Lionel Legacy Lionmaster Class A

Hi all

Just info for anyone still interested in the NW 1218

I asked another much more knowledgeable member to help me out with this new NW 1218(Christmas Toy) . He posted issues with his 1218 previously on this thread. (RB2hogger).  Thanks much for your help RB.

He is packing his up and back to Lionel.

I went to his very nice layout first. After removing mine from the shipping carton, oiling all important areas, a complete visual inspections and adding 20 drops of smoke fluid  (JT's MEGA_STEAM) he was ready to test it.

RB has a lot of experience withe Legacy and TMCC, me, I own 5 Legacy Lionmasters.  I'm not a repairman and just passing on my observations . Only because of the PITA this engine has caused some members.

Note the picture with my pencil trying to point to that small shim. When RB first took his out of the box originally he noticed the front wheel falling off and I guess with some luck located the very small part in the box. Keep a eye on them. There are a total of 6. 4 in the back and 2 in the front. Simple fix with super glue IF you find the darn thing.

First all sounds checked carefully and individually.   VERY nice, no light problems or other sound issues during the test.

All sounds and all lights did not fail on his layout or on my layout .

Then 8 to 10 laps at his house through a complete cycle of smoke. The issue was always just before a switch every time. One switch let us go through only one time during the test. A few others stopped us a couple of times. No other stalls as his engine had done during it's testing. Not all of the switches caused a problem.

These are very good Ross switches and he runs many many legacy and TMCC engines on his good size layout with no issues. All we did after the stall was give a small nudge and off we go. Kinda drove us nuts. NO OTHER ISSUES. Every stall was right before a switch, and most of them that one switch.

A guess, the undercarriage of the front of the engine is shorting out on a switch due to it's low height TOTAL GUESS. But it appears a little low.

OK, this is not enough for me to want to send it back. It is so nice of a engine.I really do like it.

Now box it up and over to my layout and it's a good 100 plus feet  of fastrack with 6 switches on the lower level.

I Filled it with 20 drops of same smoke fluid and off we go. After 9 or 10 complete laps varying speed playing with buttons almost trying to screw it up. I completely ran it out of smoke . The results were one darn switch stalled it one time. ****ed me off.

But after all this I'm keeping it for now and I'm going to run this puppy all during the holidays.

It appears I have a good one so far and I will watch the one switch and see if this type of stalling continues.

I'm posting all this stuff in hopes you who have the engine continue to share your information from Lionel. Good luck.

Merry Christmas all

Larry

Larry

Glad to hear.  I'm not sure the BEMF will bother all people just those wanted to do a MU.  We had one at the LHS.  The sound and smoke were very good. 

Good evening everyone,

December 1st, I sent my engine back to Lionel and they received it on December 8th. On the 13th it was sent back to me and I got it today.

The problems were the Headlight as the main issue but the rear motor was stalling (It was Discovered by them but not me). I tested the engine today for 45 minutes and I was very satisfied with the repair and the engine runs great gonna run it on Friday and see how it does on the tracks for 3 hours off and on. 

Thanks for any help

Ran mine for the first time under Legacy control.  Smokes like an MTH and the whistle steam effect produces ALOT of thick smoke. In conventional mode (at the local club) it hardly smokes.

Ok so I know this topic is a little old but I just got one of these #1218 back in January of this year and mine has no problems. The speed control did bother me a bit but I got used to it and it’s fine. Now I just got a Legacy J Class off the Ebay and I want to latch up the engines but it won’t let me because of 1218 having a different speed control so I was curious if anyone knew if it’s possible to fix the speed control on the Legacy Class A’s so you can latch them with other Legacy engines?

Nope, the speed it controlled two different ways between those locomotives.  The Class A uses back EMF from the motors, while the J uses an optical sensor on the motor flywheel.  The only thing the Class A can double head with is another Class A.

I still want to slow my Class A down.

Ok so is their anyway I could buy the optical sensor from Lionel and install it into the Class A?

Nope, they are completely different electronics, and Lionel comment on the matter was that the optical system didn't fit, which is why they went with the other one.

A discussion on this issue came up today with a friend and I don't see it addressed here, is it possible an ERR cruise commander can be retrofitted to one of these and would it improve the "speed curve" issue?  

hokie71 posted:

A discussion on this issue came up today with a friend and I don't see it addressed here, is it possible an ERR cruise commander can be retrofitted to one of these and would it improve the "speed curve" issue?  

Not really, the Cruise Commander M is the technology that's in it now.  Also, this is a Legacy locomotive and the CC-M is a TMCC device, it wouldn't recognize the Legacy commands, it would only run in TMCC mode. 

I believe it's probably the tall gearing that is the main issue as the CC-M and plain CC work well with most locomotives and don't have any of the undesirable characteristics of this model.

Thanks John, I had to ask the question, thinking that this obvious solution had to be infeasible for some reason or the other.  I guess I will enjoy the good and ignore the not so good on this neat unit.

Would wiring the motors in series instead of parallel, or adding something inline with the motor wiring help slow them down?  Sure Legacy gives me 200 speed steps, but anything over 50 is too fast, and it doesn't take long to get that fast.

Well, the back-EMF sensing probably won't work well with series motors, but you could try it.  All I see that doing is reducing your top speed and pulling power.