Has anyone used MTH steam loco with wireless drawbar?
Are these any good or can I expect connectivity/communication issues, especially on curves on grades?
I've never heard of that, had to look it up. The only info and forum chat I found about it was for the "O" gauge, and that was simply doing a search for MTH wireless drawbar.
Is that what you have, O gauge?
Mike.
My You Tube
This is regarding HO
I have one MTH locomotive, the Empire State Express Hudson. It has a two conductor drawbar and has not given me any troubles.
I thought about replacing the DCS decoder with a DCC one but couldn't figure out how MTH gets motor, headlight and rail pickup through only two conductors. They may use a "split" decoder with the sound portion in the tender and the motor control portion in the locomotive.
I believe some MTH locomotives use even more conductors through the drawbar such as these:
https://mthtrains.com/protosound-wireless-drawbar
My Hudson has two bronze cat-whiskers on the inner left and right of the pin-hole which contact a two-sided sleeve over the locomotive pin.
Good Luck, Ed
Some of the draw bars are trouble some and some aren't, the original ones were junk, the two wire ones were pretty good, H10's, J Class, K4 latest, Allegheny needs upgraded draw bar, Yellowstone, cab forward latest all have issues with the draw bars that MTH knows about but refuses to fix and they are all considered a wireless draw bar by MTH.
As to the other poster changing to a DCC decoder would require you to put the decoder in the boiler as the two wire draw bar is a ground wire "purple" and a power/signal wire "blue" that allows the boiler decoder to receive signals from the tender decoder. For example the tender tells the boiler turn off the lights by sending a signal to the boiler and then the boiler turns it on or off. Otherwise you would have to increase the number of wires between the two or find a DCC decoder that has a boiler and tender portion that uses two wires.
Trains213As to the other poster changing to a DCC decoder would require you to put the decoder in the boiler as the two wire draw bar is a ground wire "purple" and a power/signal wire "blue" that allows the boiler decoder to receive signals from the tender decoder.
Thank you for that information. I had a suspicion MTH was using something other than plain circuitry between the tender and engine.
For the time being, I'll keep the "Proto-Sound" decoder in there. It works and sounds OK.
Thanks again.
Empire_5426PSM1 by Edmund, on Flickr
Cheers, Ed