Upgrading a Kohs Hudson w/ Legacy & Whistle Steam?

Messing with the guts of a Kohs Hudson is something I cannot even imagine. I am no technician, but if I was you, I would call Mike Reagan or, even better, Marty Fitzhenry and John Will. 

 

Holy Siderods, you would be replacing drive systems, motors, lighting wiring ? 

You're a brave soul. That is a $7500 loco.

 

Scrappy

Phil, it would be challenging for sure but I believe it could be done with some compromises. To install a smoke unit and whistle steam might involve removing a large portion of the lead weight which will reduce traction. Speed sensors can be added to motors so the drive train could remain otherwise intact. The electronics would probably have to be installed in the tender. No doubt the handrail stanchions are brass and would have to be replaced if you tried to install electronics in the engine risking paint damage.

Is repainting an option?

PS3 would be considerably easier to pull off.

Looking forward to other opinions.

 

Pete

Each their own...it's what the client wants, so hack away.  The whistle steam wouldn't be a big deal, drill a hole, solder in a tube, and connect hose.

 

When done, he'll have a $100 model.

Somebody 3 railing a 2 rail model, fricken sweet

Possible, probably.  I would hesitate to apply the word "upgrade" to the operation.

 

Sort of like taking a Lamborghini Sesto Elemento and putting drive system from a Prius into it.

I know not of the brand Kohs, so I can't comment on it being the recipient, but if you search here, there are a couple treads on installing Legacy into a non-Legacy locomotive.  The short of it is that in our little world of model trains, just about anything is possible if you are willing to work hard, and it's nothing but hard work to move Legacy from one locomotive to another.

You can buy older Legacy R4LCs, and motor drivers and speed sensors from Lionel. They will not sell you Legacy Railsounds. Basically you would only have to canaabllize the sound from a complete engine. The question has been asked if this is going to run on two rail or three rail track? Either way it will need to be powered with AC.

 

Pete

A man after my own heart.... someday I'm going to have someone do a P:48 conversion on a few Kohs GG1s. 

 

Of course that's when the new billion dollar powerball ticket comes out.

Gentlepeople may I suggest you contact Gary Schrader in California as he is a specialist in 2 rail high end brass including Kohs, Key, PSC, a most if not all DCC installs. His repower and high end improvements to Kohs drives are the best in the world.

If you wish to send him an email let me know I will provide it. Please Pm me or email.

JR, If you perform this modification, please post lots of pics

I have put legacy guts in a mth dash 9 .. It can be done it's sad to take all the guts out of a legacy Hudson but hey ..I would find a gray one there usually a lot cheeper then the black ones.

Let me see if I can comprehend this.

A $7500 Kohs Hudson goes out to a specialist for repowering?

Sorry, cannot comprehend. Computer overheated. 

 

These sold new for about $3200. Two have sold for less than $3500 this past year. One has been on eBay for about 4 months at $5k with no takers. Its a fine model no doubt but not irreplaceable.

 

Pete

That is correct; many of the fine models Gary Schrader completely reworks including Kohs are complete upgrades to full ball bearing drives with a variety of motors including Faulhaber and electronic/sound systems at the clients request.

I do have one for sale if anyone is interested.

That $7500 Kohs Hudson must be gold plated

This one is mine:



Personally I'm not a big NYC fan; these are fine models but I'm a Grande guy. If you are interested drop my a note. PS: I'm not asking anywhere near $7500.

I love big steam!

Okay, I'll admit those are some of the most beautiful model locomotives I've ever seen.  But not having run one, I don't see the qualms at putting Legacy in it as Legacy is the best command system that I have used, but I have not used all command systems yet.

Hey Sinclair,

I really like MTH Protosound almost as much as ESU Loksound. And Legacy is a pretty close 2nd. So I agree I would never hesitate to upgrade a Kohs with a Dallee system any day. It's nice but compared to what ESU has out these days. Wow night and day.
Opinion

JR Junction,

I would have faith in your installs. Looking at your work I can't imagine why you couldn't handle a brass model. Brass is soft and fussy and stretches but for the most part these models are designed to be worked on.

Gary Schrader is expensive and the most thorough in the business in my opinion and I trust him with my finest equipment. I've sent him $10,000 Sofue's and got back masterpieces. Yeah from a Sofue!

And one of the fellas mentioned. It's the client model if they want to convert or upgrade to a state of art DCC system; too each his own.

You can do it JR!

Opinion.

I have not seen the inside of the boiler, and the Koh's website provides some info, but insufficient to make a call.

 

Your going to have to open both engines and see.

 

Making Legacy work in 2R is not an issue.

Motor drive versus Legacy motor in donor engine could be an issue.  Legacy requires tach motor, what is on Koh?  Some wiring shows 2 motors?  Are these vertical drive?

Whistle smoke will be volume and machining.

 

You can't rally just put legacy in the tender.  You might run out of harness room, plus you looking at an IR tether from the donor engine.  Plus sound and legacy and motor driver may not all fit in tender.

 

To do a Legacy install with the modern single Legacy board you going to have to make it fit in the engine.  I have done the older Legacy modular board upgrades, but that is much different and smaller package than the current Legacy.

 

I would open both, and not cut or change until I worked through and see if it could fit.

 

This is where PS-32 really would work better.  Single composite board, AC/DC, DCS/DCC.  But he want's Legacy.  G

I don't think there are any insurmountable issues involved, probably the tricky areas are...

 

• Tach encoder moved to new motor/flywheel.
• Antenna positioning and function as the handrails need to be insulated.  Failing that, you need to figure out some external component to insulate for the antenna.
• Wireless tether components on new drawbar.

 

Obviously, since there are no wiring diagrams, you'd want to do some mapping of what you are removing to have all the connections/wiring figured out for the new install.

 

If I were considering this, I'd do a little research to see if I could deal with the above issues first, I think the rest would be fairly straightforward.

John, Not sure if you realize it but you have met a guy who has done over 20 installs of Legacy in TMCC and MTH engines. He does not use donor engines but uses still available parts from Lionel including motor sensors. Like the rest of us he can't get Legacy Railsounds but uses RS4 or RS5 boards if he can find them.

The antenna would be tough but if this guy would consider a repaint then its less of an issue as the boiler could be stripped, handrails modified and then repainted.

Personally I have considered a Legacy install just to see whats involved but in the end ERR cruise is good enough for me and sounds are even less important.

I am still curious that if someone did complete an install what the engine would be able to pull if weight had to be removed to get the required components inside the engine.

 

Pete

Pete, the question was asked, and I offered my answer, nothing more.

 

Legacy is not some miracle system.  Other then the Diesel Lion Drive system, which I consider more a mechanical improvement then a specific Legacy issue, it is no different then adding any system.  Just the constraints of the specific system being applied to the engine.

 

By the way Lionel has a Legacy Back EMF driver too, but it is off the market now.  I did one of those conversions and then it was removed from the parts list  G

The back-EMF Legacy motor driver would remove one significant complication from the upgrade, no doubt about it.

 

Truthfully, while I do so love the Legacy sound quality, I am happy to stick with the ERR Cruise Commander, the new RailSounds Commander, and a Super-Chuffer to do steam upgrades.  You get a lot of the Legacy features, and minimal complications.

 

If the Cruise Commander is installed in the locomotive, you can use the Minitronics 4-pin tether to the tender for the sound board, it's very small and looks as good as the IR components.

If it were me I would just put a PS2 or PS3 kit in it an eliminate the antenna issue plus having to pull the flywheel on the existing motor. That would give you about 95% the performance of Legacy, sound being the only compromise.

 

Pete

After seeing the perfect install you and your team did on putting TMCC in my PA-1, I'm sure that it will be a work of art.

 

Keep us in the loop on the install.

I think Lionel is missing the boat buy not selling Legacy upgrade kits for it's  tmcc engines. MTH sells upgrade kits. Why not Lionel? Think of the market share they are losing.  Just my 2 cents worth.

The ERR kits are Lionel's "upgrade" kits.  And many say they are almost as good as Legacy, speed wise.  It's only the sounds that they fail on, IMHO.  If they offered the boards sans sound chip, and made the different sound chips available, that would be awesome.  Or even better, when you order the boards, tell them what sound you want and they put the chip in, like MTH does for PS-1 chips.  Lionel has a whole library of different sound sets from all the older TMCC trains they no longer make.

If I could get better and more varied sounds, I'd be a happy camper.  I'm very happy with the cruise performance of the ERR stuff, and I have the enhanced smoke performance covered as well.

 

Since the new RS Commander is loaded from a PIC debug station, all I need are the program files for the board, I got the rest covered.

 

I won't hold my breath for a major breakthrough here.  Note that ERR did recently release a steam turbine sound set, just in time for my 3rd Rail S2 Turbine upgrade.