Lionel Mikado Jr doesn't run

Does the headlight light when you apply power?  Have you programmed it and done a factory reset, I believe that would be ALT1-7-4 on that locomotive? 

Railsounds idle sound is the only thing that works.  No headlight, no response, nada.  Have tried the reset Alt 1 -74 is correct.  Have checked power under cab, pickups look good but not sure where power connects to the board.  train was running fine both times and then just stopped, like it hit a bad section of track.  No response in conventional mode either.

Is the smoke unit turned on?  Shut the switch in the cab off and try again if it is.  I know my smoke unit burned out and shorted the whole engine out.  Shutting off the smoke unit fixed it.

Turned the smoke, tried reset.  Still no go.  looks like I'm going to eat this one.

All is not lost yet.

Since you have what appears to be no power at all, first thing I'd do is check the wiring from the pickups to the boards.  This could be a simple fix.  It sounds like no power getting to anything.

Of course, you could sell me the whole thing at a huge discount and I can fix it.

I have power to the boards.

Is there anyway I can tell if it is the R2LC or the receiver?

I meant is there anyway, besides a visual examination, of determining if its a bad motherboard, DCDR or R2LC/receiver?

Well, I do it by substituting a good R2LC, can you take one from another locomotive?  I have a similar locomotive, and while it had a C13 R2LC, the C08 that I have worked perfectly in it.  I actually just received the parts to fix C13 smoke output, hopefully that will be done.

I don't have spares.

Interestingly, the seller replaced the R2LC (the first failure) with a R4LC board.  I do not understand the differences R2, R4, C08, etc.

Is Lionel the only place to buy a replacement @ $40?

The R4LC is functionally the same as the R2LC, my most recent purchase of an ERR TMCC board has one of those and I asked the question.

The C08 or C13 are the firmware versions loaded onto the board.  For the Mikado Jr., I don't think it matters, they'll both work the same.

Other dealers have that board, but until you test that board somewhere, I wouldn't spend money buying another one.  If the board is bad, it'll be the second one to go bad in that locomotive, so there may be something taking them out.

Are you saying you don't have any other TMCC locomotives?

 The idle sounds are on because the engine is not communcating with the tender and its comming on as in conventional mode. With nothing working on the engine, I would say that you lost you power lead. The engine is not legacy so it should not have a R4LC radio board. They are not interchangeable with a R2LC.

  If you need assistance send me a email @ mttp6@hotmail.com or visit our web  @

http://www.mttponline.com/  We will be glad to help in any way we can.

Bill

Bill, your answer is in direct conflict with the folks at ERR who told me that given the same firmware, the boards are compatible electrically.

John

 I think your talking about using C08 or C13. The R2LC generates 5v DC were the R4LC does not. The 5v DC is generated by motherboard for the R4LC.

Bill

Well, I can only assume that the ERR stuff generates the 5V in that case.  I have two ERR kits with the R4LC, and one of them is installed and working.

If that's the case, I can see why the locomotive wouldn't work with a R4LC, I don't see a 5V source on the standard Lionel TMCC motherboard.

Do you happen to have a pinout for the R4LC board?  What pins does 5V come in on?

Does anyone have a the pinout for the R2LC board?  Is it 5vdc to the motor?  What pins?

The R2LC board doesn't drive the motor directly, it supplies a PWM stream for forward and reverse to the DCDR, which is the board with the four power semiconductors and the heatsink.

Pin 18 is PWM forward and pin 16 is PWM reverse signals to the DCDR.  Five volts does go from the R2LC to the DCDR, it's on pins 19 & 20.

So, a little confused on the difference between the R4LC and R2LC.  I have a full 19 VAC from the MB to pins 1 thru 4 on the R4LC.  Should it be 5 vdc?

Pins 1&2 are center rail pickup, pins 3&4 are outside rails, so they should have 18 volts.  I would limit TMCC to 18 volts, some of the boards like ERR say that over 20 will cook them.  I don't like to run that close to the edge.

Pins 19&20 should have 5VDC on them, measured to the chassis.

The fact that the R4LC ran for a few hours in that rig seems to suggest that a missing 5VDC isn't the issue.

 The R4LC that ERR is using is not the legacy edition. It is a R4LC board the is configured to C08 code. It can't be used in a legacy engine. So it could be swaped with another tmcc C08 board

Bill

I knew it had the C08 code, but I assume it's the standard R4LC hardware.  We were discussing the presence or lack of same of the 5V supply.