Lionel Legacy System/Locomotives Malfunctioning, Not Responding to Remote

This is a useful thread.  Thanks for updating.  I am having perhaps similar issues in at least some cases.  I just got a large oval completed and my tmcc/odessy EM-1 and another tmcc engine is having all sorts of issues.  I had a much smaller oval previously and everything worked fine.  This one is about 25' on a side with 096 curves.

What is happening seems to vary.  I initially was seeing the EM-1 work (brought up the power supply controller with the Legacy remote) and after some work the EM-1 was running.  The sound system however was getting stuck on various commands.  Then I read you should not have  a power strip that your base was plugged into (I did) so I moved the base plug to a short three pin 3' extension cord.  That did not fix the issues.  So I used a 50' extension cord and ran that around the floor of the room and then next to the track which is 4' high.  I tried to reprogram the engine and now it starts with the power supply coming up in voltage.  Will try to program it again, I am not sure that it actually took the programming.  But it is hard to program now that it takes off when the power supply comes up even with the program switch on prog.

The second engine, also a tmcc and preprogrammed when I had the little oval was running when the power came up as well, but now just sits there.  I tried re-programming it but it does nothing in response.  I reprogrammed the power unit and it seems to be the only thing that does respond to the remote and legacy controller system.  It blinked when done programming so it took the signals.  I put new batteries in the remote.  The engine just sits there with railsounds on when it powers up.

BTW I wired the whole basement and it passed inspection.  There is definitely ground running to all outlets.  I checked the connection from the remote lug to the track all over the oval and it reads 0 ohms.  So the track is connected.  Batteries on remote now show full voltage.  Ground pin for the controller base power supply has been plugged in directly, and through the extension cord.

Suggestions?

Thanks!

The ground that is external to the house also matters.  How old is your house and does it have a ground that meets modern code?  Sounds like a signal strength problem perhaps, which can be quite striking in older homes without good grounds.  Just a guess.

Thanks

I did the electric in the basement around 2000 and the house was built in 1993.  I would think that the rail carries signal as well but I did put the extension cord next to the track oval.  No difference.  Perhaps the base or electronics need some repair.  Although it does command the power controller.  Will see if I have time to call Lionel tomorrow and see if they have any suggestion.

Interesting idea about the tmcc using the ground of the house.  However that does not seem to match this description from wikipedia

"Chief among these contributors was Applied Design Laboratories of Grass Valley, California, headed by Atari 2600 co-patent holder Ron Milner. Young had been referred to Milner by his neighbor and friend, Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari. Milner's team (consisting of numerous members, including Robert Johnson and Bryan Scott) developed the main elements of the Command system, including the innovation of using the Lionel steel tubular track system as a broadcast antenna for digital signals overlaying the electrical power being delivered through the track to locomotives, rolling stock and connected accessories. In larger layout practical application, the use of the track as an antenna has fallen somewhat short of success, however and a separate antenna wire stapled along the right-of-way has proven to solve the problem"

It would tend to make sense that they are trying to form an antenna using the ground wiring of the house as half of the antenna and the track as the other half.  This is what your cell phone does as it uses the ground plane of the phone circuit board as the larger part of the antenna and what is in reality a short piece of wire as the other "half".   But it makes more physical sense to me that the one rail of the three rail might be able to act as an antenna but it would be helpful to understand the frequency and power levels that the legacy base is working at.  Nor does a shorted loop add that much to signal propagation versus a wire that is not shorted.  The loop just looks like a big, well what would it be, capacitor if the loop were under a half wavelength and inductor if it is larger.  But shorted loops (unlike loops that are not continuous and have two terminals) are really not effective radiators.  At low frequencies like VHF radios use you see short wires and big inductors to help match out the highly capacitive short wire.  An actual effective antenna could be made (separate from the track) and possibly amplified as well.  Has anyone like a club layout had to do this?  When I call Lionel I will ask for more details like an operating frequency.  I have spectrum analyzers around the house that go fairly low in frequency but if it is below 100KHz I will not be able to use them.

Any thoughts?

I have a  U shaped layout which is about 20 feet wide, and each U is about 18 feet long and 8 feet wide.  A number of years ago I was also having signal issues especially on parallel tracks and metal bridges.  I put in some ground plane wires both just above the track and below.   This improved the signal a little but not enough to still cause random signal drops.  The next step, I purchased John and Dales signal booster.   When first installed I did not get an indicator from the booster that it was receiving a signal from the cab 2, which was probably less that 2 years old.  The Cab 2 and base were sent to Lionel for repair.  Once it was repaired everything ran great, not a single issue.  In fact, I was able to remove all of the ground plane wires.  The base 2 is attached to a strip but I do not think it has circuit protection.  So my suggestion is to check the output from you cab 2.  If you know someone nearby test it on their layout or give Lionel a call and describe your issue.

Marty

@Robbin posted:

Interesting idea about the tmcc using the ground of the house.  However that does not seem to match this description from wikipedia

"Chief among these contributors was Applied Design Laboratories of Grass Valley, California, headed by Atari 2600 co-patent holder Ron Milner. Young had been referred to Milner by his neighbor and friend, Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari. Milner's team (consisting of numerous members, including Robert Johnson and Bryan Scott) developed the main elements of the Command system, including the innovation of using the Lionel steel tubular track system as a broadcast antenna for digital signals overlaying the electrical power being delivered through the track to locomotives, rolling stock and connected accessories. In larger layout practical application, the use of the track as an antenna has fallen somewhat short of success, however and a separate antenna wire stapled along the right-of-way has proven to solve the problem"

It would tend to make sense that they are trying to form an antenna using the ground wiring of the house as half of the antenna and the track as the other half.  This is what your cell phone does as it uses the ground plane of the phone circuit board as the larger part of the antenna and what is in reality a short piece of wire as the other "half".   But it makes more physical sense to me that the one rail of the three rail might be able to act as an antenna but it would be helpful to understand the frequency and power levels that the legacy base is working at.  Nor does a shorted loop add that much to signal propagation versus a wire that is not shorted.  The loop just looks like a big, well what would it be, capacitor if the loop were under a half wavelength and inductor if it is larger.  But shorted loops (unlike loops that are not continuous and have two terminals) are really not effective radiators.  At low frequencies like VHF radios use you see short wires and big inductors to help match out the highly capacitive short wire.  An actual effective antenna could be made (separate from the track) and possibly amplified as well.  Has anyone like a club layout had to do this?  When I call Lionel I will ask for more details like an operating frequency.  I have spectrum analyzers around the house that go fairly low in frequency but if it is below 100KHz I will not be able to use them.

Any thoughts?

Don't overthink this.  There are tens of thousands of layouts using this scheme very successfully, with all functions working on all locomotives along all stretches of track.  Only a handful of the very biggest ones have had trouble getting things to work everywhere (which are a special case, with plenty of discussion on this forum, within other threads, about how to deal with the specific issues successfully).  Others, also very limited in number, have always found to be due to compromised hardware or implementation.

There is nothing wrong with the concept.  It works, and does so overwhelmingly.

It seems here, from your description, something in your implementation is not quite right, and it may be related to the size of your new layout.

Temporarily start over with a smaller loop and see if your issues are still there.

Mike

@Robbin posted:

Interesting idea about the tmcc using the ground of the house.  However that does not seem to match this description from wikipedia

Well, TMCC ain't changing any time soon!  Instead of reading Wikipedia for a flawed description, I suggest this excellent writeup by the late Dale Manquen.  Any description that says they don't use the ground to propagate the TMCC signal is flawed.

TMCC Signal Basics by Dale Manquen.pdf

Great thanks.  I appreciate all the info and wealth of knowledge.

Just looking for info.  The descriptions on Wikipedia are normally very accurate.  If it is not then we should get in the loop and change it.  Surely someone at Lionel put something out at some point.  They just designed and built a base 3 so they have electrical engineers.

I did look at the link you sent.  I follow all that actually as I have a few decades of antenna engineering (started on satellite antennas way back in 19 80 and 5) and can read electrical schematics.  The thing is that the track is going to radiate.  I would think the track is half of the "dipole" and the house ground is the ground plane. It will mirror the currents produced on the track rail.  At this frequency it would not even see the base of the loco.  Anything less the 1/10 or a wavelength is not really there electrically.  Essentially the track rail is our monopole (though a big circle at this low frequency of 455KHz a half wave is a football field and quarter wave is the 50 yard line...my track is not a football field size) a really short short monopole, that is an oval. If anything the larger track would be a better antenna.  The relatively short wires on the locos are really not meant for this frequency if it really is 455KHz that the comms are on.  But you say they work.  Mine did too.

I did call Lionel today and the customer service person after a long silence said I should call another place.  I did not get a chance to call yet but will let you know what they say.

I have spent about a year getting the larger layout with lifting sections done.  I am not going back to an 0-72 oval to see that these same locos that worked on a smaller oval with the same 990 a year ago still work.  I respectfully need the larger layout to work.

Cheers!

@Robbin posted:

I did look at the link you sent.  I follow all that actually as I have a few decades of antenna engineering (started on satellite antennas way back in 19 80 and 5) and can read electrical schematics.  The thing is that the track is going to radiate.  I would think the track is half of the "dipole" and the house ground is the ground plane. It will mirror the currents produced on the track rail.  At this frequency it would not even see the base of the loco.  Anything less the 1/10 or a wavelength is not really there electrically.  Essentially the track rail is our monopole (though a big circle at this low frequency of 455KHz a half wave is a football field and quarter wave is the 50 yard line...my track is not a football field size) a really short short monopole, that is an oval. If anything the larger track would be a better antenna.  The relatively short wires on the locos are really not meant for this frequency if it really is 455KHz that the comms are on.  But you say they work.  Mine did too.

I did call Lionel today and the customer service person after a long silence said I should call another place.  I did not get a chance to call yet but will let you know what they say.

We'll have to agree to disagree about the specifics of how TMCC actually functions.  Since the wheels are directly tied to the AC & DC ground in the receiver board in the TMCC/Legacy engine, any signal radiation from the track is somewhat moot.  However, if you remove the antenna lead and the TMCC stops working, it's fairly obvious that the antenna actually is doing something useful.  Also, if you connect the antenna to the locomotive frame, I can assure you that you'll not have TMCC operation.

Thanks John

I dont really have a strong opinion either way but it seemed that the ground system of the house was the ground plane the track the other part of the antenna?  If there is no radiation then is TMCC like DCS where the track carries the digital commands?  That might make more sense as the frequency in the pdf you kindly sent is very very low to radiate (think it was around 435KHz) and it is not part of the Industrial Scientific Medical bands that are not licensed.  So radiating would as far as I can see require a license which of course the fcc has not granted us modelers.

As it turns out, while I was looking for a tear in the space time continuum kind of complicated technical issue at the heart of this I went and looked if any of the used Ross switches I am using soldered the two outside rails together.  Not finding that I disconnected one side of the oval (I have electric plugs to take the power etc across my hinged sections) and I found that the two outside rails were at 0 ohms.  Connected!  I know you said that this is not what you want and it would short out the commands if the rail is an antenna (or probably other).  I then noticed that I had connected the TPC wiring incorrectly.  I had measured the two outside rails before but I kind of need to scrape the probes on the rail for it to work it turns out.  I starred at the wiring diagram and I can see how I did this.  It has bunch of wires converging on the lockon side which is supposed to be the outside rail.  Dumb dumb dumb.  Like most of my debugging its always the simple problem like did not turn the power on and I am looking for some subtle highly complicated cause.  I should know better but I am really too old to change

Will rewire the TPC tonight or tomorrow and I am sure all will be well.

The only way the earth ground (building ground) is connected to the locomotive is through the antenna, so I hope that's radiating the TMCC signal.

I didn't say the two outside rails couldn't be connected, AAMOF, all of mine are.  What I said is the building ground could NOT be connected to the layout in any way other than the command base power brick.

Thanks John

I am still working to resolve the wiring.  I had to stop for a bit to deal with some work emergencies and now I am down in NC in Ophelia battening down things in a storm.  At least I got to ride the train (Palmetto) to NC!

Sorry to misunderstand your statement.  It goes along with my early experience building satellites (you know by hand, like model T's before the production line) where we would have a team meeting of all the groups of Engineers and technicians every morning and get our instructions for the day.  In very clear english.  We would then go off and report back the next day.  It was common that we would not do what was asked or do some variation because we did not understand what the team lead meant or asked for.  We would then try it again and get closer.  Kind of makes you realize that these stories we have of large teams/groups of folks acting seamlessly in unison based on secret orders is pure fantasy if not delusional.  Hollywood can do that (Mission Impossible Mr Phelps ).  But humans dont do that.  Ever.

I am sure I will get this worked out once I get back to the layout again.  Thanks again for the help!  Stay safe.

Cheers!

Doesn't sound like a ground issue would be the problem unless the external grounding rod is no longer functioning due to mechanical reasons or drought.  People have reported that sort of thing, but it's a long shot.  To me still sounds like signal strength is the main problem. Works up close, but fails further away.  One issue that has come up on occasion is the receiver crystal in the command base being slightly off frequency as I recall.  I'm not savvy enough to tell you how to test that and fix it, but it sounds like you might be  .  Good luck.

Good call on the TMCC command base tuning.  It's not the receiver from the remote that's the issue, but rather the 455khz can that gets out of tune.  Dale had a procedure for tuning the BASE1 center frequency as well.  I've used this technique on a couple of the old BASE1 units successfully.  Note that the BASE1L and Legacy command base don't suffer this detuning issue.

If the frequency tuning of the Base oscillator shifts away from the nominal value, the receivers in the locomotives may have a reduced sensitivity. Re-tuning L8 is a bit risky, but sometimes this is necessary. Using the least sensitive locomotive as a reference, press the horn/whistle button on the CAB-1. Use a plastic screwdriver to adjust L8 back and forth until you determine the extremes of the adjustment range that will activate the horn/whistle. Now adjust L8 to the middle of this adjustment range. Check all you other locomotives. (You could have just one bad locomotive and a good Base!)