I won a bunch of PS1 boards in an auction recently for cheaper than cheap. Although I was hoping that they would all work, I figured a few of them might have been bad but it was worth the risk for what I paid (maybe a couple bucks a piece for a lot of like 15 give or take).
I also bought four MTH engines in various states of assembly. My project was going to be to try to build three working engines from the parts of the four that I bought. But before I dove into the engines, I wanted to try my hand at swapping out PS1 boards on something that I didn't care about.
Enter 8314. I bought a used Lionel "Iron Horse" set from Craigslist a while back, but only because I wanted the KW transformer that the guy was also selling. Turns out it wasn't even the full Iron Horse set..someone before him swapped out the Original engine (which was a cheap but still die-cast loco) with the absolute cheapest junk that Lionel ever built. The DC-only "Southern Streak" 2-4-0. All plastic (They would have made the wheels plastic if they could), one sliding pickup, and that goofy "chuff chuff" roller mounted in the tender that was supposed to sound like a chugging sound but instead just sounds like a sick cat hacking a hairball.
I proceeded to convert the DC engine to a full PS1 setup. Unfortunately, I didn't have any steam PS1 boards, so this little guy was going to be reborn as a Dash-8! After some messing around with the limited room and a couple mods to the tender. I cut away the internal supports that held the chuff wheel to make room for the board, then had to chop the potentiometer mount so I could screw it to the back of the tender and drilled a hole for the adjustment, then ended up taping the battery into the lower chuff wheel housing. Had to cut out part of the top to allow a voltage regulator to stick through.
That left only the speaker, which was a pain. So it ended up riding in some custom detents in the cab!
When I tested out the new setup, I couldn't get it to run reliably in forward or reverse. Turns out the single little sliding pickup would lose continuity over joints, and without the secodnary pickup of almost every other engine, the PS1 board reversing circuit interpreted that as a switch in state. So I had to solder a secondary pickup (some braided copper, to be exact) to assure continuity across the joints.
Now that cheap little engine is a Dash-8 powerhouse! LOL
Pics and video attached!
