Help needed! New sound card for LionChief Plus Hudson (6-82965)

The tender won't do you much good, all the electronics, including the sound, are in the locomotive!

I'd contact Lionel by phone and ask about the board.  Sometimes "not available" doesn't really mean not available.

As pointed out, Lionchief Plus is an all in one control board. There is no separate sound card that is user or service tech replaceable other than the entire board.

That said, you caught the attention of one of the people who can do component level repairs on boards. Since you said the engine still runs and works minus sounds, this most likely indicates the amplifier chip on the board has failed. Lionel has used the same basic amp chip from Lionchief all the way through Lionchief plus. These are very cheap to replace CE0030B, however the chips are mostly stocked in China. Because the local train shop sells a lot of Lionchief we have seen failures due to the way Lionchief and Lionchief Plus drawbar connector systems and the wiring tends to fail. This injects AC track power back up the speaker wiring into the amp.

The point being, your engine should be inspected at the drawbar, definitely remove the original heatshrink strain relief, repair any damaged wires and then properly heatshrink and strain relief. Because if you fail to fix the cause of the short and thus the blown amp- even if you did get a new board, you would just blow the amp chip up on it.

Again, what I have seen over and over in these failures, if the board is totally dead, then the AC passed through the amp and blows up the logic of the main control board system. If the audio amp fails, but the rest of the system works, there is a chance that replacing this simple amp chip will bring back sounds. However, at the same time, you have to solve the why it blew and most of the time it is related to a drawbar failure.

I can do this repair and have the chips on hand.

Also, I might point out  since you asked, this is what I consider one of the first series of Lionchief Plus boards. These are pre-Bluetooth. Since you asked if another board could work, technically I have the know how to make that happen. This series of board has separate soldered in right angle riser PCBs and one of those is both the personality (sounds and function) as well as the combined radio module in one of those cards. A skilled person can transplant a working personality PCB onto another similar series Lionchief plus board effectively making it the new personality. This of course depends on the fact that the PCB was not killed by a voltage event during the failure of the board.

Just validated, there are a few other Lionchief Plus Hudson boards available. https://www.lionelsupport.com/...20/%20HUDSON%204-6-4

This means that worst case scenario, yes another board could be installed, and would then either have to buy the matching remote to that engine specific PCB or use the Lionchief orange universal remote for control.

As I stated, since it appears your personality PCB section is working, your remote still works, you can still drive the train, say worst case scenario the amplifier chip didn't work, well then a personality transplant could be performed on one of the available PCBs and see if that works.

I'm just saying, there is more than one way to skin this cat. There is plenty of hope, the cheap fix (amp replacement) is the most cost effective, however, there are fallback plans as well to use other boards if that is where you end up.

Many times if there is no sound of any kind, the wire in the locomotive drawbar has broken off the solder pad on the connector as the wires do not have enough slack going around curves and breaks off. you will have to remove the heat shrink tubing on the drawbar and make a visual inspection of the solder pad connected to the drawbar.

Doesn't that engine have the new type tether. I absolutely deplore?  The two pieces of plastic the where one fits into the other. If so - check the pins. That of course if you checked the sound at the board already.

I'd first check the tether as Chuck suggests, it's the top suspect.