Just wondering if anyone knows what it means when Athearn says one of their locos is has a DCC ready wiring harness installed? Thanks
Most of the newer Athearn locos come with a board that has a nine pin JST plug on the end. Any decoder with the 9 pin JST will plug into it when the jumper is removed.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
I guess I should have mentioned that I have a AC4400 that came equipped with the quick plug feature but Im looking into purchasing some SD50's and SD40T-2 DRGW locos and it says they are equipped with the DCC wiring harness, so what would be the difference? Thanks for everybody's help!!!!!!!
As far as I know, all the Athearns that are "quick plug" or "DCC wiring harness" come with the JST plug.
They may be worded differently depending on whether they also have the NMRA 8-pin medium plug, but that's just a guess on my part.
The best thing to do is open it up, see if it has the JST or the NMRA 8-pin medium plug, or both, and select your decoder accordingly.
The SD50s and tunnel motors have the same style of harness. However, on the DRGW engines, the extra nose lights are hooked up to the front headlight.
To get them to work properly, extra work is required. The way I recommend is to get a TCS A6X decoder. This one has outputs for 1.5 volt bulbs. Take out the Athearn board, double-side tape this one in its place, and hook up the wires to the appropriate terminals. This will require soldering, but it is easy, and the pads are decent size. The nose Gyralights would get put onto a different function, and then with a little programming they can work like they should.
Mike WSOR engineer | HO scale since 1988 | Visit our club www.WCGandyDancers.com