I'm curious about the A units with 2 motors. Can these A units run separately or do they have to be tethered and run as an AA? Do they both have DCRU boards?
Replies sorted oldest to newest
One of your PS1 A units can run by itself, or it can be combined with the other unit into an AA with 4 motors. The other A unit is a slave and can only run if plugged into the first unit.
Pardon me piggy-backing. I bought an MTH F3B unit, then a PS1 MTH PS1 AA set, all Northern Pacific. I was intending on converting these to TMCC in the future. In a what-the-heck moment, I put the A unit on the track, switched the PowerMaster to CONV mode, and powered up. The engine made two clanks, not three, and moved. On second power up, nothing.
a) What happened?
b) does the tether cable have center rail, such that removing the tethers make it more likely to stall (after converting).
I may just put a bridge rectifier in there to show nothing wrong with the motors, obviously it would be stuck in one direction only.
@illinoiscentral posted:Pardon me piggy-backing. I bought an MTH F3B unit, then a PS1 MTH PS1 AA set, all Northern Pacific. I was intending on converting these to TMCC in the future. In a what-the-heck moment, I put the A unit on the track, switched the PowerMaster to CONV mode, and powered up. The engine made two clanks, not three, and moved. On second power up, nothing.
a) What happened?
b) does the tether cable have center rail, such that removing the tethers make it more likely to stall (after converting).
I may just put a bridge rectifier in there to show nothing wrong with the motors, obviously it would be stuck in one direction only.
Michael,
Is the battery inside your main A unit relatively new? Or is it perhaps very old? Old is not good.
The main A unit does not need the tether connected to operate successfully. It can run without the B unit or the Slave A unit attached.
I've run mine for years without the trailing units attached with no difficulty.
Mike
The trail unit is a DCRU and could be driven on its own with jumpers added. MTH did make powered conventional units that did have DCRU with directional control. But the ABA where wired to have the PS-1 lead engine provide the direction control to the DCRU powered Trail A or B depending on your model. G