanks so much!

I'll have to put this in the queue to try another PCB soldering project.

GRJ,

Just curious - when the relay is closed, the circuit use 4 bridge rectifiers to drop the voltage to the smoke unit when the cab light is on.  When the cab light is off, it looks like you're still using 2 bridge rectifiers to drop the voltage to the smoke unit.  Did you not want the full voltage from the R2LC smoke output in this situation? Is this for a 20 ohm smoke resistor situation?

Thanks!!

This was developed to use the 16 ohm resistor in the stock MTH smoke unit, so I needed to drop the voltage a bit to avoid excessive current.  Also, I did a version for diesels that I allowed some configuration so you could use several different smoke units and jumper to suit.  Since there is no Super-Chuffer determining if you're moving or stopped, the diesel design monitors the motor voltage to determine motion.  In the diesel version below, I used surface mount components to reduce the size a bit and also added a jumper field so you could select the drops or short out one or two of the bridges if you didn't want the drops.  For diesels, I typically don't want huge volumes of smoke, so I like to drop it off from max.  For idle, I can tune how much more the volume will be reduced.  This board is .75" x 1.15", and I fabricate them on .031" board stock to reduce the thickness as much as possible.

Here's what the diesel board looks like, and the schematic is below.  Note the red arrow, that's the configuration jumper field.