Not being a tech. Guy I just had to ask this of you technical whizz kids. Could one take an old pre war engine from the 50's and convert new technology into it ? I was looking at the engines my dad ran and thought that would be something to see. Old with a new soul. 
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Lionel did it(see the Century Club 773, 726, 2332, 2333 as examples), no reason you couldn't. Check out Electric RailRoad for options...
I've taken several old tinplate locomotives and converted them to command control using the ERR products.
@Bill Grafmiller posted:Not being a tech. Guy I just had to ask this of you technical whizz kids. Could one take an old pre war engine from the 50's and convert new technology into it ? I was looking at the engines my dad ran and thought that would be something to see. Old with a new soul.
Easy peasy. 2343 F3s with a RS 2.5 B unit from 1996 and an ERR AC Commander in the powered A unit.
One of the first ones I ever did was modify my first 2035 that I bought in 2017 getting back into the hobby from a small shop (Schultz's) in Dayton Ohio and in 2018 updated it to ERR AC commander in the tender and railsounds using an MTH tether harness. I even wired the original coil coupler to TMCC rather than shoe.
Chuff annoyed me in trying to get a good trigger (I did not like tender axle driven) and eventually my solution was drill the backside of the front fireman side powdered metal driving wheel and insert a tiny magnet with superglue. It lined up to a matching hole in the aluminum frame of the motor where I also superglued a Hall Effect sensor.
My other AC commander install was into an early FM Trainmaster 2321 also with Railsounds. Someone left the orginal horn D cell battery so the holder and frame took some corrosion.
Another one I did was the FARR Great Northern- again, using an MTH 10 pin tether wiring for a simple plug in system.
@Vernon Barry posted:Chuff annoyed me in trying to get a good trigger (I did not like tender axle driven) and eventually my solution was drill the backside of the front fireman side powdered metal driving wheel and insert a tiny magnet with superglue. It lined up to a matching hole in the aluminum frame of the motor where I also superglued a Hall Effect sensor.
Guess you hadn't discovered the Chuff-Generator. 
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Guess you hadn't discovered the Chuff-Generator.
On a 2035 motor?
using this info from you https://ogrforum.com/...1#155434570871005781
@gunrunnerjohn posted:
For the record absolutely, I have used the heck out of some of your chuff generators- mainly on a MTH engine when converting to TMCC ERR and using a matching Super Chuffer.
OK, a little more challenging to use one on that motor! 
The first engine I did was a Lionel GP7/9 with a Lionel LCRU, no sound as that old open frame motor growled too loudly. Right now am finishing the last 2 of 6 locos a customer brought in for upgrading. So, yes, it is possible.
If one of your dad's engine's is rare or collectible, would it diminish the value to a collector if you upgraded it?
I converted Lionel's 8580 Illinois Central F3 with dual Pullmor motors to digital using one of ERR's conversion kits. These conversions are easy and very straightforward (I don't put smoke units in diesel units).
Even though it was successful I wasn't happy with the engine's performance. This was not an issue with the ERR kit but with the Pullmor motors.
I eventually sent the engine off to Timko Repair; who did a fantastic job replacing the AC motors with DC can motors. Now the F3 runs as smooth as ever.
@Junior posted:Even though it was successful I wasn't happy with the engine's performance. This was not an issue with the ERR kit but with the Pullmor motors.
I eventually sent the engine off to Timko Repair; who did a fantastic job replacing the AC motors with DC can motors. Now the F3 runs as smooth as ever.
Oddly, I had a different experience. I have the original Lionel Phantom. It came with one motor, and it's performance was anemic, to say the least! It had trouble on Atlas track pulling the four stock passenger cars, never mind the two extras I bought for it! I added a second motor, and also upgraded to the ERR AC Commander from the LCRU. It's like a different locomotive! It has great low speed performance, and has WAY better pulling power with two motors. The 100 speed steps really helps at low speed, I was considering a DC motor transplant, but after this upgrade, that idea was abandoned.
Lionel's diesels, including your 8580, use back-drivable gears. So the motors in a dual-motored unit can actually "help" each other. For example: when one Pullmor motor's armature is "stuck" in the node between the poles, chances are that the other motor's armature may not be. So the second motor rotates and nudges the whole train. Because the wheels can turn the motor, this releases the load on the first motor. So now it also rotates. If you accept this premise, a Lionel diesel with two vertical motors is benefitting from about 18 "power pulses" per inch. This compares favorably to a 5-pole can motor. If both motors are in good working condition, it should be able to maintain about 600 rpm, or a steady 9-10 mph on level track. If one motor starts way before the other, something is wrong and you need to troubleshoot that to restore performance. That's just about as good as any can-motored diesel could do before the advent of speed control.
Conversely, most diesels with twin vertical "can" motors do NOT have back-drivable gears. The gears are self-locking. Thus one motor cannot "help" the other, at least not very much. So you might see some bucking and surging of the individual trucks when the loco first starts moving. On those trains, I bet that you could get a smoother start, and maybe a slower minimum speed, if you observed which motor was more reluctant and performed a radical motor-ectomy!
I really appreciate the feed back . I guess I should have added can one put the railpro module or bluerail in a steam engine from the post war area?
In 100 speed step mode a twin vertical Pullmor locomotive will actually run pretty well. I've got an ABBA LTI era Santa Fe freight F3 set with an AC commander and it'll run pretty good. No cruise but it runs far better than it did before.
My dual motored Phantom behaves itself very nicely at low speeds now with two motors and the ERR AC Commander.
@Bill Grafmiller RailPro is a DC based system.
These fine folks above are smarter than me but don't those old engines have AC motors?
Blunami is also DC.
The previous version BlueRail does work with AC or DC power. But I don't know if that means it will power AC motors.
Ron
I seriously doubt it'll work for AC motors...
^^What John said. I think to make any flavor of DCC work with "Pullmor" motors, you have to isolate the motor field ground from the chassis. Which isn't that easy to do!
I saw an article on Google that stated homes in the USA post war , that some were AC and others DC so lionel made the products to run on both. If that is a fact then why does it make any difference what system you use?
@Bill Grafmiller posted:I saw an article on Google that stated homes in the USA post war , that some were AC and others DC so lionel made the products to run on both. If that is a fact then why does it make any difference what system you use?
I think I'd have to see that Google reference, by 1945, there were no DC power being supplied on the power grid in the USA. The only reason Lionel made DC stuff was to be cheap, it cost less than making it run on the more universal AC transformers.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I think I'd have to see that Google reference, by 1945, there were no DC power being supplied on the power grid in the USA. The only reason Lionel made DC stuff was to be cheap, it cost less than making it run on the more universal AC transformers.
New York City still had DC power until 2007 thanks to Edison.
Pete
Aren’t the older motors “universal” and work on AC or DC?
Edit: I guess even if they would, the challenge is reverse operation.
@Norton posted:New York City still had DC power until 2007 thanks to Edison.
Back to the stone age! I still maintain that had nothing to do with Lionel making their cheap engines that ran on DC. 
@Bill Grafmiller posted:Could one take an old pre war engine from the 50's and convert new technology into it ?
Not possible, as pre war engines were not made in the 1950s. LOL!
@gunrunnerjohn posted:Back to the stone age!
Just saving you the effort of looking up google and DC in 1945. Nothing to do with DC Lionel in the ‘80s.
Pete
I just did an inspection on a house that sold and it was all DC voltage. Also our friend in Morristown NJ , her father (I believed he lived in Schnecksville PA) had an ALL DCC voltage house.
@CurtisH posted:I just did an inspection on a house that sold and it was all DC voltage. Also our friend in Morristown NJ , her father (I believed he lived in Schnecksville PA) had an ALL DCC voltage house.
On that note, about 25 years ago I inspected a loft industrial building in Chicago that had DC elevators in it. The building has since been converted to loft offices, so I would guess the freight elevators are either gone or converted to operate on AC. That is still not the craziest elevator story...
I recall seeing a different loft industrial building that was constructed in the late 1870s, shortly after the Great Chicago Fire, which still had its original bird-cage elevator with hand operated controls. That was a hoot!
Another side note, Lionel pre war catalogs show 12v rheostats and 110v resistor network-rheostats for use with DC battery power and wall power respectively. Obviously aware that many homes did not have AC power.
Pete
Access to this requires an OGR Forum Supporting Membership
