Lion Chief Remote and Stationsounds Diner Cars

No, it cannot. The LC-family remotes cannot operate TMCC or Legacy products.

Thank you for the response!

In short, no.  

The LC/+ remotes are digitally paired with their engines and only talk to the engine they came with.  They do not share any similarities in radio technology with TMCC/Legacy.

JGL

RAILSOUNDS,

    In your opinion will Lionel eventually build an inter-face so that Legacy will run the LC family?   The new Hallmark/Lionel Santa Toy Maker Express went over big time here in our house hold, love to have it run with the legacy Cab 2 also, understanding that only the LC running options would actually be available from the Cab2.

PCRR/Dave

Dave, 

I'd like to see a LionCheif - Tmcc/Legacy bridge offered by lionel, but there are some business concerns with doing this.  Mostly the actual functionality of LionChief as currently produced is vastly inferior to Legacy, and as such it might not be a good idea to allow a Legacy remote to run LionChief/+ products.  You wouldn't want someone to be handed a Legacy remote at a show to control an engine with only 16 speed steps, and walk away thinking that that is the functionality they can expect out of Legacy.  On the other hand, Lionel actually having the radio protocol on hand, would be better able to implement a bridge device than any third party could.  For example does the transmitter send a unique command to fire a coupler, or does it send a double-click of the button, and the processor in the locomotive then reads it as a coupler command or whistle/bell command.  If it is a unique radio command, then you could remove the button lag that LC+ has, if not, you could not.  It all depends what the actual parameters are available over the radio protocol.  

I think it very likely that some enterprising person will build a third party solution to this, but I suspect they would wait until the universal remote is available to offer an item for sale, as this way they could gut the electronics in the remote and offer a plug and play device that wouldn't require folks to modify their remotes.  Such a solution would have it's own limitations, but would probably provide enough functionality for most hobbyists that are enthusiastic about the LionChief/+ product line.  

Stay tunned for an upcoming post sure to open several cans of worms.  

JGL

Grampstrains posted:

I don't know if it will work in your case but I have a Station sounds diner in the "Baby Madison" type car pulled by a LC+ engine.

I use a CW-80 for power and I can use the whistle button to operate the diner.

Actually that's exactly what I need to know. I power my track with a GW-180 so if the whistle button will activate the diner then that's fine with me.

Thank you Gramps!

BNSF-Matt posted:

Grampstrains posted:

I don't know if it will work in your case but I have a Station sounds diner in the "Baby Madison" type car pulled by a LC+ engine.

I use a CW-80 for power and I can use the whistle button to operate the diner.

Actually that's exactly what I need to know. I power my track with a GW-180 so if the whistle button will activate the diner then that's fine with me.

Thank you Gramps!

Make sure you're comparing apples to apples.

Lionel has never produced a "Baby Madison" passenger car with StationSounds. The "Baby Madison" cars came with TrainSounds, which is a different animal.

Early StationSounds cars have very little functionality in conventional modes -- in fact, I believe they'll only respond to a whistle command when the car is stopped. Later StationSounds cars have a broader function set in conventional/transformer control modes that more closely mimic the TMCC functionality.

I hope this helps.

TRW