So we recently received our order of Lionel U33Cs from last years release. I was planning on running the BN unit we ordered with our older BN Atlas SD40s. Unfortunately, Lionel has decided to go back to their old ways of the early 2000s and not include an on-off switch for the cruise control, so that idea is scrap. I’m going to swap the shell on the new BN U33C with our early Legacy Conrail U33C to get around this. I know the shells are compatible, but with the first few releases of legacy having slightly different behavior than the later version, will I be able to swap their sound cards as well?
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If you have the Lionel stock numbers for those engines (6-xxxxx) just go to lionelsupport.com and put those numbers in (replacement parts pull down) and see what sound cards are in there. Without those numbers no one can help you. With the numbers you can find out for yourself.
Steven. The Conrail U33C was an early release legacy locomotive. The sound boards are are different as compared to the what you will find in your newer U33C.
If the sound cards are both RS 5.5 or RS6, you can swap them without smoke. However, if you have one RS 5.5 and one RS6, don't do it. Those are the two types you'll likely find in earlier Legacy stuff. The later Legacy stuff starting in the 2011-2012 timeframe started to use the single board RailSounds Lite board. Obviously, you won't be swapping those for the earlier boards.
RS6 boards have all soldered on components, here's a sample.
RS 5.5 boards have socketed components.
RS-Lite boards are a single board design that doesn't use the second power supply board.
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I figured they wouldn’t be compatible. Oh well. Thanks for the help.
Well, they might be Steve, but you have to check what you have. Without model numbers, we can't really give you a definitive answer.
John, here are the numbers.
Conrail: 6-28267
BN: 6-84282
I tried searching for these myself on the support site and couldn’t find them. You’re better at this than me I’m sure...
The Conrail has a RS 5.5 board, socketed chips. The BN is too new to be posted but assume it has a single Railsounds Lite Board. Bottom line you can't simply swap these.
Pete
Yep, no go with that swap! I'm sure the 2018 version has the single board.
I want to know why they took out the on/off switch for the cruise in the first place. I’m too young to remember but I’m told this was a big deal when odyssey first came out, so they added the switch. Now we’re right back to where we started with incompatiblity.
Can I also mention that in the catalog the listing says it DOES include an on/off switch....
What does the User's manual say? All of the stuff I've gotten recently does have a cruise disable switch, it would be kinda' unusual for that one to have omitted it.