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Hi All,

I'm upgrading my fleet from Lionchief Plus to Legacy, and looking forward to getting my 990 Control System up and running!  My layout consists of Atlas O      3-rail track.  The 990 instruction manual states that I should connect the Command Base/Charger binding post to BOTH outside rails. Some online videos claim connecting to only ONE outside rail is sufficient.

Any thoughts/advice from the Forum on this for a novice Legacy operator..?

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I honestly don’t have an exact answer for you. I would think just the one is fine, on our clubs layouts where atlas or Ross/GarGraves was used we alternated witch outside rail got the AC neutral drop. American Flyer typically works fine with only one rail but I know problems can pop up. If n tubular or fastrack the outside rails are already jumper’d. Someone smarter than me should pop in but I think the best way is to try it and see if you start having issues with signal or not.

In two rail, larger and more complex layouts work better with the Legacy signal on both rails. This is done with .1 microfarad 50V ceramic capacitors. They are tiny and inexpensive. Using these capacitors all segments of the rails can carry the Legacy signal, even the isolated sections where necessary for good Legacy signal reception. One caution, I do not have DCS so I do not know if these would degrade the DCS signal.

@AmFlyer posted:

In two rail, larger and more complex layouts work better with the Legacy signal on both rails. This is done with .1 microfarad 50V ceramic capacitors. They are tiny and inexpensive. Using these capacitors all segments of the rails can carry the Legacy signal, even the isolated sections where necessary for good Legacy signal reception. One caution, I do not have DCS so I do not know if these would degrade the DCS signal.

They would nuke the DCS signal, that would be a point of contention if you did have DCS!  .1uf at 3.27mhz results in a capacitive reactance of around half an ohm.  So, that would be like putting a 1/2 ohm resistor across the DCS signal output!  Needless to say, the TIU DCS signal would be seriously impacted by multiple .1uf capacitors across the outputs!

Really appreciate the feedback I'm receiving from all of you. Many thanks!

I have Atlas O track - not sure if both outside rails are connected in the track.  But my layout is small - U-shape with an overall footprint of 10x12.

One of my outside rails does contain some insulated joiners because of my Atlas signals. But the other rail has none.  So I'm thinking I'll try just connecting to that outside rail and see how it goes...

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