Legacy and new ZW-L

I don't see how you'd get more speed steps with TMCC from the ZW-L.  That certainly doesn't seem possible for locomotives with cruise control.

Paul, it wont give command engines more speed steps. What they are talking about is the number of steps when using the remote to vary the voltage to the track.

 

At 32 steps you have to turn the red dial one revolution to get full voltage.

At 100 you have to turn it a little past 3 revolutions.

At 200 you have to turn it 6 1/4 times to get full voltage.

 

The voltage is also relative to where you have the handles set.

This is actually not correct, although the ZW manual has statements to this effect.  The modern ZW works strictly on time slices of the full input voltage.  If the handle is set at less than full output, the power in the initial slices are always the same regardless of handle setting, but the handle sets how many steps there are before the incrementing stops.  This means that reducing the handle setting does not give any smoother or smaller incrementing.  It actually makes the number of steps smaller.

 

Just another Lionel TMCC inaccuracy!

Dale, that sounds more like reality, thanks for the clarification.

Thanks for the correction Dale.

 

One other thing about the ZW-L is the manual doesn't mention anything about less steps when turning the dial counter-clockwise like the current one does. Just as well because hitting 0 or the brake (set to stay at the braked speed) will do just as well for when you have to stop or slow the train quickly.

ZW-L Manual On-Line

Can someone explain to me what Dale is talking about? In non techno babble

Basically, if you use the TMCC system to control the output of the ZW-L and set the throttle on the ZW-L to half throttle, it will limit the maximum voltage to that setting.  You'll also end up with 16 speed steps instead of 32 speed steps, they just truncate the high end of the range.

OK that makes sense

We run primarily in the command environment using Legacy and a PWC ZW. Initially, I was excited to see the ZW-L announced and liked the "all-in-one" build as I never cared for the bricks and nest of cords on the current model. However, I'm not sure that the collection of features is great enough to justify upgrading. We've never had any internal board issues with our pwc zw and the legacy system.