Infrared sender on locomotives

You might want to provide the engine model number. I have no idea, but that is always the next question.

6-34663

There is no way for the user to reprogram the information a Legacy engine sends on it's IR sensor.

The only way to change the Railsounds is swap out that Railsounds board for one from a UP GP9 but it would have to be the same version of Railsounds board ie, Railsounds 6 or Railsounds Lite. There are other ways to do this but they would involve swaping out more hardware. If Lionel made a UP GP9 about the same time they made your engine you would have a good chance it would work.

Pete

Only a handful of the earlier RS equipped engines had the IR transmitter, those were the Vision Line models with modular boards.  I would expect them to have a different interface.  The RCMC equipped locomotives all use the RS-Lite board and a generic LTC1 IR transmitter board.  This board also handles the coupler, backup light, and markers in steamers, but apparently only the IR transmitter in diesel/electric models.

His model is an RCMC equipped locomotive with the RS-Lite board and uses the LTC1 board.

The question is, does the data come from the RS-Lite board or is it coming from the RCMC?  Since the RCMC has unique programming and part numbers for each locomotive model, my sense is the data comes from the RCMC and not the RS-Lite board.

I assume all tower com and crew talk is programmed into the Railsounds board whatever it is. The RCMC just triggers it.

Pete

Correct, and with the RCMC, they actually "dumbed down" the Railsounds boards, they don't to any autonomous functions like continuing to ring the bell after a single command.  With the RS-Lite and RCMC, each bell strike is triggered via the serial data, there is no independent operation by the Railsounds boards.  One sound command, one canned sequence is output by the sound board.