No Railsound in Lionmaster Big Boy - REPAIRED!

First off, put the tender on the track by itself and power up.  If you still get no sounds, you have some issue within the tender.

Top suspects would be the volume control or the speaker, either will kill the sounds totally.  Of course, the boards can do that as well, but the first two are probably more likely.  Also, you wand to verify that power is actually getting to the motherboard from the track pickups.

If you get to swapping boards, do NOT try to put the audio board into any other engine unless it also has a RailSounds 6 board.  The power supply board is generic with TMCC RS4 through Legacy RS6, and you could try swapping in a known good power supply board.

If the electrocoupler won't fire it, wouldn't it be something beyond the speaker or volume control?

If the tender is getting power, you could check to see if the IR tether is transmitting.  A phone camera should be able to visualize the infrared.

Good point on the coupler, probably look at the power first, then the power supply board.  Hopefully, it's not the RS6 board, that one is no longer available.

GRJ

  The Tender is getting power.  I forgot to mention that I checked the roller pick-ups and they are making good contact.  The rear marker lights on the tender are illuminated, so the tender is receiving power from the track.  What I am thinking is the mother board is the problem as everything plugs into it.  I have examined the board and I couldn't find any evidence of burning or a short, but I know it may not show.   Also with just tender on the track there still no sound.  What is your thinking?

Prof. Chaos

I used a digital camera but couldn't tell if there was an infra-red light. Any other Ideas

Thank you for help, one and all.

I have that engine and between the main board and the IR in the engine there is a sub board. shown in the upper right in this picture. After continuous operation of my version I've had to replace the wires from this board to the IR piece. What I've found is in that Lionel making this engine able to run on O31 curves the trailing truck has a huge swing which flexes those wires a lot. If you checked with the camera and don't see the purple light coming form the back of the engine I would suggest you also check those wires for conductivity.

Actually, the motherboard would be way down my list of suspects, I'd be looking at the power supply board or the RS6 board.  The coupler is controlled by the RS6 board as is the backup light.  However, they receive power from the RS power supply board.

Check and see if you have 5VDC from pins 5-6 to pins 3-4 (AC Ground).  If not, see if you have track power between pins 1-2 and pins 2-4.  If either answer is no, that's why you don't have sound or coupler.

OK, follow up on my Lionmaster Big Boy 4011.  GRJ,  I tried to do  what you suggested but I was having a problem in making good contact with my multi-tester probes.  I had a new RS power board and tried that, still no sound. I had a Legacy Lionmaster PRR T1 made the same year.  I switched the sound boards in the tenders. The Big Boy RS board gave off NO sound in the T1 and the coupler would not fire. Also no back-up light.  The T1 board in the Big Boy tender did fire the coupler and the back-up light did work, but no sound.   Next, I put the RS boards back in there respective tenders.  

I then tried the T1 tender with the Big Boy loco and the sounds, coupler & back-up light all worked as expected.  Then I tried the Big Boy tender with the T1 loco. No sound, coupler, or back-up light. 

Now I am guessing the RS board in the Big Boy tender is bad.  Also I need to test the speaker. How do I do this?  I believe the BB speaker is 8 ohms. I do have 16 ohm speakers in ERR kits. Do I dare try one of these? 

Thank you for your help to this point.

You can try a 16 ohm speaker, it won't hurt the boards.  FWIW, newer ERR kits are back to the 8 ohm speaker.

Thank you. I will try tomorrow.

I purchased from Lionel a new Railsounds sound board and a speaker.  I have installed them but still no sounds.  However the backup light and electro-coupler now work.  I am wondering if it could be the sound pot.  Is there a way to test this or use a jumper wire to bypass it?  

Any other Ideas?  Thank you

Set the pot to the center of the range.  Then jumper the center connection of the pot to one outside connection.  If that doesn't get sound, jumper the center to the other outside connection.  If neither of those connections get sound, it's not the pot.

Well, I guess it's not the pot, still no sound.  I'm not sure were to go from here.  I tested the new audio board in my T1 tender and it worked fine.

I have re-placed the speaker, the RS power board and the audio board.  The back-up light and the electro-coupler work fine.  I know I'm getting power from the roller pickups as the marker lights are and have been working. 

Does anybody have any other ideas?  I appreciate all suggestions.  Thank you Gunrunner John for your help so far.

rb2

I'm sitting here paying close attention really hoping you figure this one out.

I have the same engine with the exact same problem. About 2 years ago I had good help from John and others and I gave up.

I did at that time order every part Lionel had that I could for this engine. It's all in a bag sitting with the engine in a display cabinet yea dumb. I just got frustrated. AND the engine has no real run time just displaying looking pretty but worthless.

In addition it's been so long I may have some other issues I just can't remember. But I do know the short time I had run it before all was perfect.

Larry

That locomotive has the RS6 board, that's a fairly rare bird and was only used in a few models and only for one or two years total.

At this point, I can't suggest much else without seeing it.  Obviously, it can be made to work, but it's something that I'd have to see.  Debugging in ASCII is not an exact science.

John

You made me curious so I pulled the package out from the display cabinet and looked at the parts I ordered back in January of 2016 for a repair just in case. I did get a RS 6 motherboard.

Larry

The one part you don't have there is the RS6 board Larry.

Ok, so that item "motherboard / RS 6 / steam "         $48.00          isn't the correct one?

I think John means this one.  $100.  Doesn't show as unavailable so it maybe in stock.

The phot did not come through.

This what mine looks like??? Thanks for the help.

Larry

I think this it what you both are telling me.  My engine is 6-11208 Legacy LionMaster Big Boy UP 4-8-8-4  (4011)

Please advise and I'll try to order it asap.

Thanks

This is the sound board, what you illustrated is the motherboard that provides interconnectivity between the boards, speaker, sensors, etc.

This is the sound board.

Thanks you.

Ordered, now I'll cross my fingers it will be shipped. lol

@rb2hogger posted:

I have recently acquired a Legacy Lionmaster UP Big Boy cab #4011 (catalog number 11208) from 2010.  The engine responds  well under Legacy control.  The whistle steam effect works well.  My problem is there is no Railsounds  at all and the ElectroCoupler on the tender does not operate.  It seems like the signal from the Legacy control in the engine is not getting to the boards in the tender.  I have checked the IR tether link and both parts line up.  I checked to make sure the IR lines have a good connection on each board.  I have removed both boards for the RailSounds and re-seated them.  All wires appear to be in good shape.

Do any of our Legacy gurus have any other suggestions as to my problem.  I am stumped and I don't want to start throwing new boards in this engine unless they are bad.  

Also I am not new at this I have been using Legacy since it went on the market in 2008.          

Thank you for any help.

Sounds like the only thing left is the mother board. I guess the good news is that the MB is still listed as available from Lionel.

In all of my repairs, I seldom see the MB fail. Hmmm.  Sure sounds like it is a bad connection though.  Check all the pins, connection points, wires, etc. I would also take a very close look at all the solder joints on the mother board. Maybe there is a bad connection? 

I guess you could pull the MB from the T1 and place it in your BB to see if that works.  Make sure its the same board...

Do you have an ideas (derail, etc.) on the cause of the failure?

Dave

The MB, other than some K-Line models, isn't often a failure point.

I agree John.  That's why I would look for a bad/poor wire connection first.

Still has me thinking. 🧐

 I had an idea last night.  Today I decided to check out all the wiring, especially the wires related to the sound.  I found two wires crossed.  One wire for the pot was attached to the railsound/ signal sounds switch.  The wire for the RS/SS switch was attached to the sound pot. I re-attached these two wires to their proper terminals. and all was good. All is now working as it is suppose to.  I am a happy camper. 

The original Railsounds 6 audio board was defective.

I do appreciate the in put from everybody here.  

You outa be

Seriously ,that's good news.

Larry

Did it come from the factory mis-wired like this?

Or was someone working on the tender electronics before you got it?

I believe someone else may have messed with the tender.  The engine was manufactured in 2010.

I acquired  this engine about two months ago and don't think it came from the factory this way.  There were 4 screws missing from the original 6 that hold the boiler on the chassis.  I also had to put new batting in the smoke unit.  The Big Boy now performs well and sounds great.  

Great to hear!

Best,  Dave 

This is ANOTHER reason why I value reading and belonging to this forum.

My Lionmaster Bigboy 6-11208 experienced very similar symptoms as reported in this thread.

My symptoms are:

1. Engine dropped chuffed, whistle and steam and bell while running. But tender does produce engine idle sounds. So the problem does not appear to be with the tender.

2. Fired up engine without tender and used cellphone camera to view IR transmitter and see if it's lighting up. Couldn't see anything.

3. Sigh....started checking for pinched wires or broken connections. Hmmmm....does this look familiar?

4. Yep...the Black (looks Brown here) wire coming from the IR transmitter detached from some kind of shrink wrapped bundle located between the frame and trailing truck.

But back to my point...I wouldn't have known where to even begin to look for this kind of problem had I not read postings on this forum. And it's funny because this posting was about a topic I was not really interested in. But I read it anyway because "you just never know....".a

So I sincerely Thank ALL the Techs certified and non-certified, ALL the electrical engineers and circuit designers, and ALL the moonlighters like myself who contribute their time, expertise, knowledge and experiences to this forum and the hobby at large.

You keep hobbyists like myself going and keeping a full head of hair! 😁

I now see why the wire broke loose. It was soldered to a tiny solder pad on a VERY small circuit board that was covered with heat shrink tubing.

Just need to solder the wire back on and we should be good to go🤞.

Looks like the buffer for the IR LED to minimize loading of the serial line.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Looks like the buffer for the IR LED to minimize loading of the serial line.

Thanks GRJ. Never encounter a board like that before. Surprised its hanging below the frame above the trailing truck rather than tucked up inside the engine body.

I’d have to desolder all 5 leads to move it up inside the engine body. That’s not typically a big deal but the solder pads are tiny. Didn’t want to press my luck.

BTW….engine is fully functional again. 😅

I'm a little surprised it's hanging below the chassis, that's certainly not what I'd expect.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

I'm a little surprised it's hanging below the chassis, that's certainly not what I'd expect.

Yeah….that’s gonna keep niggling at me until I make that change. With the truck body and coupler swinging back and forth; that’s just a bad location.

@Junior posted:

Yeah….that’s gonna keep niggling at me until I make that change. With the truck body and coupler swinging back and forth; that’s just a bad location.

On my version of this model that board is above the chassis in the body. I'm surprised that yours is in that location.

@Davety posted:

On my version of this model that board is above the chassis in the body. I'm surprised that yours is in that location.

Ohhh....that's interesting! Me thinks somebody's been tinkering with this engine before I bought it.

Well that settles it. I'll run the engine for a while (one of the best whistles!). Then back it goes onto the workbench.....

Thanks Dave....