This morning I decided to convert my Silver Flash Alco PA to TMCC.

I selected the Electric Rail Road Cruise Commander for the task.

I was surprised to discover that the circuit board for the E-unit in the Silver Flash is the same part number as the one in my NYC PA. (Given that there is almost 10 years difference in when they were introduced.) I didn't take a picture of the installed e-unit prior to removal as this overall view is essentially what you would see on this view of my NYCPA

In fact the only difference I could see between the two from a chassis perspective is:

• The wire color on the headlight is red/blk on the NYC, and red/wht on the Silver Flash.
• The wire routing is different to the headlight (the NYC has an extra hole in the chassis and a grommet)
• The location of the truck grounding lug (which is connected to the pickup shoe on each truck) was different.
• There is an additional wire management hook on the back of the motors on the Silver Flash that was not on the NYC mainly due to a slightly different motor and differences in  the motor power lugs.

Overall view after removing e-unit and untangling the wiriing: I created a new schematic for the e-unit, which can be seen here.

Wire routing on the front of the chassis:

Wire routing on the rear of chassis:

I mounted the Cruise Commander to the same chassis mounting hole used by the Lionel e-unit for heat-sink/mounting, and installed the program/run switch in the same location as the reverse lock switch for the original installation. I debated installing an LED in place of the original headlamp, but decided to stick with the stock unit until the light burns out, and I use up my stock of lamps.

You will note the suppression capacitors across the drive motors in the NYC PA installation, but the Cruse Commander instructions indicate these are unnecessary with the Cruise Commander. This speeds the installation as there is no need to pull the trucks to allow access to the motor lugs.

I didn't like the operation of the Cruise Commander in this locomotive. I am not sure why this unit has issues, but the motor drive was not smooth and made crackling noises when trying to creep at slow speeds. Click Here to see a YouTube video of it in operation.

I pulled the Cruise commander out and installed Carl Tuveson's mini driver board, as was done on my NYC PA. I didn't see the need to show any more pictures as the installation looks just the same. (click on the NYC PA link) if you have not seen this.

This video shows the operation with the MDB I got from Carl.