Running 2 locomtives in a consist

[TigerMaster]

Greeting,

Can I run 2 diesel locomotives with 2 different brands of decoders? One is a Digitrax (no sound), the other is a MRC (With sound).

[dutchbuilder]

Why not , if they both have the consist function.
Said that , what will happen to the motors if they run slightly out of sync?
My experience with two 0n30 2-4-4-2's running in consist is that one of the motors slowly lost power and finally stopped working all together.
I blame the consist.

Ton

[TigerMaster]

How do I find out if they have a consist function?

[dutchbuilder]

The internet is your best friend.
look for the manuals of your decoders.

Ton

[TigerMaster]

Will do thank you

[jward]

consisting is a function of the command station, not the decoder. thus, any decoder should be able to consist with any other regardless of brand.

you will probably want to speed match your locomotives before you consist them, if they run at significantly different speeds. by adjusting the faster one to run at the slower one's speed you can eliminate them fighting each other while in consist. this is an adjustment that can be done to the decoder by adjusting cvs 2 5 and 6.

for me, the easiest way to do this is to time each locomotive over a set distance, calculate the speed percentage of the slower locomotive relative to the faster one, then adjust the values of the cvs downward by that percentage. to do this you need a command station with readback capability.

as an example, say one locomotive takes 30 seconds to complete a loop, the other takes 40 seconds. the slower locomotive would be running 75% as fast as the faster locomotive, so you would reduce cv5 and cv6 by 25% on the faster locomotive. this should get you in the ballpark, and you can make further adjustments in the values as you see fit.

[dutchbuilder]

consisting is a function of the command station, not the decoder. thus, any decoder should be able to consist with any other regardless of brand.

I don't agree.
I have some simple Hornby decoders and they don't support the consist function because CV19 is not available.

Ton

[jward]

then they are not NMRA compliant.