York TCA Legacy Users Group Mtg Results

The Legacy Users Group met for breakfast and discussion for a couple of hours this morning. It was well attended. About 40 to 50 persons.

Mike Reagan, Lionel Customer Service Manager represented Lionel. You may recall that he was the founder of Train America Studios and the design leader for their TMCC EOB products that 3rd Rail, AtlasO and others use in their current TMCC engines.

An upgraded version of Legacy, v1.3 has been thru beta testing and is scheduled to come out "very soon" read within 6 months, maybe sooner. Assuming the Club's Legacy system is registered with Lionel we'll receive a new set of "blue modules" to do the upgrade.

There will be quite a few new features. We can discuss these at get club togethers and of course we'll be learning them by using them.

The "Big Kahuna" improvement is that Mike Reagan stated that the range has been "significantly" improved and that we won't see the Radio Link Warning Lighlinking as often.

In response to my question he acknowledged that the RLW Light does not mean "out of range" but rather "corrupted packet" and that the next packet may be good and so even though the light blinks Legacy still works -- up to a point.

The other highlight is that Mike recommended to the whole group to switch to non-rechargeable lithium ion or alkaline batteries. Our Club Legacy Chargers are both working fine. So, we have the option. Lots of guys at the meeting are switching though. I thought this was a cop out on Lionel's part but when I tried to object, it became apparent that nobody really wanted to hold Lionel's feet to the fire on this. Everyone wanted to "make nice" in the hope of keeping the goodwill flowing in both directions. After all Mike brought a Legacy engine and four cars to raffle off the the guys. Works for me. (Not really, but, I'm trying :-) )

I look forward to installing the v1.3 software, learning it and then introducing the new features to the Club. I think many of you will like them.

Bottom line for me on the DCS versus Legacy rivalry is that the free enterprise system is working to our benefit. Lionel and MTH are going head to head to outdo each other and we out here under the fig trees are the winners.