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markoles
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Hi all. Two updates here. Over the weekend, I installed the aristocraft Revolution in an old Kalamazoo 4-4-0 and installed one of their new recievers with sound in an old FA.

FA: I had already wired this locomotive for Revolution, and had recently removed a Phoenix 2k2 board. One of the original Revo recievers was still in place, and I simply removed it, along with the 6-capacitor board. I inserted the new reciever, and hooked up the speaker wire. Now, on this specific FA, I am driving both the A and B units with a single reciever, along with two speakers. I fired up the engine without the B unit first, and the sound was simple and worked as expected. Longer running on the mainlines with both units hooked up and full volume resulted in some choppiness to the sound. WHen I reduced the volume, this seemed to go away, or maybe I couldn't hear it anymore. EIther way, I'm satisfied with the new unit and I like that I no longer need to add an external 6 cap board. There are two caps on the new revo. This is for getting over the minor disruptions between the track and the reciever. The only thing I really would like them to change is the horn. It blows a set number of toots, 5, and I'd rather be able to control how long the horn blows. But, that's a minor thing. I kind of like that my son can't hold the button down for lap after lap after lap!!

4-4-0: This was more tricky. I had to disassemble the entire locomotive and motor block. There is a brass contactor bus bar that is used to power the motor directly from the rails. I cut the pieces of the brass that connect to the motor. THen, I drilled holes through the step in the cab for a 4 wire connector to go through. The motor got two wires and the power pick up got two wires. I haven't wired up the headlight yet, but eventually I suppose that I will. It might have been better if I had used some sort of slip on connectors, but I simply soldered the wires to the motor. The power pick ups each were soldered as well. The sound and control went in the tender. I used the non-plug and play board (with screw terminals) that came with the new REVO installed in the FA. I also had to use a PWC to Linear board to make the Sierra sound system work. Because there's not much room in the tender, I used Duct tape to hold everthing in position until I could get the cover back on. I'm using a reed switch for the chuff, and that's located on the lead tender truck.

The 4-4-0's motor (made in USA!) is rated for 12v. Since I run track power (24v), I've limited the maximum on the Revo transmitter to 50. At this setting, the maximum voltage output is 12v, so we should be OK. Might be a little too slow for Luke, but I'll tell him the real 4-4-0s didn't go that fast, anyway.

Modifications to the 4-4-0:

- New lead truck from Hartland.

- Replaced original small plastic tender wheels with bachmann metal wheels.

- Modify the drawbar slightly. It was too high and the rear drivers were barely making contact with the track.

- Because of the reed switch, I ended up putting washers under the bolsters so that the truck can swing freely.

- New spoked drive wheels from HLW.

- New straight stack (coal fired locomotive)

- All new blue and silver paint scheme. My son turns 5 on Friday and he wanted a blue steam engine.

I got it working late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and am now just finalizing the paint details. I will have photos and perhaps videos to post after this weekend. I'm hopeful that he likes it.

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Mark,

Sounds like you did a nice bit of work to the Kalamazoo and now you have a great finished product :) Looking forward to seeing the pics of it as I'm not sure I've ever seen one before. I'm sure your son will love it, I think you said he was 5? Great age I tell you :)

Raymond

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Some updates on this.

1. We gave the engine to Luke last Friday night. Putting it on the tracks, it did not run! Oh, the horror! Turns out when I installed the new wheels, I also had to move the brush pickups. There is a brass tube that needed to be moved. For some reason, when I moved it the first time, I wasn't making contact with the bussbar and that meant the loco wasn't getting power. For the short term, I reinstalled the old solid wheels and move the brushes back, and everything worked. Took 10 minutes, but I got it done and Luke was really excited about his new train!

2. During running tests, I've noticed the Sierra sound board will cut out. Turning off the power does some sort of a re-set and the sound comes back. No idea why. Almost like i have a loose wire, but it happens each time I cut the power. Any ideas?

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Hmmm... On the sierra board if you can't improve the power pickups enough, how about adding a bridge rectifier between the board and the track power pickup and then adding some large capacitors between the bridge and the sierra board. Maybe that would provide enough power to keep the board from resetting?

Raymond

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Here's the set up:

Power coming in goes to the non plug and play board. From there, the motor outputs go to the motor and to the PWC-Linear aristo board. This is a bridge rectifier. The output of that goes to the Sierra board. The only thing I can think that's a possible problem is one of the wires to the PWC-Linear board is not secure enough. But...that doesn't explain why just cycling the power causes the Sierra to reset itself. I have a large, 6 capacitor board that keeps the REVO board powered.

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From your description, it sounds like you're using the Sierra using the Revolution motor outputs into terminals 7 and 8 with a battery back-up going into the little green plug. If that's the case, that's why the board is shutting down. When the train is stopped, there's no power going into pins 7 and 8. The board goes into idle, which times out after a minute or so to avoid draining the battery. Cycling the power will wake the system up, as does giving it a bit of throttle.

For installation with the Revolution, you'll want to take the 24 volts that's powering the Revolution and use that to also power the Sierra via the little green plug or terminals 2 and 4. (They're redundant.) T4 is positive, T2 is negative. This is polarity sensitive, so you'll want to run that through a bridge rectifier. What I can't confirm is whether the Sierra power input there can handle 24 volts, but I can't imagine why it shouldn't. I've always just used 14-volt batteries. The instructions don't even mention you can power the board this way. Don't quote me on this, but the 6-cap board that's plugged into the Revo should provide dirty-track protection for the Sierra as well. Then, you can take the motor output of the Sierra and attach it directly to T7 and T8. As hooked up this way, the Sierra will think the train is always moving, and you won't get Fireman Fred or other idle sounds, nor can you use voltage or direction-activated features like automatic bells, whistles etc. For many, that's okay. If you want to take advantage of those things, you'll need an opto-isolator board between the Revo and the Sierra. (I don't know why you couldn't use the PWC/Linear board to do this, except it's ginormous!) Aristo makes an opto-isolator board, but I prefer to use the ones Tony Walsham makes. They're much smaller. If you don't have anything hooked to T7 or T8, then the Sierra always thinks there's no voltage, and will time out and shut down.

Hope that helps a bit. Give me a call if you've got questions.

Later,

K

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