Track Power Controllers

["Ira Schneider" <ira_schneider@iname.com>]

Hi Ed,

You are somewhat in error.

The Lionel PowerMaster, which was superceeded by the Track Power Controller,
receives its commands directly over the air from the CAB-1 controller.  It does not
use the serial port.  The controller which is in the siding power box to vary the
voltage for track 5 (i.e. the auxiliary siding power) is a PowerMaster.

The Track Power Controllers (TPCs), either manufactured by IC Controls or by Lionel,
all require the serial port to receive their commands.  The four controllers in the
main power cart are TPCs, two are IC Controls and two are Lionel.  The one which died
was manufactured by Lionel.

One major problem with the PowerMaster is that the CAB-2 (i.e. the handheld for
the Legacy system) cannot communicate directly with the PowerMaster.  On our
layout you cannot control the track 5 power using a CAB-2.

Lionel has a solution for that problem.  It sells a PowerMaster Bridge (which we
purchased), which connects to the Legacy Command Base and transmits commands
to the PowerMaster.  However, in their infinite wisdom, Lionel allows you to connect
either the PowerMaster Bridge or the TMCC Command Base to the Legacy Command Base,
not both.  We have the TMCC Command Base connected to the Legacy Command Base so we can
communicate with TMCC equiped engines using the CAB-2 controller.

Due to Lionel's limitations, we cannot connect our PowerMaster Bridge to the Legacy Command Base
until we replace all of our CAB-1s with CAB-2s.  Since that is not likely to happen in the near future,
we will have to use the CAB-1s to communicate with the PowerMaster for track 5.  Also, we did some
testing of the PowerMaster Bridge at one of the shows.  It didn't seem to be able to control either
our PowerMaster (for the siding power) or Steve's PowerMaster (for the industrial siding power)
reliably.  Since we can't use it right now, we have not done any further testing to determine the
source of the problem.

The limitation of four units connected to the serial port is not normally a problem for our layout.
We have been running four TPCs daisy chained to the Legacy Command Base for over a year.
The problem arose when we tried to connect a fifth TPC (i.e. Steve's loaner TPC to replace
the dead one in our power cart) without removing the dead TPC from the serial port daisy chain.
Once we removed it, the other four TPCs worked correctly.


Ira