What would the average expected turn around time be for upgrading electronics and smoke unit to a steam engine? Upgrading from manufacture date around 1998 to todays electronics?
Also what would be estimated longest turn around time.
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Bob,
Which command control system and who's doing the upgrade?
Another question is what locomotive? Times and effort vary widely, depending on your expectations and what extra "features" you want. Getting the locomotive to move under command control is typically the easy part, doing custom lighting and other mechanical work usually consumes more time.
Thanks for the responses.
Barry: Legacy Command control, no one currently is doing a upgrade. Just wanting to know when I consider purchases. I only want to run in command or Lagacycontrol.
John: I don't have any one engine in mind, sometimes I see steam engines for sale from the late 90s era and want to know if I can upgrade sound, smoke unit, control to run in command. Custom lighting or mechanical work would not be my preference.
Bob
Allow 3 or 4 days shipping each way, and likely one to two weeks, or more, to do the work, depending on backlog at the time.
THat assumes the upgrade kit or materials are all on hand at the time the work starts.
Rod
According to Lionel, there won't be any Legacy upgrades, ever, because there's simply too much stuff that has to be changed (including the motor). Never is a long time, but the explanation was pretty persuasive. Lionel originally planned to make kits available but dropped the idea during Legacy development because of the complexity involved. TMCC upgraded engines will, of course, run fine under Legacy. A very good train electronics guy could probably upgrade a prized engine to Legacy, but he'd have to cannibalize an existing Legacy engine to do it, and he might not be able to transfer all the features.
Originally Posted by Bob Rumer:
John: I don't have any one engine in mind, sometimes I see steam engines for sale from the late 90s era and want to know if I can upgrade sound, smoke unit, control to run in command. Custom lighting or mechanical work would not be my preference.
Typically, that isn't all that difficult, but here is work involved. You still have to do stuff like fit a tether for more steamers so the electronics can be in the tender. Dealing with synchronized smoke chuffing is added work as well for fan driven units. Obviously, for a puffer, you just have to find a spot for the reed switch that matches if you want the smoke to be synchronized with the sound.
Originally Posted by Southwest Hiawatha:
According to Lionel, there won't be any Legacy upgrades, ever, because there's simply too much stuff that has to be changed (including the motor).
That is nearly the exact same response MTH gave when originally asked for PS2 upgrade kits when PS2 engines came to the market.
I think the bigger reason is to prevent it from encroaching on new Legacy locomotive sales, at least long enough to recoup more of their initial startup costs.
Legacy replacement boards were demo'd at a Denver show back when the system was first introduced. The Lionel tech support staff showed the audience the replacement live, in real time. The Lionel brass kept their fingers crossed as the boards had a tendency to self destruct when used in a chassis that wasn't designed for Legacy.
BTW, PS2 upgrade kits do involve stripping everything on the chassis down to the base drive train. It all goes. This doesn't mean that Legacy upgrades will never be available but the original decision to shelve the idea had as much to do with technical reasons as it did marketting concerns.
They've had years to work out the kinks, so if the desire was there, I'm sure it's technically possible to have Legacy upgrade kits that don't self-destruct. I just think the marketing will is not there to build the product.
I'm not saying they haven't looked and decided that the upgrade market wouldn't support the NRE to initially design the kits, that's certainly possible. They'd have to be developed for use in a wide enough variety of locomotives. However, I am saying I can't imagine it's not technically possible to build a reliable Legacy upgrade kit.
It might be priced out of reach, but that's another discussion. 
Originally Posted by John Korling:
Originally Posted by Southwest Hiawatha:
According to Lionel, there won't be any Legacy upgrades, ever, because there's simply too much stuff that has to be changed (including the motor).
That is nearly the exact same response MTH gave when originally asked for PS2 upgrade kits when PS2 engines came to the market.
I think the bigger reason is to prevent it from encroaching on new Legacy locomotive sales, at least long enough to recoup more of their initial startup costs.
John;
I have to agree with you.
Meanwhile Lionel can re-issue engines using the same tooling as before, but with enhanced Legacy electronics. This helps to better amortize the cost of tooling, and presumably helps to keep the overall costs down.
it also makes us consumers want to purchase the newer version, usually at a higher cost, just to get the new features.
It also insures that values of the previous model immediately plummet to about half of that of the newer version; which is good for those who don't need or want the latest technology.
If an upgrade kit was issued it would no doubt erode some of the market for the newer releases.
Rod
Rod: Thanks for the estimate of a couple weeks upgrade time not including shipping time.
Bob
Bob, I turn around a PS-2 upgrade in 2-3 days. I would tell you before hand if I had a backlog. Shipping back is your expense, ground is cheapest and can show up in 2-3 days depending on where you live. If you want to pay the next day cost, you could have it in a day. It does matter what you want upgraded. An old lionel with AC motor is not a prime engine for a PS-2 upgrade which needs a DC motor with a flywheel.
TMCC can be used on AC or DC motor engines. You just need the appropriate parts. G
