No, they even have a name for it - Basic Consisting. My 3 locos I always run together at the club are set this way. You just have to watch what functions you assign things, if the lights in the baggage car are controlled by F0, then the loco headlight will go on and off when you turn off the baggage car lights.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I have been running my consist for years like that. I have two consists that have 5 engines each. It runs just fine. I did do a lot of speed matching though. And I don't split the consist. Like 3 engines in the front and 2 in the middle of the train. The split consist doesn't do well on grades as it bunches and stretches the train causing derailments.
My engines are rather simple, EMD F units. I changed CV29 on one of the 'A' units to make the normal forward direction the reverse of the other 'A' unit. That way one of the 'A' units can bring up the rear facing the opposite direction of the lead 'A' unit. That also makes the headlights work correctly in both 'A' units.
It'll work, the only problem is that you'll get horns, bells and lights in all units at the same time.
We do this with some consists at our club and I don't like it much -- it gets very frustrating for the yard guy (me) trying to program a consist and not knowing whether a unit has its own number or shares one with others.
Autonerd It'll work, the only problem is that you'll get horns, bells and lights in all units at the same time.
Yeah, have to see if they have function remapping. Don't think MRC decoders do though. If a short address is ok, you could use a CV19 consist, then CV21 and 22 control what finctions are active on each loco. On my set, only the one loco has sound, so I didn;t have to worry about that. I just configured the headlight on the front unit to be on in forward, off in reverse, the headlight of the rear unit (the front of it faces the train, so at the end of the run, there's nothing to turn, like the real thing, the crew can just set the brake MU settings and walk to the other end of the consist and drive off) on in reverse, off in forward, and the rear light on both end units plus both headlights of the middle unit to just never be on.
Mel