DCC on Board - Vanderbilt Oil/Coal Questions

[dochjm]

Hello,

I have a Vandy with a DCC board in it....

Can I plug it into an ANALOG  2-8-0  engine and then use the DCC?

Trying to decide if this would work.

What else could I plug this into?    a 2-8-2? 
Which other Bachmann engines have the compatible plug?

I see that the 2-6-0 does not have a compatible plug.  Nor does the 0-6-0

Thanks for the answer?

Howard.

[Jerrys HO]

Howard,

Since there are no replies yet, I will give my uneducated opinion on the steamer side.
From what I have read, Some tenders will swap others won't. Bachmann is not consistent with the wiring on this as I have read.
If your 2-8-0 is analog and not DCC ready than I would give an educated guess of NO without isolating the motor and some wiring and soldering done (not for the inexperienced such as me).
If any of your loco's are DCC ready it may work, but I would get the ole meter out and start checking before I tried it.
That is my uneducated guess but I would wait as others may chime in or do a search and you will find that there are a lot of variables to deal with.
Thank goodness for diesels .

Jerry

[rogertra]

Sadly, Bachmann thinks it's not a good idea to have tender compatibility through their range.

The owners of the company are suits, as probably are all the designers and engineers, stuck in some office in China.  They see these models as toys and don't realize we like to do strange things, like swapping tenders around, therefore, to them, tender electrical connection comparability and DCC board compatability isn't even on the radar.

Therefore, as has been discussed here numerous times, the best thing to do it to keep the DCC circuit board with the engine by removing it from the old tender and placing it into the new tender.

BTW, most tender steam engines are analog, it's the tenders that are either non-DCC or "DCC Ready" or come with DCC on board.

How old the engine is determines how easy it will be to convert it to DCC compatible.  See Jerry's comments below.

Cheers

Roger T.

[ACY]

The short Vanderbilt tender can be used in conjunction with a 2-8-0 that is DCC Ready and from the late 1990's or newer with no modification. The medium and long Vanderbilt tenders (and Hicken tenders) do not have the correct connection and require modification to be used in conjunction with a 2-8-0 Consolidation. I have a B&O short Vandy tender that I use interchangeably with the stock USRA tender that was included with my Bachmann Spectrum B&O consolidated locomotive with DCC.

[richg]

One caveat, if you use the two short adapters that come with a tender, it will swap all three functions, one of which will cause a short to the DCC system. I bought the medium USRA tender a couple years ago and had to rewire the tender and add a resistor for the loco LED headlight. The tender I bought was for a light bulb loco. It did put a 120 ohm resistor in series with the headlight lead to dim the loco headlight when in reverse. I had to cut a trace on the PC board.

Rich