Legacy/RS5.0/RS6.0 Boards use with ERR Commanders? 7/22 UPDATE

Thomas,

I recently purchased RS 5.0 boards from Lionel to retrofit a couple of TMCC steamers that I upgraded to ERR cruise M.  These engines had earlier RS 2.0 boards. The 5.0 boards I put in the steamers made a huge difference.

I don't believe you can purchase the Legacy boards at this time, however the 4.0 & 5.0 boards can be purchased through regular customer service.  Just have a part # available.  

BT

I'll consider it, Bruce. The irony is that the more criticized generic CrewTalk on the more recent Legacy engines works for me, as I don't think there are 5.0 boards with matching road number for the engines I have.

The newer LEGACY sound boards are almost the same as the newer ERR sound boards at least physically. The only difference I noticed is the trim pot (volume control) is mounted to the board. where the LEGACY version is not. There is a 3 pin Female Plug end instead for external mount of the Volume control Pot. But they are in the same location on the boards. Lionel makes the boards for ERR. ERR is part of Lionel. I guarantee the Pin outs are pretty much the same. Those boards are reprogrammable. If Lionel ever decides to do what MTH does, we can program those boards as a consumer.  

Mikado 4501 posted:

I'll consider it, Bruce. The irony is that the more criticized generic CrewTalk on the more recent Legacy engines works for me, as I don't think there are 5.0 boards with matching road number for the engines I have.

That would likely be true.  I don't use the crew talk so it is a mute point with me.  At any rate good luck with your search!

BT

Bruk posted:

Those boards are reprogrammable. If Lionel ever decides to do what MTH does, we can program those boards as a consumer.  

Lionel release the Legacy sound files?  Don't hold your breath.

BruceT47 posted:

Thomas,

I recently purchased RS 5.0 boards from Lionel to retrofit a couple of TMCC steamers that I upgraded to ERR cruise M.  These engines had earlier RS 2.0 boards. The 5.0 boards I put in the steamers made a huge difference.

I don't believe you can purchase the Legacy boards at this time, however the 4.0 & 5.0 boards can be purchased through regular customer service.  Just have a part # available.  

BT

 

 

Bruce, AFAIK, you cannot buy Railsound 5 boards from lionel without trading one in. Did you have to trade in? If not, what are the part # for the boards you ordered? If I can buy Railsound 5 boards without trading in, I can update/make an engine I have always wanted.

Lionel is apparently now selling RS5 boards. Not really worth it now as the newest ERR Railsounds boards are less money when you add in the required audio power and motherboard required for the RS5 boards. Sound is at least as good if not better than RS5 and are all generic. I looked and could not find generic RS5 boards. As for Legacy RS, the only way you will get one is buy an Legacy engine and remove its board or maybe if you are a personal friend of someone at Lionel.

Pete

I got one visionline board for a engine that didnt have one.. It was like pulling teeth never again ..

Guess we'll have to wait until Lionel upgrades the Legacy RailSounds to a new version, or decides to give ERR some more sound boards.

I talked with Ken of ERR, and he said that the ones for sale are the only ones Lionel will let them use. Again, it wouldn't be such an issue if the sounds weren't of such limited variety, mostly steam engine wise. It can be pretty distracting to hear Pennsylvania K4 sounds coming from a NYC Hudson, or Big Boy ones from an Allegheny.

Nicks Trains posted:

BruceT47 posted:

Thomas,

I recently purchased RS 5.0 boards from Lionel to retrofit a couple of TMCC steamers that I upgraded to ERR cruise M.  These engines had earlier RS 2.0 boards. The 5.0 boards I put in the steamers made a huge difference.

I don't believe you can purchase the Legacy boards at this time, however the 4.0 & 5.0 boards can be purchased through regular customer service.  Just have a part # available.  

BT

 

 

Bruce, AFAIK, you cannot buy Railsound 5 boards from lionel without trading one in. Did you have to trade in? If not, what are the part # for the boards you ordered? If I can buy Railsound 5 boards without trading in, I can update/make an engine I have always wanted.

 

No I did not have to trade anything in.  It has been mentioned on this forum that Lionel has relaxed their exchange requirements for RS 5 boards.  For the record I purchased an HHP 8 electric  5.5 board  691RS5506b.  I misspoke on the steamer boards as they were RS 4E 691RS4E01B / Southern 4-6-2 #1396.

BT

Bruce,

I found an ideal RS5.0 board for this engine, in this case from the American Flyer Mikado with the same road number.

Though, since the RS5.0 boards are much different than the Legacy/ERR ones, is there a wiring diagram you can offer for setup? Do the ERR speaker and wires to the ERR Cruise board get hooked up differently than normal?

The easiest way to use these may be to use this RailSounds Powered Motherboard.  It has most of the same connections as the older ERR RailSounds Commander and is pretty easy to use.  Also, the pin connections are silk screened on the back side.

I'll assume that the RailSounds card slips through the 24 prongs. But that board looks like it has all the outlets for the speaker and commander. I can guess the speaker goes in the upper left outlet on the second row, and the hot and ground connection to the bottom left outlet on the second row, but where does the purple and black wires and the chuff sensor wires lead to?

Actually, the speaker goes as depicted below.  There are three extra pins that are for an external volume control as this board doesn't have it on-board.  There are the red block on the right.  You can either use those pins with an external control or buy the proper volume control pot and solder it to the board locations for it.  You can also short two of the pins for max volume and dispense with the volume control.  For steam, a reed switch goes between the Trigger switch and DC Common on the lower right connector.  The 5VDC is for a hall effect sensor.

It looks like for the speaker, hot and ground leads (red and black) and the purple and black pair that go to the 9 pin plug require new plugs in order to fit into the Motherboard.

This powered MB connects to the Cruise Commander using the three position plug on the top right, track power, ground, and serial data. You need a 3-pin to 4-pin cable.  Conveniently, the Cruise Commander or AC Commander comes with a suitable cable, you just need to remove the pins from one end of the 4-pin to 4-pin cable and use a 3-pin connector shell.

If you connect a chuff switch to the trigger and DC common, do NOT connect either wire of that to frame ground, you'll release the magic smoke.  I normally feed the chuff into the Cruise Commander and let it come over on the serial data line, easier wiring job.

Doesn't that harness actually come with the Sound board from ERR?  Except the CC Lite.  The CC Lite has the unique connector, so that board comes with a sound harness.   G

Remember, he's not getting this board from ERR as they no longer sell it, so he doesn't get the harness.  The Lionel board is a bare board, no cables.  The question is how to hook it up.  Since it's basically the old RS Commander power board, I'm using that as the pattern for documenting the connections.  The Cruise Commander does come with a 4-pin to 4-pin cable, you just need to replace the connector shell with a 3-pin shell for this application.  Obviously, you do still have to come up with the 5-pin connector for the speaker and volume control connections.  If you want a battery and/or SS/RS switch, you need the 4-pin cable too.

I think you are mistaken.  The Recent CC I received from ERR do not come with the 4 pin as it is not necessary for the CC to work as the motor controller/feature controller.  You get the 4 pin harness with the Sound set.  It plugs into the CC.  The exception is CDR Lite .  Because the CDR Lite has a non standard connector, it comes with the harness to plug into the sound board.  The one that comes with the Sound board would not work with the CDR Lite.   Also the CC-M Modular does come with a harness, needed for PWM. 

I do have spare harness if needed.  G

You're right, the cable I described comes with the Cruise Commander M kit.  I'm working on a couple of these and got the cables mixed up.  The odd thing is, you have no use for this cable with the normal installation of the CC-M, so I'm not sure why it's in the package!   You use the 4-pin cable from the old DCDR for the CC-M, so I have a lot of these cables laying around.

He has no cables with the Lionel part, so he'll have to fabricate those for this option.  If he uses a standard RS4 motherboard, he'll be faced with the came cable dilemma.  That was actually where I was going, I got sidetracked by the stuff sitting on my workbench.

I purchased the Motherboard as shown above for RailSounds 5, and a corresponding RS5 board (for the Pennyslvania S Gauge Mikado, which sounds much appropriate). However, when I contacted Ken at ERR of cables to connect to it, he said this about it and the wiring diagram:

I'm afraid you are mixing apples and oranges here.  The first picture with the 691- number is a Lionel power board.  It takes different cables than our Electric RR board.  We do not have those special cables.  Lionel or the OEM companies that used that board supplied their own cables.

The second drawing is what we sold, RS4, that is without the red parts.  It fed an RS4 audio board.  We do not sell either the power or audio board any more.  There might be a few cables left around here.

If you can be very specific on exactly what cable you need from what to what maybe I can find enough parts to make one.

I'd imagine you just needed to follow John's advice of having a 3 pin to 4 pin cable and replace the serial data wire to the motherboard, but this advice from Ken is a little disconcerting.

I use these motherboards, and they work fine!  Just take this cable that came with the Cruise Commander and retask it for the 4-pin to 3-pin duty.  You can just find a 3-pin connector shell and rearrange the wires.

That cable and the speaker is all you need.  You don't need the battery or the RS/SS switch.  If you don't have any old TMCC connectors laying around, they're available from Digikey for peanuts.  They have all the JST EH housings from 2 pins to 10 pins in stock: http://www.digikey.com/product...&pkeyword=jst+eh

The matching pins are on each product page.

That certainly makes it easier, John. I'll purchase the 3 pin plug housing in addition to the yellow 2mm LED's.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the normal Cruise Commanders I purchased did not come with that wire. Guess they don't do it anymore.

Get a few of the connector bodies, you'll need the 3-pin, the 5-pin at least.  I invested in the crimp tool some time back, now I can make cables for all the common Lionel and MTH connectors from 1.0 mm to the 2.54mm ones.  It comes in very handy when doing these kinds of things.

I looked and you're apparently correct, the last three Cruise Commanders I just got don't have that cable.  Good thing I can make them.

Mikado 4501 posted:

That certainly makes it easier, John. I'll purchase the 3 pin plug housing in addition to the yellow 2mm LED's.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the normal Cruise Commanders I purchased did not come with that wire. Guess they don't do it anymore.

Pardon me if you know this already but the connector housings don't come with pins. You order them separately. You will want to get many more than the total positions of the housings as it may take a few tries to learn how to crimp them without distorting the pins or not crimping hard enough and having the wire come loose.

Pete

If you mean these, Pete, then yes.

http://www.digikey.com/product...455-1042-2-ND/527267

If ERR doesn't respond back, I'll try and making one of those cables myself as well.

Those should work. Are you going to order the $500 crimp tool or the $1k one? 

Pete

Probably neither. I found the cheaper alternative ones of the pins as well.

I use the Engineer PA-09 Crimp Tool for these connectors, works perfectly.

I actually have a tool just like that, albeit in yellow, so that should do.

I ordered 25 of the pins (just in case), 3, 4 and 5 pin plugs, and the 2 LED's. Now to wait.

You won't have to wait long for Digikey, they ship like lightning!

You can also buy pre-crimped wires in various colors from Lionel parts.  Makes it much easier that buying multicolor wire and all the extras for a one or 2 time harness making event.  G

If he has the crimp tool, the rest of it is no big deal.  The electrons don't care what color the wire is.

FWIW, for small gauge colored wire I use rainbow ribbon and peel the individual conductors.  Very cost effective colored #24 wire.

Sure, but for a one or two event thing he probably has better stuff to do with his time...,girls,cars,school, etc  All depends on how deep you want to go with scratch building.  G

5/4 Update (Hey, Star Wars day, eh?):

I'm finally removing the outdated RailSounds 1.0 from my 18005 Hudson from 1990 and upgrading it to a can motor via Frank Timko. It will get things like fan smoke, Super Chuffer, etc. as well, but the HARDEST part is finding a suitable RailSounds card for it to do it full justice. ERR doesn't offer steam sounds that sound like a New York Central Hudson, and all of Lionel's old Hudson RS4.0 sound boards are impossible to find.

What I DID find is Lionel is now offering their modular Legacy sound boards (non-Lite boards I mean, which are essentially the same as the ERR sound boards), RailSounds 6.0 as they call it, for sale as parts. This includes both the Vision 700E and the 4-4-2 Atlantic boards. The latter would suit this engine excellently, and I will be purchasing the 5344 board for my 18056 Hudson (which is numbered 5344).

But before I seal the deal on these boards, I want to know if they're as compatible with the 691PMB2A02 RailSounds powered motherboard as the earlier 4.0 and 5.0 boards were?

And if I was to put a 6.0 board in a 5.0 RS modular system, would that be an issue? - By that I mean placing the 6.0 board in the 38097 PT tender Lionel offered for Century Club 2, which had RS 5.0.

The 6.0 boards look similar, but not quite the same as those older boards. These boards are far from cheap, but I want to do my favorite railroad and favorite locomotives as much justice as I can.

They used the same generic RS power supply board, so they have the same pinouts.  I can't imagine why they wouldn't be usable with the powered motherboard.

I checked the listing for the Vision Line Genset that uses RS 6.0 boards, they also use the generic RailSounds power supply.  I'm sure the powered motherboard will be fine.

RS 6 is Legacy, no? ERR is 8 bit TMCC. I have not tried it but doubt it will work or if it does you will have limited sounds. If you want RS 6 I believe you would have buy all the boards for the Vision Hudson including R4LC and Motor driver (plus motor encoder). Best bet with ERR is just get their large steam Railsounds board.

Pete

Pete

I get what you're saying. Maybe I'm a nitpicky fanatic when it comes to the Hudsons, but I just don't want a Hudson sounding like an N&W J or a PRR K4. I'm not looking to turn a conventional engine into a 100% Legacy locomotive, just one that sounds reasonably like its prototype - remember how ticked everyone else was when Lionel gave the Legacy Blue Comet that high pitched sounding whistle in 2012? As long as it chuffs, rings and whistles, and sounds reasonably accurate, I'll be fine.

Believe me, I would go for any of the older, cheaper RS4.0 boards from older Hudson locos if they existed at Lionel's parts department, but that isn't so. And, no, I'm not a hater of the ERR sound kits - the large one suits the MTH Blue Comet locomotive I'm upgrading just fine.

Like John said, looking over the exploded diagrams, the sound systems look almost as modular as the older RS4 and 5 systems.