2-6-0 with sound wiring

[Teditor]

I have a 2-6-0 with sound, a superb engine, but a wire in the loco/tender harness has fused/melted, it appears to be from the rear truck, don't know what other wires are affected, but the headlight will not work in the forward direction, (loco headlight is dim in reverse).

I have removed the soundboard and harness and would like to know if a replacement harness is available and is there a wiring diagram as all the wires are black (and excessively long).

As I am in Australia, sending the loco back is not economical, I am quite happy to effect repairs, just need a harness and/or wiring diagram for the soundboard connections.

Yours in model railroading
Ted (Teditor) Freeman
From the Land Down Under.

[Jerrys HO]

Ted
You may want to contact Soundtraxx and see of they can answer your question. This is a fairly new loco that has no wiring schematics that I have been able to find. If you contact Soundtraxx they may be able to supply a harness or give you the wiring diagram on this loco.
http://www.soundtraxx.com/contact.php

If by chance they give you a wiring diagram it would be appreciated by a lot of us if you could post it here so we can store it for future reference or help out another modeler.

Jerry

[richg]

I would doubt SoundTraxx would have a harness. The loco is a Bachmann product.

Many of the Bachmann locos had black wires before SoundTraxx products where being installed.

I would try to contact the Bachmann service department, though I think the Bach Man will have a better solution.

I have wondered many times, where is the location that the locos are wired at? Are all the parts, including decoders sent to China for assembly or is the assembly done somewhere in the USA? Good chance some of that info is company secret.

I do know the decoders are assembled and pregrammed in Colorado as I have seen photos of the machine that does the work.

Rich

[Jerrys HO]

Rich
Good points.
I have never had the pleasure of working on any steamer in HO except for the little 0-6-0 I have and it has no wires from the loco to the tender.
I was hoping since this is a sound decoder furnished by Soundtraxx that they could at least help Ted out with a wiring diagram or is that done by Bachmann also?

[richg]

In case there is no simple solution, you will have to do it the harder way by tracing out the wires. Use the standard NMRA configuration for the left a and right rail pickups, loco light, loco motor and driver pickups. Six wires between the loco and tender is pretty much standard. You might need to use your ohm meter to trace out the wires.
I have done that and it was a good learning experience.

The two wire connector for the loco will be the driver pickups. The four wire connector, two for the loco light and two for the motor.
Below is the decoder but I do not see any labels for the different connections. Those labels might be hidden beneath the plastic connector.



Get out paper and pencil plus a camera and document everything as you disconnect all the parts. The speaker wires will be obvious. The little PC board I believe has an LED for the tender light.
One truck picks up the left rail, the other truck the right. Some tenders, the trucks can swivel all the way around and that can produce a short to the DCC on the rails.

Below is a photo of the bottom. You can see the front truck picks up up on the left rail. The rear truck, the right rail.



Just in case, the loco caps and inductors.



I found some photos in a Google search.

Did you obtain the loco from a shop in your country?

Rich

[richg]

Each connector will no doubt have more than one wire in it.
The two large aluminum devices are 100 ufd, 25 volt capacitors if I am reading the values correctly.
At the DCC frequency, not as much capacitance is needed as compared to a power supply that operates at 60 or 120 Hertz.

Rich

[Teditor]

Thanks for the assistance offered guys, I took photos of the assembly but failed to metre the leads, I do have another two of these to help trace the wires.

There are ID's on the underneath side of the board where the terminals push on.

The loco was purchased from the USA from a reputable dealer (don't know if mentioning the dealer is allowed).

Performance wasn't affected, only the headlight failed, but I wasn't confident about leaving the charred wires intact as the chance of further damage was on the cards.

When I solve the problem, I am only too happy to share the results and the path taken to achieve them.

Yours in model railroading
Ted (Teditor) Freeman
From the Land Down Under.

[richg]

Very nice reply. Thanks. I think you can work though this with all the info on the Internet.
Do you think one of the trucks might have swiveled completely around?
Get some 30 decoder wire to replace the damaged wire.
Post a before and after photo of what you have. That could be a great help to the MRR community.
By the way, there are some people from down under on the Yahoo DCC groups like the SoundTraxx Group and a couple other DCC Groups who are very active in DCC. I have a little info about the new Sound Value line.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/soundtraxx/

Marcus and Laurie are both very active.

Rich

[Teditor]

Having only just started on this forum, I will have to work out how to put photos on.

The rear truck has the red wire, this was Ok in the truck area, the initial melting of the wire took place just near the loco/tender plug, it fused with the adjoining wire (I have not determined what this one is, suspect headlight, seeing as how it failed).

Further fusing occurred back in the harness where all the wires were knotted and bundled, I can't see any feasible reason for so much length in the wires, so will be working on shortening them as I refit.

I have removed two of the tiny plugs from the tender harness plug and wish to replace these wires (are these sort of connectors and associated wire insert pins available?)

(I did take a look at the Digikey site, but couldn't really identify anything as being the same as the Bachmann fittings).

I have joined the Soundtrax forum, thanks for the link/suggestion.

Yours in model railroading
Ted (Teditor) Freeman
From the Land Down Under

[richg]

I had a 4-4-0 that I inadvertently cut the wires too short when doing a hardwire. I ordered a new four wire and two wire set from Bachmann.
Digi-Key did not have anything close and the crimp tools are very expensive anyway.
Same with Mouser Electronics.
Working with #30 wires and crimp type pins is very difficult with the size.
For uploading photos, Many use Photo Bucket. I use it. Decider on albums before uploading. Your photo accumulation can make it hard to find a photo and don't move the photo out of the album to an album you think is a better fit.
Click on the fourth option, IMG and paste the photo into the forum message.

http://beta.photobucket.com/

Rich

[Teditor]

One of the other 2-6-0's I have was intermittently stopping, seems the tender pickups 'weren't', have now modified them so there are two prongs on top of the axle and one below, also found the engine/tender plug socket a bit loose, very careful fitting seems to have solved the problem.

As for the rewiring of the one with burnt wire problems, I have now metered out the fittings and made diagrams and notes, I have been taking photos as I go, will endeavour to put photos and description of what's been done, hopefully help/assistance to anyone with a similar problem.

Ted (Teditor) Freeman
From the Land Down Under.