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While the engine is running the horn and sometimes the announcements will activate all by itself. I reprogramed to manufacture specs, opened the tender and boiler and checked all wires and plugs for security. It does accept commands so I know the tether is working but what is odd it doesn't happen all the time.

Any ideas?

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I have had similar issues with the same engine. Unfortunately I am not knowledgable

about the electronics to have resolved the problem. At one point I replaced the battery

and this did correct the problem for a while only to have it recur when I began running

the engine after I had it packed away for 3 months. I hope someone here has  insight.

Now I'm motivated to try again. I'll try to reseat the sound boards and see if it helps.

Thanks G.    Mike

It could be the R4LC, but the last time I had the exact same issue, it was the sound board.  It could get expensive swapping boards around, so I have a suggestion.

If you have another similar vintage Legacy steamer, try swapping the tenders between them.  Run them both until you get a failure, that will tell you which end is failing.  As long as they have the same style IR coupling, they'll run just fine together.

Open your tender and remove the Railsounds 5.5 audio board.  Pull and reseat both chips.   John, without those sounds being activated by the operator what he is hearing is a product of the tender.   Nothing is being sent through the IR system.  When inside the tender, don't push the boards tight.  Pull the boards off the motherboard and reseat them.  

I would do the tender swap as John stated.  That is a good no danger trouble shooting tool.    Walk slow and try what the guys suggested before throwing parts at it.

Last edited by Marty Fitzhenry

Marty, I know that would be my top suspect, I don't believe the R4LC is a likely candidate here.  My identical failure turned out to be the sound board in the tender.

Another possibility, check the mounting screws on the trucks and the sideframes.  I had one that had loose screws for the sideframes, those were causing random audio output like this as well. 

GUNRUNNERJOHN, I would go along with the dirty wheels etc. except the way I understand it the TMCC signal does not care about dirty track or wheels. The rail is the where the signal comes from and it creates a tunnel effect around the rail and the antenna picks up the signal so it is always a clean signal unlike DCC the signal goes through the rail into the wheels for signal pickup to the decoder is this right?

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