Upgrade Completed

From this angle, you can see the tender marker lights
and the firebox glowing in the cab.

As I wrote in a previous blog entry a couple of days ago, my O scale MTH Hudson steam locomotive arrived back from the shop. I had sent it in about a month ago to have some major upgrades installed so I was pretty excited to get it back... especially to have received it in the days right after our annual train show excursion!

I had the ProtoSound electronics upgraded from version 1.0 to version 3.0. This upgrade is a significant sound upgrade as well as a very significant control upgrade. Slow speed control is outstanding now... slow and steady... chuffing smoke... the sound is great and it runs silky smooth. 

This upgrade also included the ability to control the rear coupler with my controller. And, naturally, this useful feature includes an uncoupling sound as it uncouples.  

While it was in the shop, I had marker lights added on the front of the locomotive and the rear of the tender. Also, I had a backup headlight installed on the rear of the tender which lights up whenever I put the engine in reverse.  

The cab is now illuminated, the firebox glows, and there is an engineer and fireman seated in my cab. At some point, I'd like to detail this cab with some paint to highlight some of the difficult to see details. I'd also like to weather the locomotive a bit.  

I shot some video of this newly upgraded locomotive last night and included it below. I had two of four New York Central passenger cars sitting out on the mantle so I put those on the tracks as well...  they look nice too!




First thing yesterday morning, I set up a nice sized oval of track in the living room so I could test run this locomotive. I had recently purchased some new Lionel Fastrack so I could have sweeping curves with easements (rather than the toy-like sudden sharp curves typical of sectional track)... and a new terminal track... so I was excited to give this new track a whirl too.  

I assembled it all... my spine was screaming again... I plugged in the MTH Commander power controller...  nothing... no lights... no sounds... my locomotive just sat there, dead on the tracks...

I went looking for my electronics meter... my spine was screaming again... I found the meter... tested the voltage between the rails... "hmmm... that is good..." 

Since this is a new electronic circuit board in this locomotive, I decided to switch the power leads to the opposite connectors on the controller to change the polarity...  "hmmm... still nothing..."

I was then wondering whether my controller was working properly so I disconnected the controller and power supply and brought it over to Lukey's HO scale train set...  removed his Amtrak cars and put my MTH F3 diesel locomotive on the tracks... plugged the controller in... hit the "Startup" button... my F3 locomotive instantly came to life...  "hmmm... the controller seems fine..."

At this point I was wondering if maybe I needed to upgrade my MTH controller. I've been using MTH's "HO Controller" rather than their more expensive "Remote Controller" so I got to thinking this could be the issue...  newer electronics were just installed so maybe it needs the feature-packed remote controller which is significantly more expensive? 

At this point, I was feeling a bit defeated and disappointed so I needed to write to the shop and explain my problem so I could run my upgraded locomotive.

I got a quick reply informing me, unfortunately, that Beta testing had shown that my particular controller didn't work as well as planned but the better Remote Commander (the far more expensive one) did work perfectly.  "Figures."

In his email, he did offer one more thing to try and it was something I, myself, was wondering about before he even mentioned it. Although the voltage to the tracks was correct, perhaps the current (amperage) wasn't high enough for this big O scale locomotive? 

He thought the same was possible so he recommended trying a 20 gauge stranded wire for the power leads to the track. This new Fastrack terminal track that I was using for the first time came with 24 gauge solid wire leads (thin junk commonly referred to as 'bell wire'). 

Since I was already wondering if this might be the source of my problems, I decided to change the leads. Fortunately, I was previously using 18 gauge stranded wire for power leads so it was easy to try better power leads... I swapped them out...

I hit the "Startup" button... my newly upgraded locomotive sprang to life!  The engine roared to life... I hit the "Lights" button... all my new lights instantly turned on... I hit the "Smoke" button... my locomotive slowly started to billow out smoke... I slowly pushed the throttle forward and my locomotive slowly started to inch forward... "Wow... niiiice..." 

All the sounds are amazing and the locomotive runs beautifully!