Lionel/Kline cruse control

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately, you have a real orphan on your hands.  The K-line conventional engines with sound, smoke, and speed control were not continued by Lionel beyond the club engines.  There's no documentation for the system on either the K-Line by Lionel or the Legacy K-Line web sites.  Hopefully someone with one of these engines will see your post and can at least provide any info from the user's manual.

Sorry I couldn't be more help, but I figured a post would help keep your thread on page 1 through tomorrow morning.  A lot of folks don't get to see much of the forum until the weekend.

Suprised no one else commented in 8 hours, so here goes.

K-Line cruise had some issues such as erratic behavior, and you may want to consider upgrading it with a Cruise Commander M from Electric RR.  http://www.electricrr.com/

ERR kits work great!

Jim

Try changing the speed steps to 32. They had a goofy number like 256 speed steps that you could go up to. I don't believe this ever worked for K-Line, at least it didn't for me on my K-Line engines. BF

I have a TMCC K-Line with cruise, but I don't see how you'd change the cruise steps if you don't have TMCC.

Hi guys,

I think the real difficulty here is that this is NOT a TMCC engine.  If it was Mark could do a reset w/ TMCC or Legacy and get back to good.  Unfortunately, if what Mark wrote is correct, his engine has sound and speed control but is conventionally controlled, like this ARR SD70MAC.

Personally, I never saw one of these non-command engines in person.  However, I do have experience with the TMCC versions.  As Sasquatch indicated, it was sometimes difficult to get the K-Line command engines to accept their speed step setting (32, 128, or 256).  Once they were set the speed curve was non-linear so the engines took some getting use to.  One of the best I ever ran was a K-Line 2-truck Shay set at 128 steps.  It would creep beautifully and had excellent speed control up to about 15 smph.  Once you got it dialed in right it was quite good.  IIRC, some of the technology that was funneled to K-Line by Lionel's then engineer, Marty Pearson, was the cruise control design which was being developed for Legacy.  These late K-Line engines have speed control that is far better than anything Lionel ever put in a TMCC engine prior to Legacy.  I'm not sure how much things changed between the K-Line Cruise designs and what Lionel put into production for Legacy (Odyssey II speed control), but if you have the two apart there are some obvious similarities, such as the tach wheel.

Thanks for all the help. It is a very nice detailed engine that runs fine as long as no cruse is used. Good canidate for PS-2 conversion. Happy railroading to all and thanks again. Mark

Interesting point on the tach wheel, you're right it is like the Legacy ones.

Try setting the speed steps:

32 steps/ throttle knob rev.   DIR, BELL, AUX1, 1

I have a Weaver "Little Joe" which used the K-Line speed control.  It operates, OK, but you have to get used to the very slow rate of acceleration it provides.  When the speed control is on, the engine may take over a minute and travel some 10 or 15 feet before it gets to full speed.  So it might seem to you that it's top speed is restricted but on mine, it will get up there; it just takes a long time.

Actually, that kind of acceleration is more realistic because a large engine pulling a long train really does take a long time to get up to speed.  Play withe the engine, a bit, and see if you can adjust to this slow acceleration rate.

Paul Fischer

As was stated several times, he has the non-TMCC version, so he's having trouble finding the AUX key.

I had a similar problem with the K-Line club EP-5 Electric... I still have it...  It's the TMCC version and operation with the K-Line Cruise control active was very erratic..  It, too, worked great with the Cruise Control turned OFF...  The engine ran well in this state with the Legacy controller and the TMCC controller although operation was smoother with the CAB-2...  Changing the speed steps [at least with my engine] did not make any difference in the erratic operation with Cruise Control active...

I decided the cruise control design was faulty and installed an ERR Cruise Commander M into the Engine; now it runs great under cruise control...

I don't think it matters whether the engine is a Conventional or TMCC version -- the K-Line cruise control had problems...

That's probably pointless when you can get the ERR cruise control module for that price and it works great.  It's in current production, and you can get support for them.

I had a similar problem with the K-Line club EP-5 Electric... operation with the K-Line Cruise control active was very erratic.. 

I decided the cruise control design was faulty and installed an ERR Cruise Commander M into the Engine; now it runs great under cruise control...

There's been a lot of discussion about problem K-Line cruise units for a long time, and for years now EP-5 owners have pretty much all agreed that the thing to do is remove it and drop in an ERR cruise unit.

That's what I did on my NH #379, and it transformed the cruise function.

Gunrunnerjohn is right on - it's a waste of time and money trying to rehabilitate the K-Line unit when you can get an ERR unit for the same money.

Problem is, as you say, K-Line is NOT in business, and those upgrade boards are obviously scarce or non-existent.  OTOH, I can order the ERR unit right now.  Oh, and last time I checked the EP-5 didn't have a chuff.   You're right, on a steamer if it doesn't have a chuff switch.  OTOH, I have a K-Line tank engine, and it does have a chuff switch, so that comment doesn't apply.

The only K-Line steamer I have is the CNJ Tank Engine, so I can't comment on the other models.  And yes, it's a steamer.

Exactly where are the K-Line boards available?  Can you be specific?

hello all I have a tmcc sd 70 and i need to find the run program switch anyone know where it is thanks

If it's not on the underside, look under any removable top covers/panels.

Maybe the speed control is just locked? Turn the transformer voltage all the way up when running, push and hold the horn button while slowly bringing the voltage down to about 8 volts (be sure not all the way down to zero) and release the horn button.

If it was locked, this will unlock it.

I have no idea where you get K-line boards, I wasn't the guy recommending them.   My suggestion was to retrofit it with an ERR board to have something that you could support and is in current production.