Legacy Battery Charging Question

I don't use the charger on my base, (It's one of the wonky ones, so I use an external charger.) but I seem to recall that a full charge can take 3 or 4 hours.

Thanks Nicole;

I think you are right; it seems to take around 3 hours or a little more maybe.

How do you know if the Legacy base charger is working properly or not?

Does it just quit?

Rod

Hi Rod,

On mine, it just goes into the over-voltage condition after charging for about 2 minutes. It has done this almost since new, and one day I'll send it in to get it fixed. Mine is also one of those that can't recognize a black module. (Strangely, it works fine using a 'modified' blue module, but a genuine black module is not recognized at all.)

One advantage of using an external charger, is that I always have a spare set of batteries fully charged and ready to go at a moment's notice. 

Its not as much as if it "just quits" Its rather, the combined heat of the battery charger and batteries, along with the normal heat the base creates on its own with the electronics for controlling the trains causing the charger to "shut down" sensing the heat. This is not unlike other battery chargers.

This is likely why gunrunnerjohn charges his batteries in the 993 expansion set and has no issues. The 993 set is just a charger and not a communication base.

( yoohoo John, time to chime in here)

I personally don't like the added heat, or the idea of leaving the base on when I'm not running trains. I turned the charger off when I unpacked my system and either charge the provided batteries in another charger or use disposables.

Nicole;

I like the idea of an external charger also. I already have one so I will just pick up a second set of rechargeables.

Weird about no recognizing the black modules. Go figure.

What version of the software are you running? If 1.2 or earlier I wonder if that is the problem?

RickO;

I think John is off at York, so we may not hear much from him for a day or two.

I have taken to shutting off the internal charger once I get the solid green lites indicating fully charge.

I am going to get a spare set of rechargeables as I said above, and also keep lots of Duracell AA's around. Need them for the Cab1 anyway.

Thanks a bunch,

Rod

I use the 993 to charge the cab. It works very well. Very little heat.

I did have occasion to send it back for repair once. It just quit altogether. Lionel turned it around in just a few days. 

My memory is long gone. When a Legacy system is sent to Lionel for service and returned, what does the white dot mean that they painted in the battery compartment?

As I understand it, the very first Legacy sets with version 1.0, after being delivered, required a change to some hardware inside the unit(s). To document which units were updated, a white paint dot was applied to them.

Hi Rod, yes it is strange about the black modules. Jon from Lionel sent me a tested black module too in case I had some bad ones, but even that didn't work. But GunrunnerJohn's modification to a blue module works fine. There must be some very subtle difference between them that my base is sensitive too. I did send Jon full details and photographs of the circuit boards, but I don't know if he ever managed to discover the difference. In the meantime, my 'ex-blue' modules work fine for upgrades and I'm currently running on the latest software. (Mine came with V1.4, so it's not a really old set.) When the black modules first came out, there were a few others who reported similar problem, but I believe that they all sent theirs in to be fixed. I'm holding off on sending mine in until I can get a 'spare' system, as I don't want to be without Legacy for several weeks. (I live in Europe, so shipping times are longer.) I have a set on back-order, so hopefully it won't be too long now.

if the lights cycle through to green, it is working properly. p.80 1.52 manual

 and battery charge state icon on Cab2 screen will show full

Chuck, thanks for the info.  Rich