I have a set of Williams F3's that i want to add the ERR Cruise Commander board to. I have two powered F3's I wanted to know if 1 board will be able to handle the 4 motors. I believe the Williams motors draw very little current.
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The short answer is no. I'm not sure it's the current that is the issue, it seems that the board gets confused by all the motors and the cruise doesn't work properly. I've tried it a couple of times, never got satisfactory results.
The reason I don't think it's the current is that K-Line used to power six motors with the standard Lionel DCDR, and that has no better current capability than the Cruise Commander.
Experiences vary on this one. I have an MTH F-3 AA pair with 4 motors and also a pair of powered Atlas RS-1's. These powered sets have been running great for the last couple of years with a single Cruise Commander driving all 4 motors. I originally had a Cruise Commander M in the MTH F-3's and that one did get hot trying to run 4 motors. The "regular" Cruise Commander works fine for me.
My trains are typically 10-12 cars and the layout has grades up to 3.5%. Locomotives typically run for 20 minutes or so at a time. Your experience might be different if you run longer trains, have steeper grades or if your locomotives run for an hour or two without stopping.
Saw Bob's response after I posted. I'm amazed that's working but it's great it is. That says something for the CC's servo algorithm and means the motors & drive train in your engines are well matched. Hopefully it will continue to work that well as things age & wear.
Given Bob's experience, Maybe it's worth trying first - you can always buy the second board set if it doesn't.
Cheers,
Jim
I tried it twice, and I didn't get the same results. While it worked as far as running, the actual performance did not nearly match the speed control performance of the cruise commander running one or two motors.
