Jeffrey;
I hope I didn't somehow offend you with my original comment that I didn't understand. The problem with email or for that matter writing in a furum like this is that you don't quite know how to take what the other person is writing. What might be ssumed as snarky by myeslf may not be the may to writer meant it. I am sencing that you may be annoyed by the fact I don't understand. Simply stated. I do not understand the what the difference would be whether you are running DC or DCC. That's all. To me it doesn't make any sense what so ever. Hence the question. I wasn't expecting the lengthy answer nor the disertaion that Athearn was junk.
Now since I am new to this hobby and am still learning will the Athearn Locomotives run on DC and DCC right out of the box. I seem to remember someone, somewhere telling me that it had to be converted to DCC. I would make the assumption, that I will have to get educated on the subject or find someone to do the conversion for me, for a fee of course. So here's the next question do you need a decoder to convert the locomotive to DCC form DC. or is the decoder only used to control the sound and lighting affects? Further from what I have read thus far I would think that the decoder would have to be compatible with the particular brand of locomotive. As with power tools or cars for that matter, replacement parts must be compatible. I would not put Makita parts in a DeWalt tool. So it would seem to me that decoders are similar. Or are they universal? I don't Know.
I have an Athearn Light Mikato which my wife purchased for me a couple of Christmas's ago. It sat in a box until just recently when I set up a simple oval and ran it. I thought it was a beautiful engine. The noise level is what I would expect. The detail is acceptable and the price I thought wasn't too bad. Is it a peice of expensive junk as you say? I don't think so. A year or so ago I ended up talking to someone from a club in our area and explained to him that I was getting back into the hobby and he told me to buy the President's Choice specials. These are in fact made by IHC. Are they junk? Maybe to you and I am sure there are others that would consider them as such. I now have two of them a Hudson and a Sante Fe type.
Well that's my . Gotta go and make some soup for this week's lunches.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
Hey, everyone, I'm back from the frozen north of Maine. Set 'em up, Joe. I've only had a few beers at a rather pricey bar, so it's good to get back to earth in that respect.
I've got a couple of old Athearn BB's, on that probably dates back to the 50's. It's the only one of my old childhood engines that I could salvage enough to make decoder-capable, and I save it for one specific use. When my daughter is sitting in the other room and turns on some rap, I turn on the old Athearn. Drowns out her stereo, all other background noise and the occasional siren or nearby nuclear explosion. That is one noisy engine.
Good to see you back here, Jeffrey. Your adventures always spark interesting discussions.
We just got back from what could be termed the ski weekend of the century, at least from my perspective. We trailed a storm moving up the coast on Friday night, all rain at home in Massachusetts, but it turned to all snow just north of Portland, Maine. Sunday River got a good foot of snow on the mountain, and probably more in some spots. Most storms of this type are followed by howling winds and/or brutal cold weather, but Saturday dawned warm and sunny, so it was a spectacular day on the slopes. Sunday was cooler, and by the end of the day it was snowing up a storm once again, which fortunately we drove out of within a few tens of miles on the way home.
Mike, I'm never going to see another Cat-house without thinking of your layout. Wow, that's an impressive array of hardware.
Any nachos, Joe?
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Evening guys. I'll take a tall tap Joe..And a round for the house too!
Soo...Jeffrey, have you tried switching out the motor? Not that you should have to, but it may be a good test??!!?? You now have me wondering about my Genesis F-7's. I need to get decoders into them and give them a test drive!
GUB, to try for a short answer regarding you DCC questions: The decoder totally runs the engine. It goes between the rail power, motor and anything else. It is the "brain" that reads all the packets of digital information generated by the command station...Thus the phrase from the DCC folks: "Run you trains, not the tracks". The tracks have power on them all the time and the info you send to the decoder, installed in the engine and programmed with a specific address, determines what the engine will do.
Regarding the quality of locos: I don't have any Athrearn steamers, but I do have four Bachmann Spectrum (one Shay, one Climax and two Consolidations) that run super fine! All of which came DCC ready. I also have four IHC (two Moguls and two Mountains) that I had to take apart and hard wire the decoders into. They too all run real good, all though one of the Moguls runs better than the other.
In addition I have a few steamers that have not yet been run: One Heritage 2-8-8-2 that will some day get bashed into a DM&IR Hill Mallet and two Mantue 2-6-6-2 assembled from kits...that still require some additional assembly. This is a long process unless you stay with it night and day and I can't!
As for the detail of these locos...The Bachmann and Heritage are very nicely detailed...The Mantue both have the Bowser / English detail kits (lost wax brass castings) and at this point the IHC locos are the least detailed but could be detailed also!
I run diesels too: Athearns (the older Blue Box), Atlas and Proto. They too have decoders installed and all run well. I would be hard pressed to say that any one of them was a lot better then another! So, everything I have running at this time...Runs pretty well.
colvinbackshop wrote:Soo...Jeffrey, have you tried switching out the motor? Not that you should have to, but it may be a good test??!!?? You now have me wondering about my Genesis F-7's. I need to get decoders into them and give them a test drive!
I found out what was wrong and corrected it. I must have gotten a Friday locomotive. The pickups in the trucks were so badly placed that they were making intermittent contact and in some cases were shorting out. I fixed that problem in about 30 minutes. The soldering was very badly done. The wires on the trucks were so poorly soldered that they would come loose with just a gentle tug. 5 minutes of soldering fixed that. Here's the biggie. The motor is faulty. I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but it won't hold a steady RPM. I changed it out with the motor from a John Deere BB F7. The locomotive runs fine now on DC and DCC, no humming, no growling (except a little from the BB motor). The growl sounds quite a bit like a diesel engine. These are problems I would expect to find in a BB locomotive, not a $110 RTR that's supposed to represent quality. If this had been a Proto 2000, Walther's would have gotten it back with a strong letter of complaint.With all this repair work, it has earned itself the title of 'Honorary Tyco Locomotive'.
"Evening, everybody. Joe, I'll have a Bud boilermaker. And freshen up anyone who needs it.
Mister B, love your description of your 'counter-noisemaker!' The list of things it drowns out had me laughing so hard I teared up my glasses.
Jeffery, glad to hear that you sorted out your problem child. IMHO, one thing almost guaranteed to discourage a newbie right out of the hobby would be a RTR locomotive that isn't. Unless, that is, you agree with Linn Westcott's definition - Ready To Rework.
Today presented me with one of those, "Say WHAT??!!" moments. I had just finished wiring in a (very) temporary control panel for my newly-laid yard throat and was op testing with my pet Baldwin 0-8-0T. When I set the route into track 6, I got a short. Okay - checked around, found one microspike in REALLY close quarters shorting between the back of a closure rail and the back of a guard rail (one of the non-wonders of asymmetric 3-way switches.) Pulled it, short cleared, teapot ran to the end of track. Pulled back to the lead, set the route for track 7. Yup, shorted again! This time I used everything short of an electron microscope and couldn't find a reason. Just when the language was getting interesting I was interrupted by dinner call. (Given a choice between eating a steak and chasing a short, what would YOU do?)
Went back into the garage after dinner, with a couple of things to add to the trash can that lives there between collections. As I was coming back up the main aisle, I SAW IT! I had left a Kadee coupler height gauge on the end of Track 7, at the far end of a piece of loose flex a good six feet from the place I had been cussing over.... As soon as that was removed, the rest of the op check went without a hitch.
Well, in one minute it will be midnight here. Better leave before I turn into a pumpkin!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
First of all Good Evening Everyone;
I need a Scotch. Like it or not I need a Scotch! Sorry. Hello from the Great White North. You might get the impression that Hell has frozen over by the shape of the roads tonight. The drive into work was bad. The drive home was worse. It took me 1 Hr. and 45 minutes for what is usually a 25 minute drive. The roads in some spots were a skating rink. Had to make 2 detours just to get home. We are expecting temperatures in the minus 25 degree range tonight. Think I will stay home tomorrow if the roads donot improve. I put my car in a ditch a week ago because of the road conditions and I do not relish doing that again. Some litlle B******S vandelized the car while still in the ditch.
Anyways, Jeffrey I am certainly glad you are not offended and Colvinbackshop, I do appreciate the explanation. How does one go about on determining which decoder to use. I have three locomotives, one Athearn and two IHC's which I will have to install decoders at some point as I have allready decided that I will go DCC with my layout and I have decided that in all likely hood it will be Digitrax that I will eventually purchase, which one is still up in the air for the present moment.
So ... let's have another drink, perhaps a little food. I am trying a new recipe for Flank Steak. I will let you know how it turns out. It may have been marinating too long. We were suppose to have it last night and then the neighbours invited us over for dinner. Oh well.....
Gotta go. Will check back later. Is it Safe?
GUB
It's Me Again;
I'll have another scotch. On Sunday afternoon after brunch I went to the Thames Valley Central Train Show and Sale near London (Ontario). I had fond memories of the first one I went to. This one was a little disappointing. Only a few layouts and very few venders. I did however pick up a copy of Pierre Burton's book - "The Last Spike" for $5. But that was all I got. I am a little nervous about buying locomotives and such at these shows. Any comments? Thereb werenseveral Brass units as well as some very nice plastic ones. I just don't know.
Coffee, Joe, and a large one to go, as well. Anyone remember the movie "A Civil Action" with John Travolta? It was a dramatization of a true story about a toxic waste dumping case. The site eventually became one of the early Superfund sites, and it was eventually capped and turned into an office park. Guess where the building I work in is located. Friday, we were told "Don't drink the water," but in all fairness this was an E. Coli thing in the municipal water supply, not a toxic chemical thing at all. Here it is Tuesday, and they still haven't cleared the coffee machines for human consumption. So, it's bring it in or buy the high-priced stuff at the cafeteria.
I picked up a bunch of the Walthers Cornerstone street lights while they were on sale at Walthers. (Ordered through my LHS - sale price and no shipping charges!) I mounted a few of them last night, and powered them temporarily through clip-leads just to see how they looked. I'm running the 12-volt bulbs at 10 volts, and they put off just a nice glow that lights the scene well without being too bright. I'll try to get a picture for the next Photo Fun.
Joe, I'll haver Coke, gotta' go to work REAL soon, but I'll be back for a cold tap latter.
Mr. Beasley, which lights did you get? I've been looking at getting some street lighting too! I'm thinking of an old style arm and shade type for Sawbill Junction.
GUB, slecting a decoder is really pretty straight forward...The basics require two questions: How much amperage does the loco draw and how many functions (extra lighting, sound and so on) do I want / need? For the most part a 1 amp decoder is all you will ever need, although some of the open frame motors (and or extra functions so I'm told) draw a bit higher and installing a 2 amp is to error on the safer side of things.
How much a motor will draw can be tested with an amp meter to show the current draw of a stalled motor. To do this: Power the track, watch the meter while running the loco, grab hold of the loco applying pressure downward, (momentarily) until the motor stalls and read the meter. This will show the max amperage draw. If you don't have an amp meter or don't feel the need to do the test...Just install the 1 amp decoders in the locos with can motors and the 2 amp in the older style (old Athearn and Mantue) with open frame motors. After testing a few with a DC power pack and meter...This is the "Rule of Thumb" standard that I now go by.
All of the decoders that I have installed are a Digitrax....So I don't have a wide knowledge base here...BUT... I have three standard decoders that I use here on the CCRY. For a hard wire situation (the older Athearn, Mantue and the IHC steamers that are not DCC ready, with a socket) I use the DH 83 (2 amp) or the DH 84 (1 amp) and for the locos that are "DCC ready" I use the DH 121P. All of these drcoders also give me two additional functions if I want or need them. Of course there are situations that come up that require other decoders...I have small N scale decoders in both my Shay and Climax locos because of the space that is available for a decoder and I have also used a "Plug & Play" board type decoder that replaces the factory circuit board, in one of my Atlas Alco's.
With that said; I will say that I feel you will be happy with a Digitrax system. I run Digitrax and I'm very pleased with it, even though it is an old (BigBoy) system now LONG out of production. A great place to get information and good prices on Digitrax is www.LoysToys.com
Hope this helps!
Gotta' run...It's a way busy time of the year. More latter.
Good Evening Everyone;
I'll have a glass of your finest "Funky Lama" to start. What? You have only the one bottle. Well I will make do. But I am curious what my friends will be drinking though. JB what will you have. Once again thank you for all the infomon decoders. I beleive you were one of those who advised that I should go with a Digitrax operating system which I am pretty sure I will go that route. But why digitrax decoders? Is it because you are assured that they will be compatible with the operating system? Or is it because you are familier with them and we mostly stay with what we are familier with?
Gotta go. Dinner is calling me. Will check back after dinner.
BBFN
Evening all. I'll have a virtual beer, since I'm avoiding the real stuff due to a cold. I had to beg off hockey tonight, too, but I'm sure I'll be better in the morning for all these deprivations.
I got a couple of shots of the Walthers street lamps. This night-time photography is pretty tough. The first picture is one of the short guys. These come two to a package. (Click on the photos to blow them up a bit.)
This next one is one of the taller models. These are only one to a package. This series of street-mounted lamps comes with sockets for easy removal and replacement, and they all use the same mount, so I just swapped them out. These tall ones will actually go here in this part of town. The shorter models are slated for other places, but I don't have any of the sockets installed there yet.
I'm really happy with these. The shafts are nicely formed and very slender. I'm thinking that I really need to add some No Parking signs to them. I'm running these at 10 volts. They are rated at 12 volts, so hopefully they'll last a while. At 10 volts, they cast a nice glow but they don't overpower anything.
I tried a shot with the lights down to give some idea of how these look in the dark.
Howdy guys! Joe, I'll have a cold tap, make it a Summit Pale Ale with a wedge of lime, if you please...And thanks GUB.
Mr. Beasley, nice street lights and VERY nice looking dioramas! Job well done! Even though I do really like those lights, and they would go well in another setting that is not as rural, they wouldn't fit in at Sawbill in 1964. Hey...Parts of Northern MN didn't even have electricity until the mid to late 50's and telephone in the early 60's!! I'm thinking more along the lines of a wood pole and cross arm set up with an open bulb and shade type of thing.
GUB, why Digitrax? You ask. Well, back when I was first thinking about going with DCC (which my LHS guy said would never catch on) in about 1998 - 1999, I did a lot of comparisons of systems that were available...Digitrax seemed to be the winner hands down with expandable components and features for the money.
Then......I had opportunity to meet AJ and Zana Ireland, the developers and owners of Digitrax. I also had opportunity to visit with them on a number of occasions and was very impressed with them personally and with their dedication to the DCC movement.
Then......I met Loy Sperlock of Loys Toys, at a get together at his house when he lived in CA. Loy was, still is, 100% "gun ho" on Digitrax feeling that it is the system that delivers the most bang for the buck, has people that stand behind all that they sell with great service and a great guarantee. To say the least, these encounters cemented my thoughts that Digitrax was a good company that was going to be around for a long while.
I wouldn't doubt that other decoders are also very good...And are compatible (thanks NMRA for a standards) with each other's systems. I just have never had the need to go elsewhere, either for features or regarding costs. I have also been true to Loy for being straight forward, honest, knowledgeable and competitive (I don't think he's cutting me any kind of special deals) in his pricing.
Sooo...Earlier today said this is a busy time of year for me. Even though I am semi-retired from coaching and teaching, I do teach swim lessons and Life Guarding classes in the spring of the year. OK...It's not quite spring, but we started last Monday and I now spend as much as five hours a day in the pool teaching....In addition to my CPO shift with the school district. This means that Trainroom work is now regulated, for the most part, to the weekends! This year I'm only going to do the first four weeks of swim lessons (most of the time it's twelve) and only one LG class which will cut out a very intense week at the end of May. So with that schedule, at least in my head thus far, later on this spring I will have some extra time to play with trains!
Another round Joe...This time it's on me.
Hi, everybody. 'Evening, Joe. I'll have Piel's, and see what the others are sipping.
Nice looking street scene, Mr B. I agree that some No Parking signs would be a good idea. Possibly also Taxis Only if that's actually a car stop behind the fence.
Now that I finally have the electricals up to speed with the mechanicals, I spent the day test running my yard throat with a pair of DD51 class diesel-hydraulics (B-2-B wheel arrangement - yes, there really is an unpowered truck in the center of a rather long unit!) The primary purpose was to determine where the clearance points were on all the storage tracks (the yard will be hidden staging for local freights.) The long-wheelbase power trucks and featherweight carrying trucks of the DD51's quickly turned it into a track tuning exercise.
Even though I had built the specialwork with three point gauges riding the rails and an NMRA gauge in one hand, those locos found every tight flangeway and tight gauge spot! Happily, after about an hour of twisting spike heads and nudging rail (and re-soldering a couple of tight guard rails) everything finally came up roses. I can now back a full train of assorted-length cars into any track without untoward incident. As an added bonus, I found out that the clearance points were a good two carlengths closer to the turnouts than I expected! Not only that, but there are already rail joints at those places - all I have to do is leave off the metal rail joiners to isolate the single-end tracks. Some times you get lucky!
I can sympathize with the folks who still haven't managed to climb out of the ice box (says he, who has been running around in a short sleeved shirt.) Seems funny to go to daylight saving time when it's still officially winter.
Well, it's NASCAR weekend here in Sin City, so I suspect there won't be much railroading done. Then I have my twin granddaughters coming for a visit next week. (One of them is bringing her fiancee along. My, how time does fly!) Don't be too surprised if I'm not around until a week from Monday or so.
Thanks for the Piels, Joe. Even if it did remind me why Bert and Harry went out of the brewing business.
Evening...Joe, I'll take a tap please.
Well, I'm done teaching for the week! And if I don't get overwhelmed with "requests" and chores, I sure do plan to spend some time playing with trains!
I don't have anything that I know of going on tomorrow (going to work Sat. as the CPO) and so I want to get at it and stick to it for a goodly amount of time. Even though I want to get some more done at Sawbill.....I also have this urge to get more track down at Cascade Junction! Hope I can do both!
A round for the house, Joe. It's the big six-oh for me today. Finally, I can take the BLI Hudson out of its box and leave it on the layout. So far, it's been on the track for programming purposes only, and just to make sure it works well. It did take a while to get the address programmed in. This is one of those power-hungry sound engines that my Lenz can't deal with on the programming track, and the Lenz doesn't let you set the engine address when programming on the main. BLI provides detailed instructions, but I'm glad I'm used to dealing with hexidecimal arithmetic, because they don't provide a conversion from road numbers to hex values for all of the possible numbers they have available.
I finished up the two DPM townhouses over the last couple of days. I put these together a long time ago, maybe a year or more, but I'd always planned on adding a foundation and steps up to the doors. They're all pretty much done and landscaped now. I was going to take pictures last night, but the girls took the camera to the ski team end-of-season dinner. Dumb jocks? Hardly. Every member of the ski team made the scholastic honor roll this year.
I've got a birthday bash to attend to tonight, but I'll try to drop by later. 'til then, happy Friday.
Well....A BIG happy birthday to you Mr. Beasley! And if you're still drinking (four hours later) let me buy you one!
Morning chores are done and I'm on my way out to the Trainroom!
Latter.
Congratulations, Mister Beasley. Just think, only 40 more years and you can REALLY celebrate! May you still be running trains, and enjoying new locomotives, as much as you do now.
And now for a good one! I had decided to incorporate some old display trackage (flex on pine shelving) into my hidden staging yard. Well, when I tried it quickly became obvious that Murphy had been at work. Not a single rail joint came anywhere near matching up with the new trackage. Then I noticed that each four foot track was only held by eight or fewer track nails. The pine shelf, by now firmly screwed into place, was shortly bare of track. Then inspiration struck.
This is back-in staging, and the pine shelf supports only the last four feet of sidings intended for ten car trains. No locomotive will ever run there. So, why waste good, almost-new NS flex track? The upshot of it all? The final yard of each track is now laid with a section of 'made in Italy' brass flex track that my sister picked up as part of a $5.00 package deal at a yard sale.
This is probably one of the few times in history that track was removed from a yard to be re-laid on a main line...
Well it must be Saturday morning. I see we are on page 3 once again. I'll have a coffee and an English Muffin this morning if you please. Happy belated birthday Mr. B. Jeffrey, how was work the other day? JB Thanks for all the info.
Up here in the foggy North things are melting, making it a horrible mess. I think today I will take it easy. It wasn't the best of weeks at work. This working for a living stinks to say the least. But unless I win a Lottery I don't see anyway around it.
Work is progressing on the bedroom quite nicely, well at least the design drawings are. That's it for now, I will check back later as the day progresses.
Have a Great Day Everyone
Good morning! I'll have a coffee and a stack of cakes please.
I did get to spend some time RRing yesterday and now have Gary's Standard done! I also got all the cork down at Cascade Junction!
Today however, I'm booked from about 1100 on, so it looks like I won't be able to play until tomorrow.
GUB wrote:Jeffrey, how was work the other day?
jeffrey-wimberly wrote: GUB wrote:Jeffrey, how was work the other day?Work was hard and left me covered with plenty of sawdust. It was nice to be out of the house for a while.
Did you get them all done?
jeffrey-wimberly wrote:Oh heck no! We're just getting started. We have to cut out all the pieces first then paint them and finally assemble them. We're working on an order of 50 right now with another order of 200 coming after that.
That'll keep you busy for a while. Take care and don't let it cut into your modeling time too much.
Well, I survived the birthday party, and here it is Saturday. Time for a beer, and set 'em up for whoever is around right now. The Hudson is finally on the tracks to stay. I've got a rail joiner issue that needs to be worked, of course, since this is my new "largest" steamer, so of course it will boldly derail where no engine has derailed before.
The weather has turned warmer, after the coldest week of the season in New England. Still some snow on the ground, left over from the Valentine's Day storm, but the brown earth and almost-as-brown grass is starting to peek through. The forecast is warm for the next week, so we may be out of white stuff completely in a short while.
Mr. B,
Very nice Hudson. I'll have a Sierra Nevada Stout please.