Legacy Engine Sound Drop-outs

Add a battery in the tender or diesel.

Clean the track, wheels and pickup rollers on the locos.

I concur. The point of the battery is to keep the sound system going in the event of a momentary power interruption.

While I realize I can install a battery, I really shouldn't have to in this case as all operation is via Legacy + none of my other Legacy & TMCC equipped engines demonstrate this type of behaviour. The SD70ACe has done it since its first removal from the new box; the track /pickups/ wheels are clean which leads me to believe there is something in the Legacy Railsounds controlling software that is different from the TMCC version. Jon Z. - any comments?

If you are loosing power to the engine even for a moment, the sound will drop out.  While the older TMCC engines may recover better.  I've had the same happen to me.  The only solution I know of is the battery if the wheels are clean as well as the track.

As the others have said, the battery is the only cure if everything is clean and you have no connection issues to the rollers.  I presume you've checked the wiring from each of the rollers?

If this is one of the locomotives with only two pickup rollers, retrofitting a couple of the dual-roller pickups may also cure it without the battery.

Hi D&H, and Folks.  The A/F products do not have a battery in many locos to prevent interruptions in power that cause sounds to turn off.

Back to the question: The Legacy RS has a one time start up sequence.  You can re-trigger this start-up with the "R" (Aux1 + 0), although that stops the loco. 

We have identified that the Legacy RS could use a "tickle" to wake up while moving to alleviate this issue, although it is not prevalent.  We will use the cam pulses or chuff pulses in the serial chain to wake up the RS in 2015 production products.  

I am not sure if the current product could be reprogrammed to correct problematic units.  Best is to touch base on this issue with Customer Service around Feb or Mar next year to see if any options exist that can address this concern.

I added a battery to mine after a couple days of dropouts on a friends layout...fixed.

Chuck, Jon notes that many of the A/F stuff doesn't have provisions for the battery, an interesting issue.

Maybe they could put a capacitor in the appropriate place?

I don't think there is a charging circuit to charge a capacitor. If so this is a change that I am not aware of.

Thanks you all for your replies and especially Jon Z. for that info on the Flyer products.