SOLVED! Visionline Big Boy not talking

Randy I had the same issue with my Visionline Challenger 6-11210 with everything working but the crew and tower talk so I took it off the track and put it right back on it everything came back. Try this to see if it works. Good luck Gary

I would just first confirm that sounds so come out of the tender. Manually turn the volume pot on the locomotive all the way down and then blow the whistle. Do you still hear that and chuffing from the tender or was everything you heard coming from the locomotive?

@Gary Marsh posted:

Randy I had the same issue with my Visionline Challenger 6-11210 with everything working but the crew and tower talk so I took it off the track and put it right back on it everything came back. Try this to see if it works. Good luck Gary

Thanks for the tip, Gary, I tried it but no dice.  I also re-programmed the CAB-2 with the original orange module, and also confirmed that the volume control pot on the top of the loco itself was all the way up and of course the prog/run switch was back in the run position.

Randy

@zhubl posted:

I would just first confirm that sounds so come out of the tender. Manually turn the volume pot on the locomotive all the way down and then blow the whistle. Do you still hear that and chuffing from the tender or was everything you heard coming from the locomotive?

Zachariah, great suggestion!  I haven't had the tender on the tracks since forever -- I just run the loco occasionally without it, so I put the tender on the track not expecting much.  BUT THE SPEECH WORKS FINE COMING OUT OF THE TENDER!  All of the other sounds come out of both the loco *and* the tender.  This seems like great news in that if the board is producing speech for the tender it's probably not a blown board, correct?

But what would cause all audio EXCEPT speech to come out of the loco, yet all audio INCLUDING speech come out of the tender?

Please don't tell me that speech only ever did come out of the tender on the Big Boy because that would mean I'm losing my mind ;-)

Thanks!

Randy

I like simple fixes 😉

Crew talk is only in the rear sound board so it only come out of the tender. Now I noticed on the 2019 run of challengers they changed this and moved the crew talk to the front sound boards. I can’t remember now if the most recent legacy big boy was that way or not

@zhubl posted:

I like simple fixes 😉

Crew talk is only in the rear sound board so it only come out of the tender. Now I noticed on the 2019 run of challengers they changed this and moved the crew talk to the front sound boards. I can’t remember now if the most recent legacy big boy was that way or not

Oh my gosh I can't believe I never noticed that.  THANK YOU SO MUCH, Zachariah, for figuring this out for me!!!!

Randy

@Randy P. posted:

I haven't had the tender on the tracks since forever -- I just run the loco occasionally without it, so I put the tender on the track not expecting much.  BUT THE SPEECH WORKS FINE COMING OUT OF THE TENDER!

Just curious, why run just the locomotive without the tender?  You can't pull anything with it, so it's just a bare locomotive running around.

FWIW, it's normal for only one sound board to output the crew talk and tower comm.  If both did it, you'd have a very annoying echo.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Just curious, why run just the locomotive without the tender?  You can't pull anything with it, so it's just a bare locomotive running around.

FWIW, it's normal for only one sound board to output the crew talk and tower comm.  If both did it, you'd have a very annoying echo.

No good reason John. The layout is under construction and I use different locomotives for testing. I should leave the tender connected.

@Robert Cushman posted:

Randy,

know anyone selling a big boy?

Sorry, no.