I have a VL Challenger from 2010 (6-11220) and recently after about 10 min of run time it will start to “freak out” and only respond to a few of the legacy signals that are sent. It seams to help when I shut off the smoke units. I’m wondering if by chance it’s just a loose board. Or I’d i possibly get smoke fluid all over the place and made the board freak out? Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.
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Experienced the same thing with my VL Big Boy after it had been shelved for 4 years; wound up being a failed RCMC board due to my drowning the blow down smoke unit.
Do you have any elevated track near the engine when it freaks? If so, maybe check your groundplane.
If its good in some spots and not others, check your signal.
If you have elevated track near the top of the engine, like if it goes under a bridge, it might not be able to pickup the ground signal. I had similar issues, had to run a ground wire above the track under tunnels and along elevated tracks near the line. All freak out ended then.
RickM46 posted:Experienced the same thing with my VL Big Boy after it had been shelved for 4 years; wound up being a failed RCMC board due to my drowning the blow down smoke unit.
The 2010 VL Challenger is a totally different beast, it has the older modular boards.
The first step would be to check the integrity of all the wiring and connections.
If nothing is amiss there, likely cause for having command issues is the RCDR. The good news is, it's a $40 board, and if you order this weekend, it's actually a $20 board during the half/price parts sale at Lionel.
Well I was afraid it might be the radio board. I guess I’ll dig into it and hope it just so happens to be lose but I doubt it. I have a 6-11208 LM Big boy I believe that has the same board I might swap them just be be sure
Yep, same board.
Super O Bob posted:Do you have any elevated track near the engine when it freaks? If so, maybe check your groundplane.
If its good in some spots and not others, check your signal.
If you have elevated track near the top of the engine, like if it goes under a bridge, it might not be able to pickup the ground signal. I had similar issues, had to run a ground wire above the track under tunnels and along elevated tracks near the line. All freak out ended then.
No elevated tracks, frankly it's just a circle more or less. But That was my first thought and when I put my hand over the cab area it stops all of the light flickering and seams to respond correctly to legacy. What threw me off though was the fact that the cab light also flickered. In all other experiences only the head light flickers when it has issues looking for the signal. Now just today I've ran it for 30 min with the smoke units off and I have yet to have a problem
gunrunnerjohn posted:Yep, same board.
GRJ - dumb question: is this item agnostic to the engine in which I insert it? Asking because if they are half price, thinking maybe I should buy a few in case any fail in any of my Lionel locomotives.
If it's the same software version, it should work in other engines. However, many of the locomotives don't use this board, so I don't know if you need a ton of them. Having one around couldn't hurt...
If you search for the RCDR, you'll find there are a lot of varieties. 
You could go broke trying to stock all the possible parts.
Ok, thanks.
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