Electronics and DCC

Hi again!

Well, after 3 days of messing and fretting over two new BLI Paragon locos that would not run properly, I finally figured out the problem and apparently fixed it.  As I mentioned on another post, the 2-10-2 and 2-10-4 ran sporadically and stopped suddenly - first on a curved section by turnouts but later on straight trackage.  Diesels ran perfectly over the same area, and this morning I pulled a BLI 4-8-4 over it and "surprise", it ran perfectly as well! 

This narrowed the problem to the two locos, eventually I found where the tender harness plug did not go in all the way on the loco male side.  This was not evident at first, but when compared with the 4-8-4, it was rather obvious that the plugs were only going in half way - which resulted in sporadic connections for sound and running.  In short, the plug holes were stopped up.

I ended up using a #74 and #72 drill bits and manually cleared out each hole, and EUREKA, that solved the problem.  Now both units traverse all the lower level trackage and incline perfectly, which allows me to move on to a few more tests, wiring turnout motors, and then moving on (FINALLY) to building out the main level!

Thank you all for your comments and advice, I really appreciate it.

Mobilman44

 Mobilman44

  I figured it was something simple like that. Some BLI locos are a bear to plug in properly. I use a small pair of bent nose pliers to plug mine in. Then they stay in even for maintenance. Like I said earlier. Make sure the plug is in all the way and also watch that plate on the loco cab so it goes over the plate on the tender. I actually saw the tender come off the rails on a curve because of it.

     Glad your up and running.

     Pete

Hi,

I have to say that BLI should have caught and corrected the problem at the factory or during quality control before shipping out to the retailers.  The fact that both BOTH had ALL six holes plugged doesn't sit well.  I had pre-ordered them, paid $295 + shipping for each, and having that kind of problem just doesn't sit well with me.

Having said that, they really look nice, sound terrific, and NOW run quite well!

Mobilman44 

 I had a worse one in my PCM T1 Northern. One one of the internal connectors, they used those pins that get crimped on the wire then pushed into a plastic shell. The pins have a small projection that is supposed to catch on the shell which keeps the pin from pushing back out of the shell when it gets plugged in. One of these pins was not properly seated in the shell so when it was assembled, the pin pushed back out rather then engage the opposite connector on the circuit board. The missing ping was the rail pickup from one side of the tender - so I had rail pickup from lots of wheels on one side - the drivers plus one side of the tender, but on the other side it only picked up from like 2 drivers. I didn;t find this until I pulled off the tender shell and started tracing wires trying to figure out why this loco with supposedly a large pickup 'footprint' stalled on turnouts that much much smaller locos handled with no problems.

 Stuff happens, things assembled rapidly by hand in mass qunatities often have small mistakes, a thorough examination usually finds them.

                                   --Randy