Temporary Addition Of Legacy To Currently DCS Only Layout

You would hook up the binding post from the legacy base to the negative output of the tiu. 

MOPAC01,

    Connect the Legacy Base drop wire directly to the opposite outside rail that you run your DCS on, then run an additional Legacy base drop wire to every out Black Channel on your DCS TIU, in this manner you deliver Dual Legacy Signal to your Engines on the Track, and they will run just fine.  

PCRR/Dave

Pine Creek Railroad posted:

MOPAC01,

    Connect the Legacy Base drop wire directly to the opposite outside rail that you run your DCS on, then run an additional Legacy base drop wire to every out Black Channel on your DCS TIU, in this manner you deliver Dual Legacy Signal to your Engines on the Track, and they will run just fine.  

PCRR/Dave

Dave,

Thanks but that's the sort of complicated (comparatively) connection I want to avoid.  The ZW is readily accessible but the TIU is not.  And it's more of a demonstration than I'm wanting to do for the owner of this DCS layout.  And a one wire connection to the U post on the ZW sitting right there at the main control spot is the sort of minimally involved setup that I'm looking to do.  

If you connect the command base's wire to the ZW, you'll run the Legacy signal through the DCS signal generators in the TIU. That's not a good thing to do!

have you performed the demo ?

Find a place to jumper to the outside rails directly from the Legacy base, since you cannot access the TIU common post. Connect to both outside rails if possible.  Perhaps a siding. A mainline would be better.

Just connect the base to a track the way it says to do so in the instructions.  Should work fine unless you have a very large layout.  Generally DCS and TMCC Legacy work separately just fine and this is a good thing for precisely this type of situation.

U connection On legacy base to outside rail.

MOPAC1,

   Heed what Barry has told you, running the Legacy signal from the ZW thru the TIU only down grades both the DCS Signal & the Legacy signal.  Make the single Legacy drop on the oppsite outside rail from the DCS connections and test out your Legacy signal.  

PCRR/Dave

Moonman posted:

have you performed the demo ?

Find a place to jumper to the outside rails directly from the Legacy base, since you cannot access the TIU common post. Connect to both outside rails if possible.  Perhaps a siding. A mainline would be better.

This is exactly my thinking before I got this far down the thread.  Just use an alligator clip to both outside rails on a siding somewhere out of the way, assuming the outside rails are connected to the track you want to run legacy on.  

JGL

JGL,

   You make a good point, I tried using the 2 outside rails directly from the 990 Legacy base also, however for some reason the signal worked better/stronger when run from the out Black Channels of the TIU, and I got to tell you, I have no idea why.  On my small RealTrax inside loop on my 2nd level, I have the Legacy 990 drop connected to it's own lighted Black lock on, on the opposite outside rail, and then run around to the Black Outlet on the DCS Lighted Lock on also.  It works perfectly and I never loose Legacy signal to the Legacy or TMCC Engines, and it has no effect on the DCS signal at all.  I like the lighted lock ons, better than the gater clips, even for short time running.

PCRR/Dave

I think the alligator clip may the most practical way.  I'm just wanting to do a demo and it doesn't need to go all the way around the track.  It's a large layout and is set up with the preferred star hub wiring into power districts.  So it's likely the alligator clip would only get the Legacy signal to a section of the layout.  But to demonstrate a Legacy engine or the Crane/Boom Cars it would probably be sufficient.  In fact, according to the latest release of Barry's book (which after he commented above I figured I should really go reread that chapter since I already own it and clearly didn't recall that part) connecting the "one wire" to the track directly is preferable to even connecting the "one wire" to the common output terminal of the TIU.  (Although electrically I would think both methods essentially the same.  But then I shouldn't think about electricity TOO hard less I develop a headache I suppose.)

Actually, if all the outside rails are common as they are in most layouts, the Legacy signal will be everywhere.  I've gone to a couple fairly large clubs that run conventional and demonstrated Legacy by just connecting to the outside rail, advancing the transformer to 18V, and running my engines on their layout.

So it's likely the alligator clip would only get the Legacy signal to a section of the layout.

Not necessarily.

The track block connects to a terminal block and is therefore connected to all of the track blocks connected to the TIU channel to which the terminal block is connected.

Further, if all of the track blocks have their outside rails connected to each other,as they should, the TMCC signal will be available anywhere on the layout.

Must be an echo in here.

Thanks Barry.  And to anyone reading this to pick up info on DCS - Barry's book is just phenomenal.  I was looking to do something "one off" here but should have really started my quest there.  (I'll plead laziness.)  But it really is the go to source for DCS information.  I started with Legacy as it seemed less intimidating than DCS.  But now that I've read Barry's book I'm anxious to deploy it on my shelf layout that may finally come to pass some 20 years after planning started......