I have an older MTH {Protosound 1) F-3 set ABBA that I would like to convert with ERR boards. Each A unit has two motors. I understand that the Cruise Commander will operate only two motors. Is it possible to put a cruise commander into each A unit and then operate them as a lashup? Can I set one to start in forward and the other to start in reverse? Obviously, would put a sound board into only one of them.
Is there a better way to do this?
Bill
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Others may disagree, but I've successfully used a single Cruise Commander to run 4 motors. I have a 4-motor sets of MTH Centipedes, MTH sharknoses, MTH F-3's and a pair of Atlas RS-1's that have run for years, each with a single Cruise Commander.
Disclaimer: I run freights of 10 or 12 cars, up grades as steep as 3.5%, but only for 30 minutes or so at a time. If you plan to run really long trains for hours at a time, your experience might differ.
To the original question yes you can do all you asked to what Bob said I have no idea so will not disagree but your talking a lot of connecting between both B's to get to other A so I would think your way would be better and if you wanted to run the A's as separate engines it would be better this way as they would both have TMCC in them for sound I personally would put it in one of the B units but that's up to you.
One of the others that will disagree is Jon Z. the designer of the Cruise Commander. I have also done four motors with them. What I find is the cruise performance is not as tight as when running two motors. I attribute that to probably something about the back EMF from four motors confusing things, but that's just a guess.
I once tried the Cruise Commander in the K-Line F3 A-B-A all powered set, and it failed hopelessly, just FYI.
I have a pair of MTH Premier Centipedes that are using the TAS EOB board to run all four motors, so far they don't have a problem. Since TAS uses a tach for the speed control, the issues of sensing back-EMF are not there, but I may be pushing the maximum capacity of the TAS board.
I have 3 MTH Proto-sound (aka PS-1) GP38-2s that I plan on converting to ERR cruse and to always run together. But I'm going to do each unit separately and run them as a MU/lash-up via TMCC. This way I have 3 separate units for 3 different trains if I want, and also so that there is no wires running between them that could break when handled or be forgotten to be connected. My understanding they do really well running together with ERR upgrades when starting with similar locomotives like this.
You should have no problem running them together. The Cruise Commander has a speed "tweak" feature that you can use to match speeds so that even dissimilar units should run togehter.
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