Walther's Trainline & DCC

[Anonymous]

how hard is it to install a decoder in the trainline models
i maybe getting 2 of them and have never installed DCC before. i am also going to be doing the same to some atlas models

[Texas Zepher]

QUOTE: Originally posted by EMT49
how hard is it to install a decoder in the trainline models

Unfortunately all but a few of my trainline models came with the DCC pre-installed (under the MRC brand name), and I don't know where the none equipted ones are. It shouldn't be too hard though, they have fairly simple mechanisms. The main reason I am posting without adding anything valuable is to pop your message back up to the top in the hopes someone who can help will see it this time around.

[Anonymous]

thank you [:D]

i just got a trainline susquehanna [nys&w] and i will be in the prosses of going to DCC all the other loco in my fleet are altas and most of them are plug and play . but i am not to shure about the trainline stuff .

[rrinker]

They need a solderied-in decoder, there's no socket. I don't know if they are all made the same but my FA2 had a small circuit board to which all the wires were soldered. I removed this board and wired the decoder in - the motor was alreayd isolated and had 2 wires coming from it, and there are two wires from each truck, the frame is not used to pass current. The circuit board was screwed to the frame at one end - I cut off a small part of it including the screw end and taped the decoder to that as a shelf to keep it out of the mechanism. I replaced the headlight with a golden white LED and resistor, although that's optional. The decoder I used was an NCE D13SRJ, probably the cheapest full-featured decoder out right now. That's my prefered 'generic' decoder for now.

--Randy

[mustanggt]

I found it easy to install a decoder in my old F40PH. all that was needed was to discard the old circuit board, get a drop in decoder ( in my case an Atlas one, but digitrax and NCE make similiar ones), hook up the pickups, lights, and motor leads, insulate the bottom of the board with electrical tape, and I was done.
Hope this helps[8D]

[Anonymous]

I've fitted a decoder in a Trainline Dash 8-40B - it was very simple. Just remove the factory circuit board and hard-wire the decoder in (I used a Lenz 1025 as I had one to hand from my DCC starter pack). The trucks have plastic mainframes so there's no problem with isolating the motor, then you just need to wire the pickups on the same sides together (front right to rear right, front left to rear left) before soldering the decoder wires to the motor and pickups. I reused the original headlight bulbs with a couple of suitable resistors (think it was around 300Ohms but not 100% sure), I've yet to melt anything and it looks pretty good. I did make a baffle plate for the cab to ensure that the light only shows through the lenses (rather than through the roof, windscreen, nose, etc...). Hope this is of help!