R2LC/R2LC Boards Are No Longer Available, What Do I Do?

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

I think a ton of people are REALLY missing the point!  It's not that anyone (or at least me), expected Lionel to design or manufacture anything!  My gripe is that they arbitrarily pulled all the TMCC and older Legacy electronic modules and disposed of them for what doesn't appear any good reason!  Since they kept FAR more mechanical parts for those same models, the cost of inventorying the existing stock doesn't seem to have been a major factor.  They were slowly going out of stock as their supplies ran out, and I'm OK with that, I realize they aren't going to tool up and manufacture more of the old stuff.  However simply yanking all the parts and disposing them makes no sense.  Worse, they didn't give Service Stations a heads-up so they could perhaps lay in some stock to support repairs for some period of time.

John, what did they do with the parts?  Agreed, that seems arbitrary.

@shawn posted:

Frankly, I hope Lionel goes down the tubes! Might be time for new owners. If any

I am a two-railer conventional-only person but I sure hope that Lionel does NOT "go down the tubes"! That was the most disgusting thing that I have ever read on OGR!,

@Rider Sandman posted:

John, what did they do with the parts?  Agreed, that seems arbitrary.

Don't know.  I have some semi inside information that they're negotiating with 3rd party, but I'm not going to spread rumors until I actually know something concrete.

Lionel if your listening.  I am likely not your best customer but for over twenty years have bought one new top of your line steam loco each year. Most are in their original packaging never run as, like many here, I have enough locomotives that I could have stopped buying new twenty years ago. What I would like to hear from you is a pledge that as technology moves along you would make available kits to upgrade our old locomotives, to current standards, as long as you remain in the toy train business. I can well understand that at some point economics make it impossible to produce old tech boards.  Seems plausible to me that producing enough extra boards to cover upgrade demands would actually lower your per unit cost for current production boards.   j

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Don't know.  I have some semi inside information that they're negotiating with 3rd party, but I'm not going to spread rumors until I actually know something concrete.

What ever it is, if someone is going to sell them they will be a lot more expensive than they were before they were pulled from inventory.  You can take that to the bank.

@superwarp1 posted:

What ever it is, if someone is going to sell them they will be a lot more expensive than they were before they were pulled from inventory.  You can take that to the bank.

I have no doubt about that!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Don't know.  I have some semi inside information that they're negotiating with 3rd party, but I'm not going to spread rumors until I actually know something concrete.

Don’t let @modeltrainsparts hear you say that, ….apparently if you know something and you don’t share the knowledge, it’s all smoke & mirrors,……

Pat

@harmonyards posted:

Don’t let @modeltrainsparts hear you say that, ….apparently if you know something and you don’t share the knowledge, it’s all smoke & mirrors,……

Pat

Well, if it was truly knowledge, I would share it.  However, it's just a rumor and I'm not sure it's valid.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Well, if it was truly knowledge, I would share it.  However, it's just a rumor and I'm not sure it's valid.

If it ain’t my place to share it, I’m not going to,….let the ones doing the deed announce the news…..

Pat

OK, since we are all learning something here, is there any way to check an R2LC or R4LC board without attaching it to the mother board?

@Rider Sandman posted:

Honest questions: Why would Lionel ever do that?  Why would they ever give away their technology for nothing in return?

1. To support hobbyists
2. To garner goodwill from customers
3. To foster innovation

Aftermarket programs often involve quality control requirements on the part of the OEM since the aftermarket product interacts with the OEM product/system. Why would Lionel want the headache of policing an aftermarket program on an antiquated system they are choosing to no longer support?

Who said anything about policing or supporting it? Open source software licenses have no warranty and typically indemnify the author from liability.

I, too, am an IP lawyer and agree with the very well articulated analysis from Chaos.  Like him, I also find it unlikely that Lionel - a relatively small company with limited resources - would spend any meaningful effort to enforce their remaining IP rights, if any, in regard to technologies they are choosing to abandon, especially if the competitive product is fairly/properly reverse engineered. I also find it unlikely that they’ll denounce any remaining rights in the form of some omnibus license - their current designs may still have evolutions of the original source code.

Nothing says they have to release the enhancements as well. If you don’t think they’d pursue legal options, why not help out their customers?

To me, the barrier to producing replacement products is likely more commercial than legal. If there was still good money to be made producing them, Lionel would probably do so and they could certainly do so less expensively than someone starting from scratch.

My $0.02 worth and it may not be worth $0.02…..

I dunno, it’s never been as easy as it is now to prototype electronics and have them made overseas. It’s a maker economy and as we’ve seen there are many people on this forum who are extremely capable.

Being free of legal liabilities would likely entice more activity in that regard.

@Professor Chaos posted:

I think this sums it up well.  It would be nice if Lionel open-sourced the code for obsolete products (and there's nothing to lose in asking for it). But you rarely see that happen with obsolete products - can anyone think of some examples where it's happened?

Microsoft has open sourced some of their older software.

It's some headache and risk for the company (especially if an open-source project starts competing with current products). So the business calculus is whether any benefit from hobbyist goodwill outweighs those costs and risks.

The benefits are many.

• Increased “things” that can be controlled with their controllers
• Friendly ecosystem that is welcoming to new users, rather than being “vendor locked”
• Lionel could benefit from bug fixes to the code and new features that are authored by contributors

@Norton posted:

No lawsuits because they had to use Lionel R2LCs and Lionel Audio Boards. I suspect licenses were required as well, though Lou and others can confirm.

The 64 dollar question in my mind is since Lionel has declared that technology as obsolete, therefore declaring the trains that use it as obsolete will they allow anyone else to offer replacements without the need for licensing?

Pete

TAS was the first TMCC licensee.  After the UCUB we made the SAW board for the licensees that followed.  Yes a lot of it was Lionel components.  We created some new features installed on the mother board and then Lionel changed the Licensing agreement to say that new features were not allowed.  We had Neil Young encouraging us to create new features and Lionel sending cease and desist orders.  Crazy times.

Lou N

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Lou, Lionel hasn't made the R2LC for a very long time.  I don't think they've made the R4LC recently either.  Scott hat to contract to make his own R4LC's, obviously under license from Lionel.

Okay so here's my question....

Do you or anybody else have an ERR radio board?  If you do, tell me the processor chip number.

Lou N

@shawn posted:

One day all in the garage?

Just the ones he posted here, good grief.

@shawn posted:

Frankly, I hope Lionel goes down the tubes! Might be time for new owners. If any

I'd hate to see that happen. But new owners who are actually train people and care about their customers would be great.

@romiller49 posted:

OK, since we are all learning something here, is there any way to check an R2LC or R4LC board without attaching it to the mother board?

Not easily.  You can "skywire" it, but for a full test you really need to exercise stuff like the PWM and serial data.

I made a test fixture to test all the modular boards, TMCC and early Legacy.  I use it a lot.  For folks without such a tool or similar, do what I used to do.  Poke the suspect board into a TMCC engine and program it and see if it works.

@Lou N posted:

Do you or anybody else have an ERR radio board?  If you do, tell me the processor chip number.

It's a PIC16F648A, In stock at Mouser.  Also, Microchip Direct has them as well.

The R2LC-04 I looked at has the PIC16F84-04, it was obviously a fairly old one.  That one is also in stock at Mouser.

@rplst8 posted:

1. To support hobbyists
2. To garner goodwill from customers
3. To foster innovation

Who said anything about policing or supporting it? Open source software licenses have no warranty and typically indemnify the author from liability.

Nothing says they have to release the enhancements as well. If you don’t think they’d pursue legal options, why not help out their customers?

I dunno, it’s never been as easy as it is now to prototype electronics and have them made overseas. It’s a maker economy and as we’ve seen there are many people on this forum who are extremely capable.

Being free of legal liabilities would likely entice more activity in that regard.

Without going through point by point, which of your thoughts directly financially benefit Lionel?  Not soft/feel good, but actual financial benefits?

Aftermarket competitors are not easy. I worked with an appliance manufacturer who went easy on third-party knockoffs of the water filters for their lower-end refrigerators.  They thought it was a “right” thing to do to support the folks who were buying at that price point. The knockoff filters were complete junk and built on the cheap. They leaked everywhere and ruined kitchen floors.  Many recovered field failures of the filter were built without gaskets. All the customer reviews related to leaky ice makers blamed the refrigerator as being poorly built. Simply wiping your hands of “liability” doesn’t absolve an OEM in the court of public opinion. If it’s going onto your product or into your system, you **** well better make sure it’s built well because the customer doesn’t know who the no name name knockoff is, but they do know the OEM.

@Rider Sandman posted:

Without going through point by point, which of your thoughts directly financially benefit Lionel?  Not soft/feel good, but actual financial benefits?

Aftermarket competitors are not easy. I worked with an appliance manufacturer who went easy on third-party knockoffs of the water filters for their lower-end refrigerators.  They thought it was a “right” thing to do to support the folks who were buying at that price point. The knockoff filters were complete junk and built on the cheap. They leaked everywhere and ruined kitchen floors.  Many recovered field failures of the filter were built without gaskets. All the customer reviews related to leaky ice makers blamed the refrigerator as being poorly built. Simply wiping your hands of “liability” doesn’t absolve an OEM in the court of public opinion. If it’s going onto your product or into your system, you **** well better make sure it’s built well because the customer doesn’t know who the no name name knockoff is, but they do know the OEM.

Lionel is doing a fine job of ruining their own reputation, so I don’t think they have much to worry about.

You can buy knock off parts (filters, batteries, cartridges, accessories, etc.) for thousands of products (appliances included) already on Amazon or a hundred other places. If ruined reputations were really a problem, I think the market place would show it.

instead, companies remain shortsighted, and concerned only about the bottom line, rather than the long term prospects of their business. They find ways to cheapen every aspect of their products to save pennies per unit, turning them into cheap, unrepairable throwaway garbage, that clog landfills and use up scarce resources.

Name a single US appliance manufacturer that isn’t a shell of what it once was 40 years ago, now often just renting their name out to a third party who actually makes the goods.

@rplst8 posted:

Name a single US appliance manufacturer that isn’t a shell of what it once was 40 years ago, now often just renting their name out to a third party who actually makes the goods.

Speed Queen.

Pete

@rplst8 posted:

Lionel is doing a fine job of ruining their own reputation, so I don’t think they have much to worry about.

You can buy knock off parts (filters, batteries, cartridges, accessories, etc.) for thousands of products (appliances included) already on Amazon or a hundred other places. If ruined reputations were really a problem, I think the market place would show it.

instead, companies remain shortsighted, and concerned only about the bottom line, rather than the long term prospects of their business. They find ways to cheapen every aspect of their products to save pennies per unit, turning them into cheap, unrepairable throwaway garbage, that clog landfills and use up scarce resources.

Name a single US appliance manufacturer that isn’t a shell of what it once was 40 years ago, now often just renting their name out to a third party who actually makes the goods.

KitchenAid

Pat

@harmonyards posted:

KitchenAid

Pat

Didn't KitchenAid get bought out by Whirlpool?

@feet posted:

Didn't KitchenAid get bought out by Whirlpool?

@harmonyards posted:

KitchenAid

Yes, and funny this one was mentioned because we bought a KitchenAid dishwasher about a year ago and the frame is made of plastic and the door leaks onto the floor when opened after a wash cycle.

@Norton posted:

Speed Queen.

Speed Queen is a subsidiary of McGraw-Edison, which is a subsidiary of Cooper, which is owned by Eaton, which is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

@rplst8 posted:

Yes, and funny this one was mentioned because we bought a KitchenAid dishwasher about a year ago and the frame is made of plastic and the door leaks onto the floor when opened after a wash cycle.

The best one was when they started making kitchenmaid mixers with plastic gears….I remember factory refurbs being all over the place.

@rplst8 posted:

Yes, and funny this one was mentioned because we bought a KitchenAid dishwasher about a year ago and the frame is made of plastic and the door leaks onto the floor when opened after a wash cycle.

I was thinking of the mixers, ….they’re still made in Ohio, and they even brought the hand mixer production back to the US,…

Pat

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Not easily.  You can "skywire" it, but for a full test you really need to exercise stuff like the PWM and serial data.

I made a test fixture to test all the modular boards, TMCC and early Legacy.  I use it a lot.  For folks without such a tool or similar, do what I used to do.  Poke the suspect board into a TMCC engine and program it and see if it works.

It's a PIC16F648A, In stock at Mouser.  Also, Microchip Direct has them as well.

The R2LC-04 I looked at has the PIC16F84-04, it was obviously a fairly old one.  That one is also in stock at Mouser.

Wasn’t the issue with these the availability of surface Mount . Or was the the radio receiver - I remember ordering a couple of hundred of something from china.

@rplst8 posted:

Lionel is doing a fine job of ruining their own reputation, so I don’t think they have much to worry about.

You can buy knock off parts (filters, batteries, cartridges, accessories, etc.) for thousands of products (appliances included) already on Amazon or a hundred other places. If ruined reputations were really a problem, I think the market place would show it.

instead, companies remain shortsighted, and concerned only about the bottom line, rather than the long term prospects of their business. They find ways to cheapen every aspect of their products to save pennies per unit, turning them into cheap, unrepairable throwaway garbage, that clog landfills and use up scarce resources.

Name a single US appliance manufacturer that isn’t a shell of what it once was 40 years ago, now often just renting their name out to a third party who actually makes the goods.

Lol - like the first time I saw one of Lionel’s easy hookup accessories. I mean really…can you get any cheaper looking switch?

@feet posted:

I'd hate to see that happen. But new owners who are actually train people and care about their customers would be great.

That’s  was one thing about Mike Regan. You felt like a family member was working at Lionel. My friend at the top of the Company - imho has zero customer relations skills.

@JohnActon posted:

Lionel if your listening.  I am likely not your best customer but for over twenty years have bought one new top of your line steam loco each year. Most are in their original packaging never run as, like many here, I have enough locomotives that I could have stopped buying new twenty years ago. What I would like to hear from you is a pledge that as technology moves along you would make available kits to upgrade our old locomotives, to current standards, as long as you remain in the toy train business. I can well understand that at some point economics make it impossible to produce old tech boards.  Seems plausible to me that producing enough extra boards to cover upgrade demands would actually lower your per unit cost for current production boards.   j

I agree!

@Lou N posted:

Okay so here's my question....

Do you or anybody else have an ERR radio board?  If you do, tell me the processor chip number.

Lou N

I see John posted the number. I have no recent ERR Cruise Commanders that came with R4LCs  but have found, by accident that all Lionel “Legacy” R4LCs can be used in TMCC applications if you program them with the correct feature code. AUX1 1 or 2 for Legacy, AUX1 4-8 for TMCC. Maybe one reason they offed them to their new destination, yet to be announced.

Pete

@rplst8 posted:

Lionel, to support hobbyists?  Lionel to garner goodwill?    In my opinion.

They no longer have to...no real competition...MTH, Weaver, Williams, Right-a-Way kind of kept them on their toes in years past.  With MTH redeveloping, Bachman doing what Bachman does, Atlas slowing down and Sunset far above Lionel,  Lionel can do what ever they want to.  Lots of orange Kool-Aid.

Whenever there is any question of what anyone is doing in any business decisions, simply follow the dollar.  No love to be lost.  Loco Louie said it best when he quoted certain others.

In my experience the main way a company can make the big dollars is to sell new product. 

@Tom Tee posted:

Lionel, to support hobbyists?  Lionel to garner goodwill?    In my opinion.

They no longer have to...no real competition...MTH, Weaver, Williams, Right-a-Way kind of kept them on their toes in years past.  With MTH redeveloping, Bachman doing what Bachman does, Atlas slowing down and Sunset far above Lionel,  Lionel can do what ever they want to.  Lots of orange Kool-Aid.

Whenever there is any question of what anyone is doing in any business decisions, simply follow the dollar.  No love to be lost.  Loco Louie said it best when he quoted certain others.

In my experience the main way a company can make the big dollars is to sell new product.

“In my experience the main way a company can make the big dollars is to sell new product.”  That all depends…..on the economy - and the new products being produced. Frankly, why does every manufacturer rehash existing products typically when the economy gets bad….MTH? As a example….in these situations it imperative for the manufacturer to keep the hobby alive. Providing parts for older loco’s.

I had a few atlantics…You couldn’t even get a smoke unit gasket..years ago.

@rplst8 posted:

Lionel is doing a fine job of ruining their own reputation, so I don’t think they have much to worry about.

You can buy knock off parts (filters, batteries, cartridges, accessories, etc.) for thousands of products (appliances included) already on Amazon or a hundred other places. If ruined reputations were really a problem, I think the market place would show it.

instead, companies remain shortsighted, and concerned only about the bottom line, rather than the long term prospects of their business. They find ways to cheapen every aspect of their products to save pennies per unit, turning them into cheap, unrepairable throwaway garbage, that clog landfills and use up scarce resources.

Name a single US appliance manufacturer that isn’t a shell of what it once was 40 years ago, now often just renting their name out to a third party who actually makes the goods.

Yet, you expect a 100-year-old low volume toy manufacturer in a decaying (no offense) market to magically be immune from all the market realities you just listed….all the while they should just give away what little remaining technology they have “for the benefit of the hobby.” Gulp.  They’re not “doing a fine job of ruining their own reputation”, they’re trying to survive.

As an aside, your analysis of the US appliance market is also way off base. There is still lots of US made stuff under the traditional brands - Whirlpool, Maytag, Kitchenaid, Jennair, GE, etc. - admittedly under brand consolidation, but still US designed and built.

@Rider Sandman posted:

Yet, you expect a 100-year-old low volume toy manufacturer in a decaying (no offense) market to magically be immune from all the market realities you just listed….all the while they should just give away what little remaining technology they have “for the benefit of the hobby.” Gulp.  They’re not “doing a fine job of ruining their own reputation”, they’re trying to survive.

As an aside, your analysis of the US appliance market is also way off base. There is still lots of US made stuff under the traditional brands - Whirlpool, Maytag, Kitchenaid, Jennair, GE, etc. - admittedly under brand consolidation, but still US designed and built.

And it might not all be decaying because of attrition….It might have to do with marketing. Your assuming they can’t make money selling parts. Do you know how many parts I didn’t order because they didn’t have them?

I’m starting to feel - like I’m buying overpriced light bright stuff - from our biggest O gauge train maker.

@shawn posted:

And it might not all be decaying because of attrition….It might have to do with marketing. Your assuming they can’t make money selling parts. Do you know how many parts I didn’t order because they didn’t have them? Then this new mess of a web site? You can’t even find anything…hopefully they hired a outside company for that fiasco.

I’m starting to feel - like I’m buying overpriced light bright stuff - from our biggest O gauge train maker.

@shawn posted:

And it might not all be decaying because of attrition….It might have to do with marketing. Your assuming they can’t make money selling parts. Do you know how many parts I didn’t order because they didn’t have them?

Politely, I’m not assuming they can’t make money selling parts. This whole thread is about the fact they are selling off what parts they do - or don’t - have. They aren’t not selling parts because they could print money selling parts!

Do you know how many parts I didn’t order because they didn’t have them?

FWIW, last year, I spent over $2k in parts,  this year, I spent $600

The 3 orders last year.  First order was the big one, then order 2 was parts I forgot, then 3 was the parts I wanted and found while looking some more.

They may have made more on you selling parts…then purchases of new product lol

Hi Folks,

To give you all a little background, we entered in a licensing agreement in 2018 with Lionel to be the sole, worldwide producer and seller of ERR components, including R4LCs. We independently procure these boards from a manufacturer designated by Lionel. We have stocked up on many of these boards (Cruise Commanders, AC Commanders, Mini Commanders, Railsounds Boards and R4LCs) in anticipation of chip obsolescence which is taking place now. The life of the product line will be limited, which is why we urge customers to stock up on what we sell so they have supply for their future needs.  These are not Legacy level boards, only TMCC.

If you want to stock up...

http://www.electricrr.com

For clarity, we are not an electrical engineering company or team. We have no experience in using the ERR components to upgrade other manufacturer's models besides 3rd Rail / Sunset Models, but our Dealer Network is experienced in this, and you can search the list on our web site above to find one that suits your needs. We do use the OEM versions of the Cruise Commander, R4LC and Railsounds Commanders in all our 3 Rail Locomotives.  I might be interested in offering some limited repairs of R2LC as it's seems pretty simple. But I think the R4LC is backwards compatible for the most part as a replacement for the R2LCs.