I have a Lionel NYC Hudson (6-28065) from the NYC high end freight set (6-21988) that was advertised as "TMCC/railsounds upgradeable"
The engine originally had a signal sound board.
So I recently purchased a R2LC (691R2LCC08) radio board and a generic steam rail sounds board (691PCB1111) and a rail sounds power board (691PCB104D) attempted to "upgrade" the engine to TMCC/Railsounds.
after installing the boards, and moving the required jumpers and plugging in the green wire on the harness to the railsounds motherboard, I performed the reset procedure as described in the upgrade manual.
While the engine responds to the TMCC commands, the railsounds remain in a conventional mode. While running conventional, the sounds will not ramp up with speed, nor will the chuff work. However, I can blow the whistle and bell using the transformer buttons.
In TMCC, the engine will respond to all commands, yet the sounds simply sit in the same "idle" mode as they do under conventional control.
Curiously, the bell and whistle will respond to the transformer buttons while in TMCC mode. This occurs on a ZW-L as well as with a Z-4000.
Thinking there may be a problem with the harness or tether, I swapped the tender for the one on my Mikado Jr 2-8-2 with TMCC and rail sounds since they share the same tethers. The tender from the 2-8-2 worked with the Hudson and all sounds responded under TMCC, so the engine must have a good connector and no issues with it's electronics.
Now I believed my tender must have either a bad motherboard or wiring, so I replaced all the wiring, installed a new tether, and a new mother board. Despite all this, the same thing happened, the railsounds were unresponsive in TMCC.
So I ordered another rail sounds board and power supply, thinking I might have damaged the first set, but no dice. The exact same effect. No response in TMCC for the railsounds.
I swapped over the sound board from the mikado to the hudson tender, and everything worked. So all I have been able to determine, is the generic rail sounds boards don't seem to be compatible with TMCC.
I have pretty much eliminated the boards and wiring by using known good components or swapping the tenders, so it has to be something with the sound board. Incidentally, when I try to perform the R2LC reset, or program the engine ID, I do not get any sounds confirming the settings, yet the engine clearly responds to TMCC. When I performed the reset procedure using the 2-8-2's tender and sounds, I did get the whistle blows when I set the ID and reset the board.
So the $64,000 question is, are the generic railsounds boards meant to work under TMCC? Aren't these the same boards used with ERR conversions, what am I doing wrong?
P.S. Yes I even checked the Railsounds/signal sounds switch setting on the tender.
