reviving my thread with a new question. legacy ten wheeler 6-111150

You mentioned the engine starts up when you power up the layout. Is it just the sounds coming on in the tender ?  By running the engine forward and reverse. All this is being done I assume using command control.

I would lean towards the IR tether. The engine itself should perform normal minus the tender being attached. Which it seems to do. Other than the smoke unit not shutting off. A good test. Remove the tender. Use a digital camera or phone and aim it towards the IR on the drawbar. On the screen you should see a purplish colored light on the screen. Light being on you should be looking at the tender. No light. The engine. Not sure what’s going on as far as the smoke unit though.

command control yes. only sounds from tender is correct.

@Dave_C posted:

You mentioned the engine starts up when you power up the layout. Is it just the sounds coming on in the tender ?  By running the engine forward and reverse. All this is being done I assume using command control.

I would lean towards the IR tether. The engine itself should perform normal minus the tender being attached. Which it seems to do. Other than the smoke unit not shutting off. A good test. Remove the tender. Use a digital camera or phone and aim it towards the IR on the drawbar. On the screen you should see a purplish colored light on the screen. Light being on you should be looking at the tender. No light. The engine. Not sure what’s going on as far as the smoke unit though.

I’d agree with Dave 100% ……look carefully at the IR transmitter on the engine side….look for a broken wire heading to the transmitter on the drawbar,…..

Pat

As for the smoke, this locomotive uses the now unavailable Legacy smoke voltage regulator.  It also came equipped with the 6 ohm smoke resistor that was creating an excessive load on the smoke regulator and hastening it's demise.

Sadly, there are no Legacy smoke voltage regulators available as Lionel declared them all obsolete and apparently pitched them.

One possibility that doesn't involve the smoke regulator.  Since the serial data to the tender doesn't seem to work, and the smoke regulator also doesn't work, it's possible that the serial data connection has been broken.  Many locomotives have a wire nut with the serial data being distributed in that manner.

A quick test without taking anything apart is to use your phone camera and with the tender out of the picture, sight into the IR transmitter on the drawbar.  If you see a purple glow, the serial data is present, if not, I'd consider checking the wiring inside the locomotive.

thanks guys. will check the ir tether when I get home.  if I get it to work is there a solution to the smoke reg board since its unavailable?

could I just turn off the smoke via the switch and run the engine as is?

update guys, did the phone camera test and got a light on the engine drawbar it appears white to me,but still a light none the less. see attached photo. no broken or damaged wires as far as I can tell in the engine.

tryed another legacy tender from my other ten wheeler with wistle steam. that engine has the latest blutooth board in the engine.

with this tender hooked up I can now get the rear electro coupler to fire. it now has chuffing sounds, whistle, water fill sound, and thats it. no bell,crew talk or towercom or other sounds. also the smoke does not shut off either with the cab2 or change settings aka LMH.

this leads me to belive that you are all correct in the ir tether data stream. could the tender ir sensor be bad?

I see no bad wires in the tender either. I got a photo of the tender IR tether also.

am I on the right track here? or is there more going on here? I realize the ac reg smoke board could be bad. hence why I cant set LMH or turn it off with the cab2.

If I could get the engine to funtion as it should with only the smoke not working right. I would just leave the smoke feature off and run it like that.

would love to have smoke,but as john has pointed out lionel no longer sells the smoke reg board. so replacing that is a no go.

another update. after further and closer inspection of the tender IR. it was bad. see photo.

I ordered one from lionel. that should solve the sound problems I hope. now the smoke is a different matter perhaps? I will see when the new IR tether arrives. any other advice is welcome. thanks.

A question relating to the smoke unit parts. Never heard of this pcb(see second photo below). What does this board do?

The board is the smoke fan controller.  This model had a lame smoke fan control, don't know why it took them so many components to do a poor job of controlling the smoke!  I got tired of the lame smoke control and enhanced mine.

Improving the Lionel Legacy 10-Wheeler

just a quick question, maybe you can answer this john.

is the smoke regulator a sperate issue altogether from the IR tether issue? say once the IR tether issue is fixed and all sounds restored. will the smoke unit still have the control issues via the remote? or will restoring the serial data conection solve the issue?

I had the canadian pacific ten wheeler years ago I remembered having to order a smoke reg board and installing it. I sold it years ago cause I needed the money at the time. never thought back then about the smoke being off at idle.

also not to side track my own thread, but this is my last very early legacy or tmcc used engine I will be buying. from now on I will be doing my homework on all my used engine purchases. looking at lionels parts websight first is what I should have done. this parts obsolescence by lionel makes older engines harder to buy for me.

case in point this ten wheeler and the no longer available smoke reg board. luckly it was a steal of a price so I am still ok buying it.

while parts searching for this engine in particular. I see a lot of the main parts like pcb control boards or smoke unit parts are discontinued or no longer available. this is for a lot of very older models.not just this one here.

unavailable main parts like that become an issue when buying used. lets say you get somthing at a good deal just because its an old model. good luck if you need a pcb smoke part or maybe the part in question is the main control board which could be $200 dollars. and thats if it is still available. those issues alone make the used purchase not worth the time. at least for me.

I realize for the most part older lionel tmcc and leagacy parts are robust, but in this case with the poor lionel smoke unit design. it just for me anyway causes me to pause and shy away from models with outdated electronics. this is solely my personal opinion.

now back on track. will update everyone here when the IR part arrives and I install it as to how this engine operates. I hope that cures it. thanks again for the info here guys you are an invaluable bunch here on the forum.

The tender IR tether has nothing to do with the smoke.  The fact that a different tender works shows that fixing the tender IR link should restore all the sounds.

As for the smoke regulators, Lionel got a wild hair several years back and decided that all the TMCC and early modular Legacy boards were suddenly obsolete.  So, they removed them from the parts site and disposed of them, exactly where we don't really know, but my guess is that Trainz got at least some of them.  So, if you look up any TMCC locomotive or early Legacy before the RCMC started showing up in 2010, you'll find that virtually all the electronics are no longer available.

TMCC is not a big deal, plenty of us have lots of TMCC parts still around, but early Legacy is another matter.  I still have some early Legacy parts, but the pile is shrinking.  I actually got a bunch of Legacy smoke regulators several years ago, only to discover when I went to install one that they were defective!

I have managed to make a somewhat kludgy work-around for Legacy using the defective regulators, but it's obviously some work to do the extra wiring, etc.  Here's where I described that project.

A Smoke Control Relay For Special Occasions

thanks john for the reply. thats what I thought. I just was not sure.

as you all suspected it was the IR tether. new one installed in the tender and all sounds restored.

now the smoke is a different story. still no LMH or off with the cab2. since lionel is out of production in the reg board. I guess it will just need to be shut off with the physical switch underneath the cab.

I have a feeling its on the high setting now all the time now. so it smokes,but do not want to damage anything else by using it. plus if I did use it the wick would get very cooked in no time as at idle it does not run the fan.

I checked trainz website for a reg board, but did not see one. oh well at least it runs now and wont be a shelf queen.

thanks again guys for all your help. I learn somthing everytime I work on lionel stuff.

If the smoke regulator isn't working, you're likely putting way too much current into the smoke unit, so leaving it off is probably a good idea.

thanks john. thats what I assumed. the smoke unit works and I get good smoke. the only thing is it can not be shut off by the cab2 at all. so I assumed the ac reg was bad.

wish there was a fix,but being poorly designed and lionel discontinuing the reg board leaves me to think fixing it is a no go.

if you have any suggestions I would be glad to hear them.

maybe john you can answer my latest question.

A little backstory..... I was recently working on my lionmaster challenger. the chuff switch needed replaced. the smoke unit in this engine was taken out by me several years ago. it had a bad pcb board.

it was then I realized that I left the ac reg board in this engine. so i looked up the part # and low and behold its the same reg board that is in my 6-11150 ten wheeler wich went bad.

my new question is if I install this reg board into my ten wheeler. will I need to get a different ohm resitor for the smoke unit so I dont damage this ac reg board? if so what size resitor?

john you mentioned the original 6 ohm put to much stress on the reg board wich is possibly why they fail in this smoke unit design by lionel. so my thought here is if I just replace the ac reg the same problem will occur again. am I right?

8 ohms when using the regulator.

@Lionelzwl2012 posted:

maybe john you can answer my latest question.

A little backstory..... I was recently working on my lionmaster challenger. the chuff switch needed replaced. the smoke unit in this engine was taken out by me several years ago. it had a bad pcb board.

it was then I realized that I left the ac reg board in this engine. so i looked up the part # and low and behold its the same reg board that is in my 6-11150 ten wheeler wich went bad.

my new question is if I install this reg board into my ten wheeler. will I need to get a different ohm resitor for the smoke unit so I dont damage this ac reg board? if so what size resitor? 8 Ohm is the recommended resistor when using the regulator.

john you mentioned the original 6 ohm put to much stress on the reg board wich is possibly why they fail in this smoke unit design by lionel. so my thought here is if I just replace the ac reg the same problem will occur again. am I right? Yes, which is why we switch to an 8 Ohm resistor whenever we find the 6 Ohm in place, because that implies 2 simple things- there is a regulator if it is a 6Ohm, and if it's still working and we want it to stay working, we follow the guidance to switch to an 8 Ohm smoke resistor.

Thanks vernon.