I have two old brass locos. A Hallmark EMD E1a&b and a Daiyoung S2. The S2 I bought in the late 80's. The E1 I'm not sure, maybe early 80's. And who knows who how long they were sitting in the hobby shop before I bought them.
Neither of these ran very well on DC. Since I'm on DCC now, are the motors in these older bass locos compatible with DCC? I'm thinking I might be better off selling them to a brass collector.
For starters, if they don't run very well on DC, they are going to work equally as poor if not worse on DCC. DCC is much more sensitive to poor pick up than DC.
Check the wheel pick ups first. A lot of the lesser quality brass diesels from the earlier years only have four wheel pick up ... two wheels on the right of one truck and two wheels on the left of the other truck. This basically equates to the pick up qualities of a 0-4-0.
If the running quality is strictly due to the poor pick up ability, a stay alive module would help huge in keeping the engine running.
If it's a bad motor / drive / gears, adding DCC is not a magical fix. You need to get the engine performing well on DC first.
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
Measure the current at 12 vdc. Lock the armature. Good chance over one amp. Most decoders are one amp max.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
If it is the motor and not the drive train/whatever, a good can motor is only in the $25 range. Also, remember the motor must be insulated from the frame, and in a lot of older models they aren't.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
Unless you are into re-motoring and rebuilding and all that goes with installing decoders in non DCC friendly locos, I would suggest you put them in a display case or sell them on Ebay. And of course the kicker is that the locos don't run well in DC, and as mentioned, running in DCC is definitely more demanding (of good connections, etc., etc.).
When I converted to DCC 8 years ago, I had over 50 motored units. At the advice of folks on this forum, I divided them into categories..........
- Those already with decoders, or those with DCC plugs installed.
- Those with isolated frames that allow relatively easy hard wiring of decoders (i.e. Stewart F units, etc.)
- Those with non isolated frames or with space restrictions, etc. that would make conversions rather difficult.
I ended up keeping all in the first group, wiring up all in the second, and I sold off all in the third group. In hindsight I probably should have kept a few and put them aside until my skillsets improved where I could have converted them.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central