Is it just me, or does TMCC-era Lionel stuff have a mind of its own?

Obviously has some sort of problem, or maybe it's an issue with the layout signal.  In any case, I find most TMCC to be pretty bulletproof and predictable.

The battery has nothing to do with the TMCC operation, it's only function is to provide a brief bridge for the Railsounds for power interruptions.  Usually the battery is more needed for conventional operation.

Maybe TMCC signal issue. I spent a bunch of time tweaking this and putting in  in ground plane, doing various things.  There are 4 loops and I put them all on different blocks, an then I connect the TMCC to all of them from that one spot.  I grounded the ground plane to the building ground.  Actually mostly TMCC is better for me now after fussing with this.  I've cured all my TMCC dead spots, at least.  Maybe the antenna inside the locomotive is bouncing around in there, doing something random?  Another thing I considered.

TMCC doesn't exhibit things like multi-path distortion unless you have a truly monster layout.  With a wavelength of over 2,000 feet, any reasonable sized layout will work by connecting the command base anywhere.  Mine happens to connect to the common ground buss that feeds all four of my power districts, but it worked just as well when I had it temporarily connected to one end of my mainline loop.

If it's down to one locomotive with TMCC issues, it's probably time to pop the top and see what's going on.

OKay, that makes sense, maybe best is to assume this is some kind of antenna/analog radio issue internal to this one engine.  I can't believe the symbol rate of TMCC would be high enough that it would matter.

What is weird, though, is before I started monkeying with all this, I did get TMCC dead zones on the lower track, whenever it passed below another track. There is some multi-generational Lionel-confusion going on here, because I'm pretty sure my father never got this quite right either and that's why we have two Base-1s, both of them seem to work exactly the same. (And yes, I do use the Base-1 power supply that comes with it, that has the ground prong.)

@Cathryn Mataga posted:

OKay, that makes sense, maybe best is to assume this is some kind of antenna/analog radio issue internal to this one engine.  I can't believe the symbol rate of TMCC would be high enough that it would matter.

What is weird, though, is before I started monkeying with all this, I did get TMCC dead zones on the lower track, whenever it passed below another track. There is some multi-generational Lionel-confusion going on here, because I'm pretty sure my father never got this quite right either and that's why we have two Base-1s, both of them seem to work exactly the same. (And yes, I do use the Base-1 power supply that comes with it, that has the ground prong.)

I think you are on the correct track with the antenna/signal.   I had a TMCC engine act exactly the same and it was an antenna connection issue (actually grounding against the shell in my case).  Sometimes it would work and sometimes not.   I took the shell off to investigate, and it ran perfect with no shell.  Put the shell back on and issues returned.   Turns out the antenna was grounding (intermittently) on shell on mine, but yours could be a bad connection.  Try running it with no shell and see what happens. It will still run with no antenna connected.   That would explain why it worked at shop but not back home.  Intermittent things can be the hardest to find.  Also check the radio board is seated correctly.  TMCC engines usually are pretty solid.

@Sean's Train Depot posted:

I think you are on the correct track with the antenna/signal.   I had a TMCC engine act exactly the same and it was an antenna connection issue (actually grounding against the shell in my case).  Sometimes it would work and sometimes not.   I took the shell off to investigate, and it ran perfect with no shell.  Put the shell back on and issues returned.   Turns out the antenna was grounding (intermittently) on shell on mine, but yours could be a bad connection.  Try running it with no shell and see what happens. It will still run with no antenna connected.   That would explain why it worked at shop but not back home.  Intermittent things can be the hardest to find.  Also check the radio board is seated correctly.  TMCC engines usually are pretty solid.

I think possibly yes, just analog boards and crusty old connectors.  Actually this one wasn't that hard to take apart. I didn't have that 'I'm going to destroy delicate plastic feeling hardly at all' -- I took it apart.  I didn't see any obvious antenna, and I didn't see any obvious leaking capacitors, anything like this.  I couldn't figure out how to pry apart the little white electrical connectors, but the wires were long enough, I just wiggled the boards around in there a little, put it back together and now it's working.  Maybe just dirty connectors, something like that? It is quite old now. We'll see how long this lasts. Maybe I just leave it.   Is deoxit considered okay for these, now I wonder..

Deoxit is good for any age connector, and it's excellent if oxidation is starting to cause problems on the contacts.

If you're not seeing an obvious antenna connection, that's a problem.  The exact product number would help us help you.

The 'wiggling around connectors' has made this work reliably into the second day. So I honest think I'm onto the problem.  I have some Deoxit coming in, will use that on the connectors in there.

It's this one here.   72-8241-250. There were wires coming off of the train to the case, but they all looked like they were going to lights.  It's not obvious to me where an antenna would connect, I assume it shipped this way, but possible it was lost at some point?  It does seem to be working now.

https://www.lionelsupport.com/...ents/72-8241-250.pdf

This metal plate is the antenna, it's hanging on a post above the electronics and/or the motor.  If that doesn't have a wire going to a motherboard connector, that's one of the problems.

Oh, oh, that makes sense.  I do have that plate. Thanks. When the Deoxit comes in, I'll keep an eye out for that and make sure any connections to it are good.

And come back to this after I get time to monkey with trains again. This engine is now running fine now.  Been pretty reliable for a bit now.   I'm not sure if this makes any sense at all, but I had two 5906 Horn/Bell buttons wired in with the powermaster + brick.  I removed those, and now it seems fine.  These things were super-old, and I found they were reducing the AC voltage on the tracks, even without the button pressed.  I really think it was this, because after removing these, our Railsounds diner is now working fine too, and that had trouble before too.

Happy to hear you may have discovered the problem, I've had a couple of those horn/bell buttons go bad, when I placed a postwar steamer on the track the whistle would blow constantly. Happy New Year!

@charles mcdaniel posted:

Happy to hear you may have discovered the problem, I've had a couple of those horn/bell buttons go bad, when I placed a postwar steamer on the track the whistle would blow constantly. Happy New Year!

I suspect mine was broken the same way.  Not all trains did this, but I did have one Protosound-1 engine that did exactly this.  Constant horn. I started to take them apart, but, really, every transformer I have, already has bell/horn buttons, and the PowerMaster already has this -- so just going to stuff in the drawer.