hello I've been a model railroader for a long time and just getting into the 3 rail side of the hobby due to the Bluetooth polar express set i just bought . there is something about lionel that draws me in,sometimes regular model railroading gets too serious and 3 rail is just more fun. so now i went on ebay and bought a lionel northern pacific rs-11 with odyssey. my question is what controller do i need to run it? i am using fastrack if that helps. thanks, dan.
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Is it TMCC or Legacy? What's the item number?
its from the early 2000's and the item number is 6-28545 and has trainmaster control
A basic lionel CW80 will run both. Dont try to use the RS11 with the pack that came with the Polar set. That is DC voltage and the RS11 is AC. Dont ever use both either. Make sure the Polar Express power source is put away and just use the AC power such as the CW80. It will run the Polar exactly the same as before as that can run with AC or DC, and run the RS with the Transformer handle and bell/whistle buttons.
A TMCC Controller (handset) and Command Base will do it for Command Control. These can be found on eBay, sometimes unopened, often at a good price. They often came as a set. Very simple to set up. You will need an AC track power source for TMCC - i.e., a Lionel (or MTH) transformer.
They will also run later Legacy locomotives, as Legacy and TMCC are backwards compatible (Legacy is newer). A Legacy system will do the same thing.
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