LIONEL SDK BOARDS

I wonder if those may be K-Line boards. K-Line pushed their licensee agreement with Lionel going directly to SDK to get their command control boards. I believe they also adjusted the connector layout so standard Lionel R2LC boards could not be directly used.

@bmoran4 posted:

I wonder if those may be K-Line boards. K-Line pushed their licensee agreement with Lionel going directly to SDK to get their command control boards. I believe they also adjusted the connector layout so standard Lionel R2LC boards could not be directly used.

Thank you for the information. Who is SDK?

Sanda Kan, who provided electronic parts to Lionel (China) who was bought out by Kader industries, who provides trains for Bachmann.

K-Line was then acquired by Sanda Kan (SDK), a Chinese toy manufacturer that formerly acted as K-Line's subcontractor. Sanda Kan had licensed the use of the K-Line brand to Lionel until 2010. With the license expired, Sanda Kan sold the tooling to with some going to Atlas, Bachmann, and RMT.

And for discussion about the K-Line boards: https://ogrforum.com/...c/r2lc08-with-prongs

@bmoran4 posted:

And for discussion about the K-Line boards: https://ogrforum.com/...c/r2lc08-with-prongs

Thank you for that good information. I will check the link you sent.

As mentioned above, SDK stands for SandaKan. The four digit number is a manufacturing date code, with the first two digits being the week and the last two are the year. 1004 = tenth week of 2004. It's important to note that this is NOT a part number, and isn't indicative of the revision of the board or the software programmed into it.

Lionel began transitioning R2LC production offshore in 2002, which was complete by 2003 if I remember correctly. At one time, there were at least four suppliers (two in the US and two in China) approved to produce the board. As such, they were not necessarily ordered by K-Line. Remember that K-Line's last year in business was 2005, so that eliminates the two 2006 boards. Chances are they were ordered by Lionel as part of the regular manufacturing processes.

TRW

@PaperTRW posted:

As mentioned above, SDK stands for SandaKan. The four digit number is a manufacturing date code, with the first two digits being the week and the last two are the year. 1004 = tenth week of 2004. It's important to note that this is NOT a part number, and isn't indicative of the revision of the board or the software programmed into it.

Lionel began transitioning R2LC production offshore in 2002, which was complete by 2003 if I remember correctly. At one time, there were at least four suppliers (two in the US and two in China) approved to produce the board. As such, they were not necessarily ordered by K-Line. Remember that K-Line's last year in business was 2005, so that eliminates the two 2006 boards. Chances are they were ordered by Lionel as part of the regular manufacturing processes.

TRW

Thank you so much TRW. You have put me on the right track and I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. A wealth of information you have shared.

Thank you again,

Denny Todd

@PaperTRW, always great to learn new information like what you shared!

One interesting twist was that K-Line made some of the R2LC boards with reverse polarity connectors, they had male pins on the board and female pins on the motherboard.

Really? I understood that the connectors were gender swapped, but it is news to me that this was also in electrical polarity. The things K-Line did...

I do not think it was polarity just gender as you state.  G

Correct, gender not polarity.

A comparison of the R2LC configurations.

Interesting to compare the two. The Lionel version has one more cap. than the K-line version and they are of different values judging from the different sizes.

Well, it's an unfair comparison.  I just grabbed any Lionel RxLC for the shot, and it happened to be the Legacy R4LC.  I didn't expect anyone to be counting caps, I was just trying to show the different connector gender of the two.

Here's a shot that has both R2LC's represented.  Note the layout is identical.

OK, point made.

Yep, careless of me to grab the first board with the right connector, I should have thought of the differences between the two boards.