Is it possible to take a ps2 board from a starter set engine (like a 2-8-0) and put it into a Lionel Northern with the not so mighty sounds of steam? Do i need the conversion kit from MTH or is everything i need in the 2-8-0 already?
Any help would be great.
Thanks,
Eric

Eric

What motor do you have in your Lionel. I have a Yellow belly That had the old AC pullmor motor in it. I had to change the motor and the tether to get it to work. I had Timco Trains do the motor for me. I had installed the ps-2 kit before I shipped it to him.

Man what a difference. The engine pulls so much better with the dc motor in it. Frank did a great job on it.

If it is a standard DC motor you can but I have forgotten if the smoke unit will adapt. The Yellow belly had little to no smoke so I changed it to a MTH unit. Lights and LED's expect to change them which are in the kit.

Jamie

Eric,

If you have a DC motor as Jamie suggested, you can use the components from the RTR 2-8-0 and save the expense of buying the conversion kit.

Eric Hofberg

No it does have the Pullmor motor in it. How much was it to have the new DC motor put in your yellow belly? It would probably be worth it. Its a nice scale sized Erie & Lackawana 4-8-4

Eric:

With the 2-8-0 you get an entire engine, including the motor, etc. I wonder if you could reuse the can motor in the 2-8-0?

The MTH 2-8-0 does NOT have a tailight or rear marker lights. The headlight does not appear to be controlled by the PS-2 headlight switch. You may also need a "choke" if you have constant voltage lights.

The 2-8-0 does have the pulsing MTH smoke unit that is NOT included in the upgrade kit. This is an advantage of upgrading from a 2-8-0. Trainz seems to have a ton of these on ebay right now.

YB

quote:

Trainz seems to have a ton of these on ebay right now.

I know i was thinking about buying a few if i can get them cheap and put them on display and use the boards in my other engines.

Does anyone know if it is easy to upgrade a loco sound engine. I have a blue comet i got before i got into command control and i would like to put ps2 in it.

Eric

I believe the motor was around 50.00. Frank built a special adapter to allow you to just drop the new motor into the old mount. Trying to adapt the old mount can be a real pain and Frank took that out of the equation. Money very well spent.

I have been hearing about people buying the RailKing unit and stealing the boards out of them. I would agree but you may come up short on some of the lights as noted above. They take the old unit and put it in the Railking and sell it as conventional at a swap meet.

Jamie

Not sure the tailight and markers (if you even want them) are that big a deal. The smoke unit is a definite plus, and it is nice to do a heart transplant from an assembled locomotive, so you can see where everything goes.

Don't know what you call a Lionel locomotive with a MTH control system, but if you can't get a purple/orange argument going with that, you are hanging out with the wrong crowd!

The lights are not that big of a deal for me. Would it be easier to do if you were putting the board in a MTH ps1 engine or maybe one of the old Weaver or Williams when they had no sound?

quote:

Would it be easier to do if you were putting the board in a MTH ps1 engine

Yes, If this is your first attempt go for a PS-1 engine, The boards were designed for PS-1 engines,There's a lot of stuff to hook up,

Maybe not. You basically have to "gut" all the old PS-1 stuff out of the engine, including lights, boards, couplers. What's left at that stage isn't much different for a Williams or Weaver or MTH. They are all pretty much the same. One of the other forum members suggested starting with a "cab" diesel that has a lot of room inside, good advice, I think!

YB