Here is the AF Berkshire. It comes with Lionel's
Flyer Chief remote control system. It is an entry level remote with only a
few options and can only run one the loco it comes with. Also you can't change
it's ID number incase you need to run more than one loco of the same
type.
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The loco is a good looking model but to keep
costs down Lionel cut some corners like using cast in handrails, cast in front
coupler and many details left out like no crew figures and no backup
light. |
When removing the 4 shell screws be careful not to loose the 4 sets of
insulating washer.
These are used to isolate the loco shell from the frame and are very
important to keep in use. I squeeze the top flat washers a bit
to distort them so they will stay on the screws.
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Here is where the backup light LED goes. It was used on the Polar
Express Berk but the PE loco has no coil coupler. This was a
limitation due to the 4 conductors in the drawbar connector. |
Here the electronics are removed and the mount for
the original electronics board will be removed also. |
This is the new mounting bracket for the ERR
Cruise Lite board. |
Here the Cruise Lite boards are in place with
double sided tape. I changed the motor since I wanted to keep the original
tach motor for spare parts. It does not need to be changed though for the
conversion. You just don't use the tach.
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The chuff signal was generated by the tach
flywheel in the original system and there is no place in the loco for a chuff switch
which is needed for the ERR
system.
It so happens the tender wheels are almost exactly one half the diameter
of the drivers so a two magnet switch will generate the desired four
chuffs per driver revolution.
I also added wiring to the tender trucks to supply power for the tender electronics. It is
connected to the side frames with their mounting screws.
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Here is the mounting bracket for the ERR
railsound board. I also added a space for the 9 volt battery if you use
one. |
I came up with a circuit to multiplex the rear
coupler and backup light onto one wire in the drawbar. This is the tender
loco portion of the rear coupler and backup light combiner. I
designed this to eliminate the need for a loco to tender tether. It only
uses the 4 drawbar conductors. See the wiring diagram for details.
Note: I add a 1uf NP cap to the loco coupler multiplexer to improve
reliability on 10/17/18.
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This is the loco portion of the rear coupler and
backup light combiner, |
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Preliminary testing of the systems. I also
added a Puffer board that takes the chuff magnet signal and makes pulses
for the Smoke motor |
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Here is the wiring diagram.
Note the smoke element has been changed to 30 ohms to use the smoke out of
the R4LC board
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