I recently purchased a Bachmann Dash 8-40CW HO Scale which is DCC equiped. This particular loco is considerably slower than my other locos consisting of Athearns and Atlas units. I suspect that this unit is needing more volts to get it rolling faster and match the speed of my other units. Now it is not a huge speed disparidy between this loco and my others but I want to get them closer.
Is there anything I can do to speed this unit up. Now I should mention that I am running a DC system so slowing the others down is not an option. Could I possibly disconnect the or take out the DCC decoder so the unit would not need as many volts and therefore run a little quicker?
I do have another Bachmann loco that is not DCC that is in line speed wise with the rest of my fleet. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Will
willjaynaIs there anything I can do to speed this unit up.
Change your track elevation to 75% and push it downhill.
Actually other than regearing or possibly changing the motor out to a NWSL, I'm not sure there is much you can do. That would be expensive and time consuming. I think the easy thing to do would be to purchase a quality engine like Atlas, or Athearn Genesis and be done with it, assuming they make that model.
In HO scale, of course...
Will,
I am guessing those Athearns and Atlas locos of yours are not DCC equipped?
If so, probably the easiest way to match the Bachmann to them would be to remove the decoder from it and hardwire it - Sort of the opposite of converting a loco to DCC.
I have never done such a "reverse conversion", nor am I familiar with Bachmann locos, so I have no idea how difficult that would be.
HTH, Steve
The new 8-40CWs have a slower speed motor combined with fairly high speed gearing (so it goes about 70 scale MPH). If you really want it to go faster, all you need to do is switch the motor for a faster one. Bachmann's faster motor is completely identicle in size to the one in your DASH 8 (the only outward difference is the color of the plastic. Slower ones have gray, and faster ones have black), and can be found in any of their current Standard line diesels and some of their Spectrum diesels. You can probably get one of their Standard line diesels for half the price of a Mashima or NWSL motor.
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