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I just bought a GE Demo Diesel (6-18226) from someone on here and the Railsounds don't work as he advertised. To be clear, he said the railsounds don't work in the ad and the price was very reasonable because of it. Now I am trying to fix the railsounds, everything on the engine works fine (TMCC and conventional) except for no sounds. I popped it open and it would seem that C15 is missing from the board. Also, the 9V battery hookup is disconnected but I don' think that matters as the board should receive power from the rails. Can someone please tell me the value of C15 so I can replace it and see if that gets me going? Thanks, Doug

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So I soldered the cap in and all I got was a static sound that went up and down with track voltage changes. I noticed the RS chip was not seated all the way so I pushed it down and it didn't make a difference. So it would appear something else on the board is bad like potentially the chip socket got hosed at some point. At least sounds came out of it after adding the cap. I think I will remove the chip looking for bent socket areas and reseat it before buying a new board.

MartyE posted:

IMO this is one of the best sounding "early RS" engines Lionel produced.  I have it and the startup and shutdown sounds are excellent.  I hope you get it going.  I only wish it had can motors.

Amen to the can motors. I am trying to lashup two of the exact same diesel and they want to fight each other to the point it trips the CW-80 and the bigger transformer I tried. One has some run time on it while the other is brand new and seems "tight". I took the new one apart and lubed it but it seems like it needs some run time to loosen up to the point where it will play nice with the used engine. Think I will try running it in to see if it gets better.

OK, so I reseated the chips and resoldered a purple wire I accidently yanked while getting the chips out. I burnished the chip edges with 4000 grit sandpaper while they were out to make sure I would get some connection. Fired it up and got full sound. However, when the engine moves it makes god awful noises out the speaker and seems to be in time with the pickups from the eccentric (3 sided wheels). If the loco stops in the right spot the sounds all work and everything is normal. If it stops somewhere in a spot where its receiving signal from the 3 sided wheels I get no sound. So whats my next move? Just disable those proximity switches and live without the RPM change from the engine? Open to ideas, feel like I am close now.

PaperTRW posted:

The battery leads on those boards are somewhat fragile -- they were hardwired versus everything else being connected via those white Leoco-style connectors.

The lack of control via the volume pot again points me towards a wiring problem. The pots usually don't fail in that manner.

TRW

Spot on! After thinking about the symptoms further and closely examining the schematic it turns out one of the previous owner(s) or Lionel... plugged the volume pot into the cherry switch slot and vice versa. Flipped those plugs and got full, clear sounds! So in summary I did the following to get it working:

1. Replaced C15 capacitor (it was missing) with a 1000uf 35 volt cap

2. Pulled chips, cleaned edges, and reseated them gently towards the top of the seat 

3. Found the reversed volume pot/cherry switch leads and switched them

Hopefully this will help someone searching in the future. Feel like I deserve a badge for getting this one, or at least a beer...

So the plot thickens.... something smoked again but this time I can't tell what. Sound is dead again and engine was not responsive to TMCC commands (intermittent). Turns out someone had soldered a longer lead onto the antenna and then soldered the lead to a small metal plate at the front of the engine that would periodically touch the engine frame and ground out. Removed that kaka and the engine responds perfectly now but the sound is still dead. Strongly considering a tether to hookup dual 16 ohm speakers from my good Dash 9 to get sound into the other unit. Just glad the control board didn't die from the antenna grounding out. 

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