Legacy steamer lighting question

Look in your operators manual. Certain number of "blinks" with the cab light means that something may be wrong, and the manual will tell you what it is, by the number of "blinks".

That is correct. The new legacy engines have a microprocessor in them. The problem is the blinks are not the same for all engines.

Sam, I am experiencing the same thing with my Mikado except mine blinks three times. According to the manual that is an issue with the smoke fan unit. I am preparing mine for a shipment back to LHS for repair. As for yours you may want to to try a reset. There is instructions in the manual or from Lionel's website.

I wonder what do we do when the engine is out of warranty? still send it back, but at what cost.

What happens when any other train breaks out of warranty?

As far as the power dropout goes make sure your locomotive and tender rollers and the rails of the turnout are clean. I've had dirty rollers going over turnouts cause the same problem, once cleaned, no more sound loss.  Not sure what brand of track but atlas turnouts are notorious for causing sound dropouts due to their "dead spots". I believe some folks have remedied this with jumpers to the "dead spots".

Just got back in from our weekly club meeting and want to thank you all for the suggestions. I skimmed the manual but will give a thorough read tomorrow. Come to think of it, the smoke had ceased when I noticed the light blinking so will have to check it out.

The sound dropping out is a real P.I.A. as it will do it through several of our switches that don't and haven't affected any of our other (non-Legacy) engines to date. Sometimes it does it each time around and the only 'cure' so far is to power down the loop and start up again. The other thread said even adding a battery has no effect and that this is a common issue with Legacy. Not very relaxing!

 

but smoke issues can sometimes be fixed at home. so we will always have to send in our engines?  cause we just rebuilt our smoke unit on our 765 berk and we were wondering what will happen when our 3751 northern needs the smoke unit repaired.  doesn't seem right to have to send it back to reset the electronics.

I get it.  I'm not a fan of the flashing lights but to not void my warranty, I will comply.  I think it could get very old.

 Before you think "the sky is falling",if its any consolation i've had the smoke unit apart on my new legacy k4 to lube the fan motor because it was noisey. Put it back together and it works fine. As far as the flashing cab light code and smoke unit shutdown is concerned, I suspect as these locos begin to get out of warranty one way or another information on how to reset the diagnostics will become available. If nothing else, if you find yourself in that situation and email to Lionels customer service will hopefull yield the necessary information. There would be no point in having such extensive parts available to the customer if the repairs were only allowed to be done by Lionel.

thanks, just the suggestion I was looking for.

I called customer service and 'Angela' suggested that I reset the engine ID number which I did to no effect. My smoke unit is working fine and essentially is quiet. She said I still need to send it in (at my expense OW) before the problem develops.

Heck of a note...

c.sam:

 

No LHS to consult?

 

FWIW, my brand new Mikado gave me blinks (one, pause, one...) when I got it out of the box and powered on the layout, but pressing the "circle-R" symbol on my Legacy remote cured it (permanently? I hope!). Last when I visited it (last week), it was still working fine. I know it may not help you much, but...

 

Hope it all works out.

 

Bruce

Most may remember my trials and tribulations with my S3.
I was ridiculed for not reading instructions and voiding my warrenty, etc...
If you're not comfortable opening one of these engines than send it in and have it
Serviced. Eventually the warranty will run out on all of them. So it was in
my best interest to understand the failure modes and repair it myself. To each is there own.
I happen to enjoy repairing them.
I would try to understand what the light code is saying before sending it back

Bruce - I obtained this from an out of town retail store as there are no LHS's anywhere near here that carry new Lionel.

 

The 3 blinks evidently indicates a failure with the fan unit. When the blinking starts, the smoke unit turns off.  The manual says to use No 0 on the Cab1 to reset the locomotive which I did and she resumed normal operation for a minute or two. Then it stopped smoking and the light blinks again. Evidently after 3 resets the smoke will be shut down for good.

As mentioned above, the lady at Lionel said to reset the ID number and try that. It still started blinking after a minute of normal running. Mine is smoking well and fairly quiet in between resets. I've turned off the smoke with the switch until I decide when to send it to Lionel directly. Am curious if I should wait and run it in case something else goes out after reading the (too) many reports of DOAs and other malfunctions right off the bat. I've run this one only about an hour if that.

You could probably go either way on that sam, either wait or send it in.FWIW I believe the locos get a fairly extensive test run at lionel after they are repaired to make sure there are no further issues. 

If you're a veteran, Lionel will pay shipping both ways for warranty service.

c.sam - Can appreciate that you don't have an LHS; I value my (NC) LHS highly, particularly for their repair service.

 

That said, my LHS had to send one of my diesels back to Lionel for warranty repair for a "three blink" error (fan unit) that couldn't be repaired in house. Lionel returned it in perfect running order with fantastic smoking function.

 

Although not what you might want to do (paying for shipping), sending your Mikado back to Lionel service will give a very satisfying result, if my experience is to be taken as typical.

 

Good luck!

 

Bruce

C.Sam.  The blinking is a result of the fan motor drawing too much power from the electronics.  There is plenty of margin in the design, so the failure is real.  The cause is normally from a bad fan motor, or binding in the fan housing with the impeller.  Also, it could be the electronics are failing on the smoke system.  Pressing "0" or "R" will reset the smoke system, and after 3 cycles of run, blink, reset, the software will stop the smoke system to prevent meltdown.   Turning off the smoke switch will stop the smoke unit, thus no monitoring is done and the blinking will stop.  At some point you should have the loco serviced while in warranty.

Thank you Jon for jumping in here.

I will pack her up this week and get her on her way.

Do I need a RA number?