Purchased a lionel CW 80 watt.My mth K4 won't run right.
The bell stay's on or whistle stay's on.Can't activate station sound's.
Is there any help out there? (i did reverse wire's)
Compatibility might be a secondary issue at this point.
Based on your description, it seem your CW might have one of the buttons, whistle or bell, stuck.
Do they both "click" like the direction button when you press them? If not, you have a defective CW. When you can verify that this is or is not the problem, then you can move on to compatability issues.
Rob
Spongebob,
If you just put a small amount of power to the track does the horn or bell continously blow. On my "pre-fix" old ZW's I can run MTH PS2.0 engines but only if I run them slow. Above a certain voltage it triggers the horn continously. I don't think your button is stuck. My K-line trasformer also blows my MTH horn continously.
Jim H
My William's F7 runs fine Trueblast horn & Bell work great.So i know button's function are good.
Tks
jimhaleyscomet wrote: Spongebob,If you just put a small amount of power to the track does the horn or bell continously blow. On my "pre-fix" old ZW's I can run MTH PS2.0 engines but only if I run them slow. Above a certain voltage it triggers the horn continously. I don't think your button is stuck. My K-line trasformer also blows my MTH horn continously. Jim H
Is the K-4 a PS-1 or PS-2 locomotive. If it's a PS-1, it may not be able to run with modified sine wave transformers like the CW-80. When QSI designed their original sound/control boards, they were based on PW variable tap transformers that put put near pure sine waves, not modern electronic units with modified wave forms that allow other "tricks" . The modern "transfomer" units use modified output waveforms that interferes with the trigger circuits for electronic whistle/horn/bell "relays". When QSI found out about the issues they began to modify their boards. MTH chose to have the sound system cut out on later model PS-1 boards when they detected a modified wave form. Other later generation QSI products have no problems with the modern power supplies (circuits were modified to accomodate non sine wave power).
Re 10 amp limit on the breakers. All "Toy" train amps are limited by the UL/CPSC to a maximum of 10 amps per output channel. If it's over 10 amps it's not considered a toy train transformer. Even the Z-4000 is limited in this fashion. The TPC's can handle 15 and 20 amps but they are not considered "toy" transformers. All of the modern equipment is protected by fast acting breakers. This is done in part to protect the much more delicate electronics found in todays toy trains. The older PW transformers all relied on thermal breakers. These were capable of handling transients in excess of their rated output, aka a consist that might pull 10.2 amps at start up but then operated below this once the train was moving. The newer equipment can't/won't do this.
If you really need 10 amps for a consist, you need a power supply that exceedes 10 amps to run it well/properly. I would try to give myself a 20% cushion. Running at the edge is just begging for trouble.
The assumption that MTH transformers work well with other manufacturers equipment and Lionel's do not is incorrect. There are instances where TMCC locos do not operate properly with the Z4000 and work just fine with the CW-80. In general, each manufacturer's locos operate best with their own transformers because that's what they're tested with. An example of what I'm referring to is the following comment from elsewhere:
spongebob wrote: Purchased a lionel CW 80 watt.My mth K4 won't run right.The bell stay's on or whistle stay's on.Can't activate station sound's.Is there any help out there? (i did reverse wire's)
Yes, there is help spongebob. If this is a locomotive with Proto-Sound 2.0, then I've been in the same boat before. Last year I bought an MTH SW1500 with PS2. It operated fine on one of my older Lionel 80 watts, but when I tried to operate it on my CW-80, the horn would blast continuously and never stop. Apparently, the CW-80 does not run MTH Proto-Sound 2.0 locomotives very well. I think the horn blasting problem can be fixed by putting a lighted car (like a caboose or passenger car or something) on the same track. If that doesn't work, though, I would recommend you use a different transformer. Along with the whistle/horn sound issue, the buttons on the CW-80's are more sensitive to the pushes than other transformers, so there isn't any way you can activate the featurs of the locomotive that you need a whistle/bell button sequence for (like front & rear couplers, station sounds, factory reset, etc.).
Another note -- if you have Lionel's TrainMaster Command Control, and you have it all hooked up to operate both command and non-command engines (with a TPC), then the MTH PS2 locomotives operate fine with the CW-80, as I am doing right now. You can activate the couplers with the coupler buttons on the remote, and you can activate the station sounds by pressing AUX1 and then the buttons on the numerical keypad for "fast horn" and "fast bell".
If you don't have TMCC, then I would suggest you use a different transformer, preferably an MTH kind.
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