Pairing a Bluetooth Engine

With the Cab3 Bluetooth tab, connecting to a Lionel Bluetooth-equipped locomotive is easy! Follow these steps for a one-to-one pairing between the smart-device and the engine, with no command base required.

  1. Place your Lionel Bluetooth-equipped engine on the track and power it up.
    • Hint! LionChief engines will make a chirping sound to indicate they’re ready to pair.
    • Hint! Legacy and LionChief Plus 2.0 engines will not make the chirping sound. Instead, they will play the whistle/horn once to indicate successful connection. Make sure that their Bluetooth ON/OFF switch is in the ON position.
  2. Make sure the smart-device’s Bluetooth feature is enabled and then open the Cab3 APP.
  3.  Tap on “Tap here” or where a connected engine’s road number is displayed. This will open the engine select screen. You can also get to this screen by swiping down from the homescreen.
  4. If available engines do not automatically appear, tap on the search icon and wait a few moments while the APP looks.
  5. Available engines will appear with a road name, road number, and a brief description.
    • Note! Engine images are stored on Lionel’s online engine database. Once the APP sees a certain sku, it will reach out to the Lionel online database to download the image to the smart-device. This may take a few moments depending on connection speed. If the smart-device does not have an internet connection, a generic engine image will be displayed. Once an engine image is downloaded, it will remain on the smart-device until the APP is uninstalled.
  6. The number of available engines will be displayed in the box directly under the engine image. If more than one is present, use the left/right arrows to cycle through them to find the engine you wish to connect to.
  7. Once you see the engine you wish to connect to, tap on the link icon. The APP will connect to the engine. This may take a few seconds.
  8. Once connected, tap the home icon to return to the main screen.