Atlas F3???

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

I'm getting ready to convert my F3 from ERR/TMCC to BPRC. I would like to be able to reuse the circuit board that houses the electronics for the lights in the nose (headlight, number boards, markers).

Anybody know what the voltage going to this board is? There's 3 wires connecting the board to a 7-pin connector on the ERR Cruise Commander board.

If I can't figure it out I'll replace the light board with a single LED and be done with it.

[chuck]

BPRC? I am guessing that the RC is "Remote Control". What's the BP?

The ERR boards were set up to drive LED lighting direct without the need for pull up resistors.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

BPRC? I am guessing that the RC is "Remote Control". What's the BP?

Battery Power

[chuck]

Battery Power

Thanks! I'm trying to run through possible vendors and all I kept coming up with was British Petroleum

Back to original question. The board was designed to run at constant 18 volts AC. It will be completely functional down to about 10-12volts AC with the couplers and any aux function boards (e.g. smoke unit) first to shut down.

The seven terminals on the board are used to connect ALL of the devices attached except the motor driver. The couplers connect to the two mini molex just above/below that main terminal block. The other pins are for

Antenna, Run/Program, Common, Front/Rear lamps, another Common, and Aux (smoke unit?).

The lamps connectors can safely drive LED's without additional pull up/protection but they can also drive incandescent bulbs with the brightness determined by track voltage. I suspect the three wires you are talking about are front, rear and common. If the engine had additional lighting effects (like a strobe) it might be using the aux port. Pinouts are in the ERR manuals which can be downloaded from the ERR web site. I didn't see any specs. The material on how they work is from my use of the units in my trains. Early mod's used the original lights and I later switched to LED's.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Yep, Battery-Powered, Remote-Control.

Here's the schematic for the electronics:

IMG_0101.JPG (64.73 KiB) Viewed 9165 times

And the guinea pig in question:

IMG_0102.JPG (37.08 KiB) Viewed 9165 times

The Rx is a Deltang unit from RCTrains in the U.K. The battery is a 9.6v, 2000Mah NiMh pack. The BIK-U3 and charging jack are from RCS Australia.

The Tx is also from RCS Australia.

The BIK will fit where the old volume control was on the chassis frame, but the charging jack location is TBD at this point. I may put it where the rear door window is located for easy access and so I won't have to remove the engine from the track to charge it.

I would like to develop a charging system using a coil between the rails and the other coil on the bottom of the engine...kinda like a cordless toothbrush

For this install I'll have to look and see if Seaboards F3s had a rear light, but I don't think they did.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

I would like to leave the Atlas light board in place, just can't figure how to wire it into the Rx.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Here's an inductive charging system from Adafruit, but it's not heavy duty enough for my battery:

IMG_0103.JPG (135.57 KiB) Viewed 9164 times

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Thanks Chuck!

AC, oh well. I was hoping it would have been converted to D.C. By the time it got to the light board.

[chuck]

I'm going to dig around and see if the UCUB manual(s) has any additional info. The TAS board predates the ERR units and I know I had to include pull up resistors for any LED lights on those and you did need to be careful about LED polarity. Since it was "universal" there may be more specs than the ERR units.

Since TMCC was designed to allow PW trains to run in a command environment everything was set up for AC with high voltage and high current. It wasn't until Lionel started switching to can motors that a DC version of the motor driver was released.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Here's the ERR/TMCC boards:

IMG_0104.JPG (1.17 MiB) Viewed 9153 times

And the BPRC system:

IMG_0105.JPG (1.65 MiB) Viewed 9153 times

Side by side photo:

IMG_0106.JPG (1.57 MiB) Viewed 9153 times

On the BPRC photo, you see the bottom of the BIK on/off switch on the right, the battery is in between the motors and the small Rx65b is on top of the battery.

The light board that's in the cab nose plugs into the white 3-pin connector seen at the top right corner of the ERR board.

No sound, no smoke.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

DANG!!! The photos are fine on my Ipad and laptop, but turned 90 degrees counterclockwise on my desktop!!!

[chuck]

Lower board looks like a DC commander with a TMCC receiver board installed "on top". Are there any markings on the bottom of the board near the top of the screen? It looks like an older style RailSounds board?

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Chuck,

The engine was Atlas P/N 1647-1, originally MKT 202, not sure when that was offered. The board on top of the Cruise Commander board (V4.5) has 691-R4LC-B printed on it, not sure what the board to the right is and there's no writing on the side that's up.

I only paid $190 for it Bought off Ebay and found 1 wire had been broken (or is that "borken"???), fixed it and it ran fine.

[chuck]

The top board is the TMCC transceiver. I'll see what I can find on the other board (top/right depending on your screen). Pretty sure it's a sound board.

Yep, it's the newer ERR RailSounds board. The manual for both the cruise commander and the sound board are on the ERR web site. If you install a 9 volt battery on the appropriate connector you may be able to keep the sound board functional but you will have little or no control of the output. The serial data line requires that TMCC be present to control the sounds and/or it expects a DC offset to trigger horn/bell in conventional (which you won't have with a battery as a power supply.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

I think for now I can live without sound, none of the 8 steamers I have converted have sound and I really don't miss it that much. Steam chuff or diesel sounds would be cool, but the rest are fluff for my purposes.

Now if the developer of the Deltang Rx comes out with a decent sound board I may change my mind