LGB 4267S Lake George & Boulder Box Car w Sound issue

[Troy1316]

Hello there, First time using the forum.

 

I have a LGB sound car that I just purchased that I hooked up to my old LGB 2119D Locomotive (ochre lake george and boulder).  

  It sounds like a machine gun, or I should say like the sound is being played back at high speed.  I have a brand new MRC controller, throttle pack 9900, including a new circuit board on the Mogul.  Im thinking I might have to install pickups under the boxcar to power it seperatly from the mogul.

 

I notcied a youtube video of the same boxcar with comments stating that other owners seem to have this same issue, however I cant seem to find a solution anywhere. 

Thank you!

[Swiss-Colorado-Lines]

Hi Troy,

when you say it " sounds like a machine gun", do you mean the chuffs are very rapid? These simple sound units work off of track voltage. I would suggest to try it with another transformer, preferably an old school analog unit.If it performs normally, my theory is the 9900 transformer is putting out a " pulse" output, which has pulses at full voltage. Occasionally, some things don't always play well together....

The other thing that comes to mind: some of these sound systems will have an adjustment pot on the circuit board that can be adjusted up or down to adjust the rate of chuff. Might be worth looking at .

Hope this helps.

Paul

[PVT Kanaka]

I picked up one of those sound cars overseas while traveling for business.  Mine has an option to use a 9 volt battery to power it.  Have you pried the roof off to see if yours has the same? It might solve the problem.

 

Eric

[Troy1316]

Hello,

Thanks for the replies.  Yes, the chuffs are very rapid.  I have an old MRC transformer/controller and I tried using that as well, I still have the rapid chuffs.

Sorry for my ignorance, what is an adustment pot, and what would I be looking for?  To my knowledge there is only the volume control.

 

Thanks!

[Troy1316]

I have connected a 9 volt to it with and without hooking it up to the locomotive tender power outputs, and still the same extremely rapid chuffing.

 

 

[Swiss-Colorado-Lines]

Hi Troy,

  an adjustment "pot" is a potentiometer( hope I spelled it correctly). It is an adjustment switch, which may look like a wheel, or a small circular device on the circuit board that you can use a small screwdriver to turn to adjust.

 Some background: these simple sound systems use track voltage to vary the chuff speed. As the track voltage increases, the train runs faster. The increase in voltage will cause the chuff rate to increase also, but you may have to adjust the " pot" to match the chuff to the train speed. The ones I had previously had 2 " pots" on the circuit board, one for volume, one for chuff rate. They had a 9 volt battery to power the speaker, and I used conductive wheel sets connected to the circuit board to vary the chuff.

 Try this: take the leads that you had previously connected to the mogul's tender and connect directly to the transformer variable output. What you are looking for is as you vary the voltage up and down, does the chuff speed up and slow down? If it does, it is working correctly. If this is the case, you will want to connect these leads to connective wheel sets so they will pick up directly from track voltage to modulate the chuff rate as the track voltage goes up or down.

 Hope that makes sense. Give it a try and let us know.

Paul

[PVT Kanaka]

Troy,

May I suggest you take a picture of the "guts" of your sound card?  Then Paul could snip the image, circle the pots, and repost the picture.  

 

Pictures are a bit tricky on this web software, with some cloudservers working better than others.  You may be able to exchange the photos via the "Messages" function of this site.

 

Eric

[Greg Elmassian]

Try powering the loco on "pure" DC, like from a 12v gel cell battery.

The MRC is probably using PWM which old circuitry may interpret as full steam ahead.

 

Greg