Hello. I am considering possibly upgrading my Railing Pioneer Zephyr set (30-2186-1) to PS2. I have a donor locomotive I plan to use for parts and fill in with additional parts where needed. Its a Railking PS2 GP-20 (30-2777-1) that has a damaged shell but everything else works flawlessly (lights, sound, smoke, PS2 command/conventional operation, etc.). I have carefully read the upgrade guide that came with the PS2 upgrade kits online and have also carefully studied the exploded view (https://mthtrains.com/sites/de...oded/30rtr11207e.pdf) of the zephyr on MTH's website.
Overall, I feel pretty comfortable about upgrading the engine itself and loading a sound file, it's just the passenger cars, especially the powered observation car, that I'm not so sure about. Mainly about powering the lights in the passenger cars and the motor on the rear truck of the observation car. I'm willing to lose the powered rear truck if needed, but I would prefer to keep it and the lighting of the passenger cars. For those of you that don't know the cars are powered using a pickup on the rear truck of the observation car and by a harness on each car that connect to one another and then to the engine. Is there any way to wire this harness system into the PS2 board without causing problems? If so, what needs to be done? I am asking before I just jump in and try it. I plan to take my time with the upgrade and only proceed if I know 100% what I'm doing. If it's more trouble than it's worth, than I simply will leave it PS1.
If anyone had upgraded this model or knows someone who has, please let me know how it was done.
Thanks in advance,
Jake
Edit: I don't plan to add any proto-couplers as the model doesn't have to begin with and I don't plan to add a smoke unit
