legacy oddity

Flickering headlights mean that something is degrading the track signal reception.  Where/how is the power supply to the command base plugged in and where does the track antenna on the command base attach to the tracks.

If the Legacy base is plugged into a surge protector and the protector is not carrying the ground lug through to the wall outlet you could see this kind of behavior.  If the antenna wire from the base is not getting a good connection to the track it could also cause this to happen.

Chuck that was my take also, and have a very expense surge protector and sure enough it is showing a compromised internal ground, enough to effect only my lionel pieces. Problem solved and ship this surge piece back to the manufacturer! Thank You

that is because legacy requires a good ground to work at all.

the other system is not so dependent on a ground.

I had the same type of problems, when your hand is by the engine it works fine, walking around the track with my hand over the engine no problems ..move your hand and problems are back.

I phoned Lionel about it and I had to send the Legacy unit back to Lionel for a repair.

fixed the problems...

the handset or the base or both?? Now when I removed surge protector "0" problem..Go figure?

Your problem obviously lies with the surge protector. Legacy transmits one side of the signal through the ground wiring of the room/outlet it is plugged into.

Poor house wiring and/or bad powerstrips can hamper the signal. This has come up before.

I sent in both , the repair was to the base, but they updated to the latest version while there.

A surge suppresser on the track side will do nothing to protect the equipment on the line voltage (aka house wiring side).

the issues that people see on there layouts may look the same but they may be caused by very different specific  root causes.  Blinking headlights just mean you have poor signal propagation.  You have to figure out whether its on the track side, the house wiring side or possibly an induced signal from some metal object in the vicinity.

The funny thing was that when I was telling the Lionel repair staff my problem with the hand over the train, he was able to finish of my sentence, I guess it is a known problem..

I am running thru a "line conditioner" and 3 phase sequencer for powering up everything. Something went in the unit and was causing interference instead of a clean signal. This is usually a foolproof signal enhancer but it sure did alert me to a bad signal when it happened

You are right about surges on the line side that's why most people install a surge protector. My guess though is that surges occur on the line side when there are power outages.

If they were to occur on a regular basis in lieu of a power outage wouldn't that indicate a major supply issue?

"If they were to occur on a regular basis in lieu of a power outage wouldn't that indicate a major supply issue?"

Weather plays an important role.  Frequent violent thunderstorms can cause problems if the lightning is hitting the power lines.  As the power companies have gotten more concerned with profits over service surges from equipment failure or overload are also becoming more common.  A GOOD unit is cheap protection.  

When we have a storm WARNING and the local doppler radar shows a larger red or purple zone bearing down on the community I pull the plugs on power strips one the way to the basement.  These devices are only meant to handle strikes that happen some distance away, not a direct hit.