Savere ground plane problem ?

Unfortunately, Legacy engines are the most sensitive to these types of issues (with TMCC, TMCC with cruise, and large to small engines) having increased sensitivity. It drove me crazy for a couple of years.  The final solution was to zig zag a wire on each level (5 levels) with the wire between the homosote and the plywood. I then pigtaliled them all to a single wire that I attached to my outside water pipe. All Legacy signal issues when away after that.

Is the power for the command base plugged into a properly grounded 3 prong plug?

Does it go through a surge protecting outlet strip?

And yes the signal is robust enough that the other loop will be affected.

Under these conditions TMCC suffers from two strong a signal with respect to the antenna trying to see a  ground. To test this you can place your hand near the

locomotive antenna and it should operate normally. Another test is to place a three wire extension cord that is plugged into an outlet next to the track.

I had a similar situation with a lower track that had an upper track running parallel to it. Since the upper track was was powered with a separate isolated transformer from the lower track, and I was just running conventional I tried tying the outside rail on the upper track to earth ground. This solved the problems on the lower track with the TMCC signal.

Now for the interesting part of this test. I placed a TMCC locomotive on the upper track that had the outside rail tied to earth ground and it ran under TMCC. The antenna was picking up the TMCC signal from the lower track. This was done several months ago and TMCC has benn working ever since on both the lower and upper tracks.

because the DCC signal is in the track and the Lionel signal is in the air.

Are both tracks being powered from the same transformer?  If so, the TMCC ground signal is going from the base, to the track to the transformer to the other track.  But as for the signal, it can affect locomotives on parallel tracks.  I had a loop of FasTrack that had a base connected to it, and a loop of Atlas track inside of it.  I pulled the transformer off of the FasTrack and attached it to the Atlas track.  There was one section where the Atlas track was right next to the FasTrack, and on that section, my TMCC Big Boy wouldn't start if stopped there.  Took me a while, but finally figured out it was getting the TMCC signal from the FasTrack.  So I unplugged the base and regained convention control of My locomotive.  But we are only talking of a track distance of maybe 2"  Outside of that range it didn't get the TMCC signal.

There have been instances in the past (possibly described on this forum) where someone had taken a TMCC engine across the room to test it conventionally at the workbench, and it wouldn't run. Turned out that even though the engine was many feet from any TMCC track, it was still picking up the Command Base signal from the air and powered up in command mode.

Unplugging the Command Base solved the problem in that case. 

---PCJ

 2 separate transformers. The DCS system is supplying power through variable out

1 and 2, This is where the TMCC wire is connected.

A thought was that it is backfeeding through the TIU and on to the second track.

One dumb thing I was doing was not putting the full 18V to the track, I was setting it at 16v, thus getting the flickering lights from the low signal. Increased the

voltage and the flickering really went down.

I do have one other problem. I have my switches wired for non derailing, and did

not put the capacitors in as recommended by Lionel,  That is next.

I have both the DCS and TMCC systems and boy am leaning towards DCS.

Never had an issue with the DCS system. This radio wave thing seems to cause

a lot of problems on layouts with a lot of close track.

Thanks for all the help guys'...

Not sure I understand the problem.

If both tracks are seeing a signal, isn't that a good thing?

Now, if the signal is not generating proper operating characteristics, that is another thing.

Did you wire first for TMCC?

Remove the DCS system signals and test for Legacy/TMCC signal first to attempt to isolate the issue. Did you build the second level or any scenery using wire mesh?

Scrappy

I am using the DCS system for track power. one power brick for each channel.

I connected the TMCC base output ( or signal ) to the common output of each rail.

I was having problems with engines stalling and headlights flickering.

So I disconnected the TMCC signal wire form track 2 in trying to isolate the problem.

The TMCC signal was still on track 2, even with no base wire connected to it.

So my conclusion was the signal was cumming from track 1 as the tracks run parellel

above and below each other or it's feedback through the TIU. I thought I had read someplace the the signal was only supposed to go 2.3 to 3" above the track.

Now I am using the CAB1-L. is this a different animal then TMCC ? don't know.

I've added a ground plane in the parallel area and now have to add the capacitors

on the isolated rails. Will do more tests later on.

The TMCC signal is most likely connecting the two tracks via the TIU as I would guess that the grounds are connected internally.

As for Cab1-L vs Cab-1s, the L is for Legacy, so it's transmitting to the base from the handheld at Legacy's frequencies, same as the Cab-2.  It will not talk to the TMCC base that the Cab-1 talks to.  So if you are trying to get a Cab1-L to talk to an old Cab-1 base, then it won't work.  Otherwise they are the same animal as the signal from the base to the locomotive is the same.

The TMCC signal is in two parts.  One side is from the outside rails of the track, the other is from the ground wires of your home.  While you only hook up on wire, the other one is run through the ground lug of the wall wart power supply for the command base.  This is why you need that special wall wart and it needs to have good access to the house ground wires. 

You get blinking lights/poor reception when the receiver in the loco can't discriminate the house wiring "envelope".   This is where running a wire from "earth ground" or pin 5 of the command base (thank you Dale Manquen) serial port can get the other half of the signal near enough to the receiver to restore proper signal propagation.

  Chuck, Do you do field  trips ?

  The power comes from a terminal strip and I've used one of those plug in

  testers and it say's all is ok.

  Now The pin 5 is being used right now because of the cable between the

  CAB1-L and the TIU . Do I need to use a WYE connector ?

Try plugging the base directly into a wall outlet.  Some power strips (particularly ones with surge suppressors) isolate the ground pin and will not work properly.  You mean the Base 1-L and the TIU?  Yes, you could use a wye cable.  If the command base wall wart is connecting to the house wiring correctly you can just run a piece of wire to the screw on the face plate of an outlet and get to the "ground plane".

Funny you should mention that.  I had all my power coming from a strip and all

the power wires were run closely together. I moved the power supply and re-routed

the power wire away from the others. Didn't have any stall out's last night.

TMCC commands worked most of the time.  Will do a little more playing around

today.. ( to cold to do anything else )

This has been a most informative set of posts. I have been plagued with a legacy engine that stalls The Legacy controller is powered from an APC UPS and I have often wondered just how the ground was wiredthrough the UPS Some of the trouble shooting ideas are certainly worth a try. The engine was returned to Lionel and as expected it ran like a charm on their track.

I have a similar layout, parallel, over under, metal bridges and buildings... and had similar problems.  I thought I had signal and ground plane issues, ran wires, had some of above suggestions which I tried.  Nothing helped.  Then I looked closely at my track (Atlas) which looked new and shiny.  I found some small spots using a bright light which looked like a tiny tar spots from oil drips.  It took a lot of scrubbing to remove them but when I did, it solved the problem.  Every location there was flickering there was a small amount of these spots.  It took a bright light to see them.  Anyway, I always look closely at all the rails if I see flickering lights.

Good luck,

John