Question about dc F7A and Dcc F7B

[Railman74]

I am looking to add the Bachman Santa Fe F7B DCC with sound to my layout.  I already have a Life-Like Santa Fe F7A DC Engine.  My question is will these two work together? and if so how?

[jward]

the short answer is no they won't unless you convert the dc engine to dcc. why? dcc equipped locomotives will run on dc unless they have that feature disabled, but the circuitry of the decoder means the locomotive won't start to move until about 5 volts, give or take, is applied to the rails. the dc locomotive will start to move at a much lower voltage.

adding a decoder to the dcc locomotive will give both a similar starting voltage, and if you run them on dcc you can fine tune the speed settings so they both run the same.

[Railman74]

ok thank you, that answers my question and my decision.

[Doneldon]

Railman-

You might also want to sit the two units side-by-side before you commit to a purchase for this project. Every manufacturer uses different paint and you might find that the silver (I'm assuming passenger F7s) finishes don't work together. The same is true for the striping but there is so little color on the B-units that it shouldn't be very noticeable. For some reason, the blue paint on the freight engines isn't usually a problem. Of course, the silver sides didn't match on the prototypes after a while. Different groups of locos had different finishes to begin with and age varied from purchase to purchase so the variation between units doesn't have to be a problem unless you want them to match.
                                                                                                                                                                               -- D