PS2 upgrade looks like a good deal

If the dcs upgrade fits, I'd do it for the speed control alone.

Both have speed control, but in truth the PS/2 upgrade ends up being a bit cheaper.  If you join the MTH RR Club, PS/2 upgrade kits are $150, if not they're $180.  To buy the ERR Cruise Commander and RailSounds Commander, you'll pay around $180.  For steamers, the ERR kit also requires you add a chuff switch.

 

Generally, the PS/2 upgrade kit has everything you need to finish the job, for diesels they include two electrocouplers, for steamers, one.  No chuff switch is needed as the timing is generated by the tach timing tape.

 

The effort is similar for each upgrade.  You are correct about the flywheel, if you don't have one, the TMCC upgrade is the way to go.

Thanks John - and thanks for the tip on MTTP and their CC Lite buy 2 deal, just waiting for them to get some in stock.  I'll check out the MTH RR Club too.

 

Complete kits appeal to a novice like me, it's no fun to realize halfway into a project you need to run to the hardware store, and for train stuff that means going online and waiting a week or two for the parts to arrive.

 

 

 

 

PS-2 requires a DC motor with flywheel. Besides speed control you get synchronized chuff and smoke puff.  Also, more light control features especially for diesel and the ability to select and load sound files.

 

TMCC upgrade has various price structures but easily can exceed the cost of PS-2 if you go for full sound and cruise control.  You do not get the synchronized chuff with out a cherry switch (Lionel method) so you either have to add the switch or use a reed switch.  To get synchronized smoke you have to add another board. 

 

So you go for the TMCC because you have a non fly wheel motor, and AC motor, or your a TMCC person.

 

PS, some models can have a flywheel added if missing, since most newer DC motor engines all have flywheels now.   G

Thanks GGG, and thanks for your help with my DCS TIU. 

 

One question that can't be answered yet, will there be enough parts in the PS3 upgrade to upgrade a PS2 engine, and then use the removed parts from the PS2 engine to upgrade a conventional engine. 

 

Wouldn't that be cool.

Why would you go to all that work?  Currently, there isn't going to be a lot of difference in the capability of the current PS/2 upgrade and the new PS/3 upgrade.  There's lots of talk about how cool it can be in the future, but right now it's basically a PS/2 replacement without a battery. 

 

I'd just use the PS/3 kit to upgrade the conventional locomotive.

 

Yes with exception.  First, all you would need to do is mount the new board in place of the old PS-2 board, reconnect all the harnesses except the battery.  Remove battery and the battery harness.  At that point you have the PS-3 in the PS-2 engine.  Load sound file.  This is effectively what a future PS-2 board repair will be once PS-2 3V boards are no longer available.

 

The exception is you may have to swap plastic connectors depending on whether your PS-2 is a 3V or a 5V.

 

For the conventional engine you would use the rest of the upgrade kit plus the battery, battery harness and the PS-2 board with bracket from the PS-2 engine to upgrade your conventional engine.  So not a tremendous amount of additional work.   G

I'm inclined to agree with GRJ.  It can be a lot of work on details to do an upgrade, and why di it twice?  GGG is certainly correct.

 

Any word on status of the PS3 boards, or of the S-gauge PS3 boards such as will be used in the 44-ton?

The PS-32 board for 5V is now available.  When ever a tech orders a AE-15/16 combination they will get that board.  MSRP for the board set is $230 plus you need the speaker and heat sink for it.  That kit is $23 MSRP.  So a repair using the new PS-32 is $253 MSRP in parts.  It comes with a flash code that I believe is PS-2 based for everything but the GG-1 with operating pantograph.   You load the PS-2 3V sound file.  The PS-3 board extracts the gear ratio from that sound file.

 

I have asked the question and I think the answer will be that this board is not designed to use PS-3 sound files.  Since the PS-3 sound file will not have the gear ratio and other operating characteristics.  If you tried, I think you would also have to use a PS-3 flash (Chain file) also.  Not sure if it would work.

 

BUT inquiring minds have asked the question! 

So replacing a failed 5-volt board with a PS2 upgrade kit bought thru MTH Club would save over $100, and all the $100 would buy is no battery.  I think your earlier idea, replacing a failed 5-volt loco-mounted board with a PS2 upgrade kit in the tender seems to make the most sense??????

When I repair PS-2 5V engines and the board is in the engine, I put the replacement in the engine too.  Still have not had an engine I could not do that with.   Keeps all those extra engine lighting features available.  G

I must have you confused with some other commentator.  Sorry.

 

If the old PS2 boards with 5-volt connectors are no longer available, the cost of repair will certainly jump.

Sorry, what is a PS-32 board?  

 

Are you saying the cost of PS upgrade kits is going up to over $230.00?

I believe that a PS-32 board is a special PS3 board, designed to replace the 5-volt PS2 boards when they fail.  THis is somewhat different than a PS3 upgrade board.  However, there have been posts in other threads indicating that the PS3 upgrade kits will cost more than the current PS2 upgrade kits.

I just ordered two boards and the old 3V with 5V connectors was listed as "not available", so I put in the order for the new PS/3 replacement.  We'll see what I get and how it works...  Yes, I did order the heatsink mounting for the new kit, but I have plenty of speakers.

 

GRJ:  Is the heatsink mounting designed to replace the different shaped heat sink that MTH used on 5-volt boards located in locos?

I've never seen it, but the ASC notice said I need it for the new board, so I'm assuming it's the same idea as the heatsink that comes with the PS/2 boards, only specific to this new board.

 

I'll know a lot more it my order ever ships and I can fix these two locomotives that are sitting here with bad boards.

 

If you have opened a PS-3 diesel you have seen it.  Because the rectifier on PS-3 is vertical, the heat sink is different. 

 

RJR,  The PS-3 bracket is designed to sink to the chassis.  The PS-2 5V brackets really came in many different sizes and shapes.  Almost specific to each engine type.  PS-2 3V brackets also come in different shapes, but not nearly as many as the 5V systems had.

 

The 5V also had a different rectifier.

 

Alan,  MTH is using the designation for the PS-3 board that will replace PS-2 board as PS-32.  There are still PS-2 boards available, but they stopped making the PS-2 with 5V connectors a while ago.  SO MTH ships a PS-32 with 5V connectors as the replacement board.

 

Interesting is that a PS-3 diesel board MSRP is $220.  The PS-32 is $205, but you need the $25 adapter board.  The connector is different on the PS-32 so it will not be a direct replacement for the PS-3 board.  All this is at the tech level, because MTH does not sell replacement boards to customers.  Only to ASC and ASC techs.  G

It's curious that they made two different boards if they could have done it with a single stock number...

 

Having never ordered a diesel board, I didn't realize that was the heatsink.  I have the Aerotrain with PS/3, so I guess I've seen it and just not realized it.

 

 

Well I imagine sooner or later one of the boards will get damaged and you would want the option to replace what is bad, not the whole set.  Also, I think when they get the 3V top board in stock, it will use the same bottom, but the top will have a different stock number.  Since this will ultimately also replace the PS-2 3V when they stop production of spare boards. G

The adapter board is dirt cheap, my thinking it it should have just interfaced to the existing diesel board.

 

In any case, it is what it is, so we'll have to deal with it.

 

 

Yes, but than we would complain it is a solid board like the PS-2 5V and we can't get to the components to repair it?  G

Well, right now there's very little I can see to repair on the current PS/3 board, so that will be nothing new.

 

Smoke fan and heater fets as long as a hole doesn't burn through the traces.  I assume the adapter board uses the normal fets and may be repairable.  Especially with a pinched light wire or such.  Will see, but having the flexibility of swapping adapters is probably a good thing.  G

My point was actually not that they should eliminate that board, but rather they should use the same base PS/3 board as the current production, thus saving them from having another unique part.

 

I haven't seen the new board, my order is still sitting waiting to be processed, it'll be interesting to compare it to a standard PS/3 diesel board.

 

Jeff shot out a picture in the ASC tech update.  The board uses a different connector to mate the adapter board.  It doesn't have the fragile 40 pin connector.  So if you purchased this board, it would not be a direct replacement for a PS-3 Diesel board because the 40 pin connector would not fit.  G

The two PS32 boards have connectors that mate to those for PS2 5 volt or PS2 3 volt board engines, respectively.

The adapter does, but the PS-32 board uses a header to connect to the adapter.  The header connection is different than a PS-3 diesel 40 pin connector.  G

What about controlling other vendors smoke units like k-line, Williams or Lionel? Will upgrading a conventional engine with smoke to ps2/3 would you have to replace the smoke units?

You don't have to replace smoke units unless you want the ability to turn them on-off via DCS or have puffing smoke.  You might have to install a choke in the feed line to the existing smoke unit if it has a constant voltage board.  On-off could be attained by having the DCS board smoke unit output drive a relay..

Yes, it can be done.  If it is fan driven, you just wire the fan as any PS-2 upgrade.  For the smoke unit, you need to make sure the element doesn't have any contact to chassis ground, and it needs to be changed to an effective 8 ohm unit.  So 2 16 ohm elements in parallel, or a single 8 ohm, or a resistance in between.  Even modified Atlas or TAS units with single elements smoke fine.  TAS as example was a 10ohm element and it smoked fine of the PS-2 connection.  G