ok just picked a new aux tender. There's warnings all over it stating its for ps3 engines only as the back up light is LED and connecting to ps2 engines will blow the LED. Ok I get that, but I'm going to us it anyway with my ps2 challenger. With that said what is the voltage on ps2 back up light? Same as the headlight and I can use Marty's 560 ohm resistor in line?
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Was that highlighted in the catalog? I too was going to do use it with my PS-2 FEF.
What product number is the one you have?
How many pins is the tether? I would open it up and trace wires and make sure no other stuff inside.
Your then going to have to open the PS-2 tender and trace wires. Coupler to coupler should be no issue as long as the PS-3 tender is not sharing a common.
The LED is a single light so a 300 to 560 ohm should be fine. G
Gary, the rear light is the same voltage as the headlight on PS2. Is your tender set up with a DPDT slide switch on it? Check what George asked first. If you need the pins to use off the PS2 board, let us know.
Will do, I haven't really looked at it yet. It's a Christmas present for my son. It does have a female connector under the front coupler. You need to open the PS3 tender and locate the tether and snake it out to mate with the Aux tender. That's all I've seen so far. Don't know if my PS2 challenger has a tether in it's tender or not. but I'll find out.
here's the link to the tender and the instruction sheet for those interested.
I wonder if they pasted and copied the old PS-2 instruction.
Early on for PS-2 you had a switch in the main tender that would select either the Main tender to fire, or send the signal to the tether to fire the aux tender. It was an either or via switch.
Later PS-2 tenders did away with the switch and the rear coupler wire went to the main tender coupler and the fwd coupler (normally not used on large steam) would go to the tether to fire the AUX tender. This was PS-2 3V where the board was in the tender.
Here is the problem with PS-3. Typically the tender board only operates the rear coupler. The boiler board in the engine fires a fwd coupler and there is not connection back to the tender.
I imagine a PS-3 engine would have a switch in the main tender so that the reverse coupler signal can be an either or via the switch.
For your application it probably does not matter. Just find the 2 wires feeding the coupler on the main tender harness and make sure they match up to the Aux tender coupler. Do the same with the reverse light, just making sure you add a 300-560 ohm resistor to the LED lead and get polarity correct.
Both Light and coupler coming out of the PS-2 main tender use the "Purple" common which is + DC voltage. So they may or may not be merged. IE they could use one wire over to the aux tender and than have it split. You will always have 2 separate control lines though. One for light and one for coupler.
If this was my tender I would make up a new led with the 2 pin plug and have the resistor inline with the new LED harness. Save the original LED. That way if I want to operate it with PS-3 engine I just go back and put in the LED without resistor. That way no tampering with aux tender wires. G
Got a PS-1 Railking tender I can't run it behind my Proto 2.0 but it is a good car to pull around for the engine.
Wow, MTH finally delivered those!
Got a PS-1 Railking tender I can't run it behind my Proto 2.0 but it is a good car to pull around for the engine.
Sure you can, change the coupler to a PS-2 coupler and modify wiring. No problem. G
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