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I am coupling a Lionel Vision Flag water tender to a Big Boy.  Manual says to configure the tender as “Freight”.  The tender and Big Boy are added as a train in Cab2 with the Big Boy in the lead position.  TrainLink shows the touch screen icons and the sounds work as expected.  Here’s the problem.  If I reverse the train direction, the backup lights on the Big Boy tender and the water tender both light up.  Worse is if I press the R coupler button on the Cab2 the electrocouplers on the engine tender and the water tender both open.  That pretty much renders the electrocoupler feature on the water tender useless.  If I change the Vision water tender from Freight to Steam, then only the backup light on the water tender lights up in reverse and only the electrocoupler on the water tender fires when the R coupler button is pressed.  BUT...with the tender configured as steam it appears you lose all access to the sounds on the tender.  It appears to me that you can either have the various sounds or you can have the electrocouplers and backup lights work properly.  Anyone found a way to fix this.

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I have found the same thing, what it is is that the sound set is like a freight sound car so Lionel recommends you set up that way but when in a train a freight car would have no light so it’s never told to come on. As for the rear coupler in a train config that’s always seamed you be all over the place for me sometimes it’s just the engine sometimes it’s just the rear fright car with a electro coupler and sometimes it’s EVERY rear electro coupler on the train. To address your question I have had no issue running the tender asa LEGACY steam engine. You just have to remember what position did what sounds. What gets sent to the cars is the same if it’s Eng 80 and you hit 3 doesn’t matter if you see a steam blow down pic on the Cab-2 or if you see a box bright loaded it’s still “3” to the tender. Hope that makes since I discussed this in a review I recently did 

https://youtu.be/I9_CThnbm1M

@Dave Olson would be able to comment.  I would think as you have done select it as a steam engine.  I would also try making sure that the sound icons for both whistle and crew talk are part of that setup to see if that makes a difference if you haven't already.  I don't have one so I am just brainstorming but hopefully Dave will chime in.

This has happened to me all the way back to my Vision Tank Cars. If you use the Trainlink button to address the tender and fire the coupler from there it should work. I think its more of a bug in the Legacy firmware versus a hardware problem with the tender. For the lights, you should be able to turn off the locomotive tender lights with the Cab2. I don't have a tender, but this is my experience with both my tank cars and reefers.

Thanks for all your suggestions.  I have decided on two approaches to fixing the double coupler and double back up light problem.

First method:  Configure the water tender as STEAM.  Add the water tender to the engine when building a train.  AFTER the train is built, go back and re-configure the water tender as FREIGHT.  With the train addressed with the train's ID number, only the back up light on the water tender lights in reverse, and only the water tender's coupler fires when the R coupler button is pushed.  To access the sounds even when the train is running, access the water tender's ID and press AUX1.  All the tender's icons are visible.  This method will survive power cycling so it should be stable unless you CLR the train.  The disadvantage of this method is you can't use the TRAIN LINK button to quickly access the tender's options.

Second method:  Configure the water tender as FREIGHT as Lionel suggests.  Add the water tender to the engine when building a train.  When you want to fire only the water tender's coupler, press the TRAIN LINK button and then fire the reverse coupler.  The coupler on the engine's tender does not  fire.  The disadvantages of this method are that the back up lights on both tenders will light up in reverse and you have to remember to press the TRAIN LINK before you fire the coupler (addressing the tender's ID and then pressing the R coupler would also work).

Again, thanks for your help.

 

 

 

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