Newbie Here

[moverby]

Hello, I am a newbie to trains. I just bought a HO Scale Bachmann Loco number 3061, the EZ track, and the EZ Command Plus controller as I understood that I had to have the controller to operate the DCC installed loco. I am at a total loss as to what to do with the controller. We have managed to get the loco moving, somehow my husband got the lights to operate, but that is all. The instructions are not for a newbie that has 0 experience. All I want is to be able to turn the switch on, make it move, use the lights, and hear the sounds. There are absolutely no videos that unbox this product, and shows you how to make it work including the lights and sounds. I do not have other locos to add to the additional pages, there are plenty of videos on this topic. I am so aggravated that I am almost at the point of sending it all back. Can anyone help? I want to love this, and enjoy it.

[trainman203]

You are not alone out on the sea.  There are a lot of experienced modelers on this forum besides me who can help, all with long years plugging away at this hobby.

Is there any possibility that you know someone else with a DCC layout? If so, you should try that engine out on it to see if the problem is in the engine. 

DCC operations rely on settings in the DCC decoder in the engine, called control values, or CV's.  If some of the functions work and some of them don't, it sounds like the control values in the decoder are scrambled.  Especially if this happens to be a used engine that someone incompetently altered the CVs in.   The problem is very unlikely the EZ command.  More advanced DCC cabs would have a connection for a programming track where you could easily reset everything to factory default. And maybe if you know someone that has such a system they can do it for you. Or even a hobby shop if there's one around.  But the EZ command, being an extremely simplified system for basic  Train set operation, does not have this capability.  It's probably designed like that to keep overly curious and unexperienced operators from scrambling it all up, which can be very easy to do.

In today's world, most of us don't have easy access to a local DCC model railroader.  So you may need to send the engine back to the Bachmann service department, after calling them.  I've dealt with them multiple times over at least 20 years about DCC stuff and always had a positive experience.  Don't think for a second that you need to bail out of model railroading. There's a way out, you just need to eliminate each possibility at a time to find out what's wrong. And then get it fixed.  I can assure you that nothing major is wrong that can't be fixed easily, it just needs to be isolated and identified.

I would like to, in closing, discuss all those videos that are out there. There are a lot of windbags and a lot of people not very competent that think they are experts that are putting videos up.  Sometimes I have to look for a video for something, because even after 20 years of running DCC, and nearly 40 years of Model Railroading before that, I still find things I need to learn something about.  Even with all that experience, most of the time I have to watch about a half dozen or more of those videos before I find one that really is worth much of anything. So don't let them frustrate you.