ERR sound upgrade 3rd Rail steamer

For the chuff sound to work on your old RS board there must be serial data on the tether. The new Railsounds board has a serial data input. Its just a matter of making sure what wire is serial data in the tender. Pin 1 of J2 on the Railsounds board is serial data in.

Pete

If the Cruise Commander and the sound board are already in the tender, the chuff must already be coming back or you wouldn't be getting the chuffs now.

Perhaps if you gave us more information about the current configuration, we could help you with the repairs.

He said the tender has a cam and a chuff rate switch used to trigger the chuff.  Where did those wires go in the original set up.  TMCC can have chuff via switch feed the R2LC which in turn sends serial data, but there are RS board that except the chuff input directly.  The key difference is TMCC can allow the generation of the chuff by grounding to chassis, BUT ERR new versions can not.  Hence the reed switch and magnet.  They can accept hall effect sensors, but those do not generate a chuff via grounding.   So for your new ERR sound board you most likely need to add the reed switch in place of your cam if it is a grounded switch set up.  G 

3rd Rail uses 2 chuff switches in the engine. It allows you to switch between 2 and 4 chuffs. Those switches go to the RxLC. So the Railsounds board gets its signal from serial data not the chuff switches directly. I know their early engines had a magnet on the tender axle but this engine has cams and switches in the engine.

Pete

As Pete says, it's the locomotive that has the cam, so the chuff has to be going to the board to make it work right now.

Thanks to you all, as always. I installed the upgrade and yes, it has chuffs without the reed switch/magnet and as far as I can tell (see below) they are 4 per revolution as per the switch setting. 

I would say that, at last, something that was simpler than I thought, but now the engine is binding/sticking in forward motion but not reverse (which is how I know it chuffs). I think this might be just mechanical and I’ll check everything over unless anyone thinks this might be a board-related problem. The Cruise Commander is labeled CR 7.0, (c) 2009; the radio board is a stock Lionel 691-R2LC-C labeled 08Z.

98% this is mechanical, very few failures of the boards could cause something that specific.

Make sure you check the location of the eccentric. It should be just off center of the axle. Too often the screw holding it on gets loose and it moves and binds when the eccentric rod is getting pressed or stretched.

Pete

Yeah, now there’s something up with the drive train. I think that the main gears are not engaging. Took off the cap underneath that covers the main gear and the drivers turned freely, which I think is not meant to happen with these engines. To top it off a long screw fell out from somewhere underneath. I was hoping not to have to take the boiler off - but at least I have sound!