Consisting Athearn's And Kato's Together With DCC

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I have been in the hobby for about two years and spend alot of time with my 2 layouts (one is about 10 x 20 and the other circles around a 15x14 room twice)
I have a pretty steep incline that I need several engines consisted together to pull the load up the hill. I have 3 Kato's and one Athearn in this consist (only because I do not yet own 4 Kato's). My problem is that the Athearn seems to be geared much higher That the Kato's. I have tried seveal times to slow it down with my decoder (NCE D15SR) by using CV2, CV5, and CV6 but have had no luck. The engines do run together without ripping each other off the track, but since the Athearn is so much faster, it tends to spin it's wheels on the incline and sometimes around corners. Has anyone had any luck with this kind of situation? Any help would be great.
Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I have been in the hobby for about two years and spend alot of time with my 2 layouts (one is about 10 x 20 and the other circles around a 15x14 room twice)
I have a pretty steep incline that I need several engines consisted together to pull the load up the hill. I have 3 Kato's and one Athearn in this consist (only because I do not yet own 4 Kato's). My problem is that the Athearn seems to be geared much higher That the Kato's. I have tried seveal times to slow it down with my decoder (NCE D15SR) by using CV2, CV5, and CV6 but have had no luck. The engines do run together without ripping each other off the track, but since the Athearn is so much faster, it tends to spin it's wheels on the incline and sometimes around corners. Has anyone had any luck with this kind of situation? Any help would be great.
Thanks

[Anonymous]

I run an Athearns and a Walthers together and they had a simular problem, but it was easily fixed by programming the decoders. I use MRC Prodogy and MRC decoders and I mearly programmed the max speed for the Athearns to aprox. the max of the Wathers. They run fine together with no other programming.

[Anonymous]

I run an Athearns and a Walthers together and they had a simular problem, but it was easily fixed by programming the decoders. I use MRC Prodogy and MRC decoders and I mearly programmed the max speed for the Athearns to aprox. the max of the Wathers. They run fine together with no other programming.

[cacole]

The solution is going to require that you re-program the Athearn decoder's speed curve with one that slows the locomotive down. If you can guesstimate how much faster the Athearn is going at full throttle compared to the Katos, you will need to draw a new speed curve and program into the NCE decoder, then tell it to use your custom speed curve. The NCE instructions should explain how to create custom speed curves, and may even include an example or two. CVs 5 and 6 are not going to help much in trying to adjust the Athearn's speed.

[cacole]

The solution is going to require that you re-program the Athearn decoder's speed curve with one that slows the locomotive down. If you can guesstimate how much faster the Athearn is going at full throttle compared to the Katos, you will need to draw a new speed curve and program into the NCE decoder, then tell it to use your custom speed curve. The NCE instructions should explain how to create custom speed curves, and may even include an example or two. CVs 5 and 6 are not going to help much in trying to adjust the Athearn's speed.