Sound Fails on Legacy EM1 - Replaced Sound board still fails - Fixed by adding battery

Put a battery in it and see if it still fails. A common issue with legacy steamers is they can drop sound when power gets momentarily interrupted to the loco. The interruption won’t be enough to stop the motion but the lights may flicker and the sound will drop. Shutting down then restarting the loco will bring it back but you’ll lose it again. Gunrunnerjohn makes a battery replacement system for TMCC & Legacy locos to eliminate this issue. Also check your pickup rollers and make sure they are clean plus make sure the track is clean. 

As Matt says, sounds Like bad pick up in the tender. I have experienced when the tender looses power and it has to be "reset" with aux key or the 'R'.

This is the only Legacy engine I have that demonstrates this problem.  I will put a 9 volt battery in the tender to see if this effects the drop out.  If so I will contact gunrunnerjohn for his permanent fix.  Thanks  Currently running with a medical 9 volt battery on the same loop with my FEF and SD 40 UP engines pulling 9 passenger cars while the EM1 pulls 15 reefers.  Nice background noise.   I have put the trains to bed after 31 minutes and 10 seconds with the sound working all the time. Today, it is 1 hour and 1 minute of running without the sound failing.  Turned the loop off after the hour of no failure other than a coupler uncoupling from the full length dome MTH UP passenger car.  This is the first time I have had to place a battery in any of my Legacy engines (2 NS road diesels, NS genset, Cass Heysler, R27 subway, GP9 GN,  and the first Legacy Big Boy.  Thanks for the support and fix.

As stated, check your pickups and clean the wheels and lubricate pickup pin.  The point was, if sounds fail, try turning them back up.  TMCC/Legacy can take a spurious signal and turn sounds off.  If that is not the issue, did you check speaker?  Speaker coil failure can cause some issues too.  G

I’ve had trouble some years ago with the volume pot.

winrose46 posted:

This is the only Legacy engine I have that demonstrates this problem.  

I believe Lionel made an electronics change after the first run Legacy locos which did not exhibit this issue. This started in 2011 offerings.

The change may have been when the ability for the loco to actually be off when parked i.e. no lights until addressed was implimented. First gen legacy stuff didn't have this feature.

I have 1 legacy loco the first run K4 with this same problem, ultimately it is is overly sensative to dirty track or pickup rollers. Even though my track APPEARS clean, if the K4 drops the sound I know its not. Clean the track and /or rollers and no more sound dropout.

At some point in the last few years, I recall another change was made so Lionel locos didn't drop sound so easily and if they did sound could be restored without a reset, simply hitting any button on the remote while the engine was still underway.  In my experience, more recent offerings don't seem to have this issue.

I don't know the particulars, JonZ would.

Anywhoo, as already mentioned above. try a thorough track and roller cleaning and see if you can lose the battery.

My Vision Line Challenger does it and do does my H7. 

I've found that a number of older Legacy locomotives benefit from a battery to avoid sound dropout and the necessity of a reset.  I have just the ticket to fix that permanently.

 YLB - RailSounds Battery Replacement

Thanks john, I have it bookmarked.  How different is it from the BCR kit used in MTH engines?

gene

Very different.  The BCR used in MTH engines is just a capacitor array to perform the functions of a rechargeable battery.  This product incorporates the capacitor to store the charge as well as a sophisticated power supply that allows you to charge the capacitor from track power as low as 6 volts and boosts it to the full voltage necessary for the RailSounds board backup power function.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

Very different.  The BCR used in MTH engines is just a capacitor array to perform the functions of a rechargeable battery.  This product incorporates the capacitor to store the charge as well as a sophisticated power supply that allows you to charge the capacitor from track power as low as 6 volts and boosts it to the full voltage necessary for the RailSounds board backup power function.

I have a few Legacy engines that may use this device.  I don't remember seeing anything regarding a battery for my VL Big Boy, Legacy Allegheny, Legacy Polar express (new) or my new VL Niagara.  Are these equipped with batteries, or is this an over and beyond feature that eliminates sound dropouts?

They didn't eliminate the sound dropouts, they just didn't include the battery cable for those models.   Lionel has it as a part, and you can connect that, and then use my YLB to provide power for potential dropouts.  The connector is there on the sound board, and the sound board has the circuitry for the battery, just no cable.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

They didn't eliminate the sound dropouts, they just didn't include the battery cable for those models.   Lionel has it as a part, and you can connect that, and then use my YLB to provide power for potential dropouts.  The connector is there on the sound board, and the sound board has the circuitry for the battery, just no cable.

 

Do I need these for my engines I posted earlier?  Big Boy, Allegheny, PE and new Niagara.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

I've found that a number of older Legacy locomotives benefit from a battery to avoid sound dropout and the necessity of a reset.  I have just the ticket to fix that permanently.

 YLB - RailSounds Battery Replacement

With the huge amount of these locomotives having this issue it should become a sticky John.

Any later Legacy locomotive that you are experiencing sound dropouts with and it doesn't have the battery cable, you'll likely need one of the Lionel cables for.  The RailSounds Lite board is a single board solution and just has a connection for the battery cable.  Many locomotives have the battery cable supplied, but recently there seems a trend not to include them.  I suspect one of the reasons is they don't want to deal with the issues of users taking the tender apart and breaking something, but that's just a guess.