Have you tried asking this question in the N-scale section of this forum?  That is where the N-scale experts hang out.

Jim

It has been many years since Bachmann made plastic track and the large scale trains to run on it.  As far as I know, they never made switches for it.  This all plastic track still shows up from time to time on eBay.  Alternately, the battery powered, radio controlled Big Haulers can be run on Bachmann's G gauge track with tin plate rails or on the G gauge track from other companies.  My solution 25 years ago was to hand lay my own track, including switches and crossings, by spiking aluminum rails onto cedar ties.  There is more information on this at the link below:
http://members.shaw.ca/sask.rail/construction/index.html

Jim

There were some 2-8-0's produced with a flaw in the frame casting that allowed the jack shaft bushings to tip.  This led to premature failure of the bushings which allowed the jack shaft to move longitudinally and wear the casting, increasing the jack shaft's end play enough that the cogged belt started rubbing against the casting, producing effects like you have noticed.  My solution was to make up some new bushings that included an enlarged end that abutted the jack shaft pulley and controlled end play that way.  Because of the wear in the frame casting and the original flaw, the easiest way to secure the bushings was to epoxy them in place.  If your problem is similar, you might consider returning your 2-8-0's to Bachmann for repair, particularly if they are under warranty.

The alert reader will be wondering by now why I do not follow my own advice.  The 2-8-0's that I repair are ones used by our Saskatoon Railroad Modellers group in a public display at our local museum.  We consider that as "commercial use" and do not expect warranty coverage on a product designed for personal use.  Besides I was lucky enough to learn the skills during my career and luckier still to still have access to the necessary machine tools.  To give Bachmann their due, we keep using these locomotives because they are like the Energizer Bunny - they keep going and going and going.  They last for tens of thousands of trips around our layout, each trip initiated by simply turning the power on (no gentle acceleration) and ending with the power being abruptly turned off (no gentle deceleration either.)  We have tried other brands of locomotives but they have failed in a month or two, with one brand failing in less than a week.  With our Bachmann 2-8-0's we expect and normally get two years or more of trouble free operation.  We had two units with the problem mentioned above, both bought at the same time from the same dealer.  To me, that is indicates there may be more of them out there.  For our group, two less than perfect Bachmann locomotives in 20 years is a good track record, particularly when the "bad" locomotives lasted 3 times as long as the next best brand.

Jim

Quote from: florynow on December 29, 2011, 05:42:38 PM
I'm going to get one.  But that miniscule headlight has got to go.  Looks like an N scale headlight on an HO engine. 

PF

I couldn't see that the headlight was under size so I superimposed a photo of the model on top of a photo of a real 2-6-0.



It seems the size is right on.  However, comparing the H0 2-6-0 to an 0n30 2-6-0 (a much smaller locomotive in real life,) then the headlight looks small.  But then again, putting an H0 headlight on an 0-scale locomotive, it really should look small.

Jim

CPR, for one, ran RS3's long hood forward.  The union demanded it - the engineers who had until then run steam locomotives boiler forward liked to have that large mass of metal between them and the idiots that tried to beat them at highway crossings.  That did not change until the manufacturers started installing collision posts in the short hoods.  The down side of long hood forward operation was the amount of diesel exhaust that ended up in the cab, poisoning the crew.  Early units that ran short hood forward were not much better.  Many old time steam engineers hated the early diesels, although laying on the cab floor with a wet sack over you, or having to crawl into the tender water tank and close the hatch to survive the smoke and fumes in a long tunnel cannot have made a steamer much fun either.

Jim

It does matter which side the insulated wheels are on.  If both trucks are reversed, they will both be wrong way round compared to the locomotive wheels.  A quick and easy test is to put the 2-8-0 on the rails and hold the tender just off the rails behind it, or put a sheet of paper between the tender wheels (just the tender wheels!) and the track.  If the short circuit disappears, the problem is in the tender and mostly likely in the tender wheels.  If the short circuit is still present, the problem is most likely in the locomotive.

If the above test shows a problem in the locomotive, you might want to do another test.  Carefully unplug the tender and set just the locomotive on the track.  If the short is still present, the problem is in the locomotive wheels or wiring to the tender plug.  If the short is gone, the the problem is between the tender plug and the decoder, or in the decoder itself.

About those pesky capacitors - they interfere only with silent decoders that pulse the motors at rates higher than the human ear can hear.  And only with silent decoders do you have to disconnect them (cut one lead, chop them out, etc.) and then only if they interfere with decoder operation.  Bachmann decoders pulse the motors at a lower frequency and are not therefor bothered by the capacitors.

Rereading your initial post, it sounds like you are using a Digitrax Super Chief or Super Empire Builder set.  If that is the case, I assume you heard the clicking at about once per second when you did the quarter test and you hear that same clicking when the locomotive shorts the track now.  Otherwise I would be reminding you that just because your throttle (either a DT400 or DT402) shows address 03 does not guarantee that 03 is the address of the locomotive.  I would expect it to be 03 when received but the 03 showing in your throttle is a result of entering 03 when you tried to pick up that address.  Or am I missing something here?

Jim

It is normal for smoking locomotives to produce smoke only at high speed.  If the manufacturer used a smoke generator that got hot enough to produce smoke at more reasonable speeds, they would be forever replacing melted plastic bodies because owners were over heating their smoke generators by running at full speed.  The solution, if you really want smoke, is to have a DCC locomotive equipped with a smoke generator.  Then it is running at full heat even if the locomotive is stopped.  While that solves the smoke production problem, it does not keep the smoke from depositing oil on your track, your locomotive, and the insides of your lungs.

Jim

Have you considered 0n30?  Being 0 scale, 1:48, it would be too large except that it is scaled from smaller prototypes.  Putting an S scale box car and an 0n30 box car side by side shows them to be very similar in size.

Jim

No, not common.  But it can happen with a faulty smoke generator.  Smoke generators are typically a number of turns of nichrome wire around an insulating, heat resisting rod.  The number of coils/length of wire is carefully chosen to produce the right amount of heat to make smoke oil smoke when the proper voltage is applied.  This is usually the maximum expected operating voltage of the locomotive.  If the voltage is exceeded, the coils can over heat with disastrous results.  But this is not the only possible cause of overheating.  Sometimes an error in manufacturing or mishandling during or after installation can result in coils being pushed together so that one coil shorts against the next.  This lowers the overall resistance of the smoke generator.  Lower resistance means more current.  More current means more heat.

Hopefully your locomotive was purchased from a Bachmann dealer and Bachmann will replace it with a new one.

Jim

Twenty pieces of lighting equipment could be drawing as much as 2 amps, depending on the number and size of the bulbs.  It does indeed sound like you are overloading your power supply.  All model railroad supplies have some kind of internal protection, usually a self resetting circuit breaker which will turn the lamps on and off repeatedly, or a thermistor which will dim the lights and reduce their current when it overheats due to excessive current.  It sounds like your supply is of the latter type.

What you can do is either acquire a larger power supply or a second power supply.  If you decide on a second supply, you will need to disconnect about half the bulbs from the first supply and connect them to the second one.  Do not connect the two supplies to all the bulbs wired together as they are now.  This would likely work.  I say likely because without knowing how much current your power supply can produce and how much current your lights draw, I cannot say for certain.

If you want to save a few bucks, use a "wall wart" power supply rated 12 to 16 volts volts at 1 amp.  These supplies that look like a fat plug on the end of a cord can often be bought used at thrift stores for a dollar or two.  You might even have a suitable one around the house, left over from a printer or laptop computer or??  The output can be ac or dc - bulbs do not care which.

Jim

Quote from: undertaker4105 on December 24, 2011, 12:11:16 PM
Hello,
My ez command control center is not running my trains. it turns them on, but they do not run.  Is it cheaper to buy a new unit than fix my current one??

Could you please add a little to that?
 - Did your E-Z Command ever run your trains or has it always been like this?
 - How do you tell that it turns them on?  By the noise?  Do lights come on?  Or??
  - Do your DCC locomotives have sound as well?
 - Did you buy your E-Z Command from a Bachmann dealer?

If you bought your E-Z Command from a Bachmann dealer, call Bachmann service to ask about warranty repair/replacement.

If you bought it used or from a non-dealer, let us know the answers to the above questions and we can try to help you with trouble shooting.

Jim

The paperwork with the decoder should already tell you which decoder wire (identified by colour) needs to be connected to which locomotive wire (identified by function.)  Your problem will be to identify each locomotive wire by where and what it connects to.  Often you will want to disconnect the locomotive wires and connect the decoder wires in their place.  Be wary of "sneak paths" where there are connections that are unseen but may still cause damage.  One example of a sneak path would be the case where the locomotive frame is used to carry power from the wheels on one side to one contact on the motor.  This type of connection can be broken by isolating (disconnecting) the motor from the frame.  If not broken, such a sneak patch will damage the decoder.

Jim

$500 to $600 for a program and an interface sounds a little high.  I use a LocoBuffer-USB ($69.95) to connect my Digitrax command station to my computer and JMRI software (free).  The software will let me program decoders and run trains using the computer screen as a control panel.  The level of control depends on what hardware I select.  If I understand correctly, Digitrax's PR3 interface can do the same as well as load sound files into SoundFX decoders at a cost of $84.95.  Perhaps this huge difference in cost is because the LocoBuffer function is simply a translation of signal levels - it does not require gobs of intelligence to translate them.

Have a look at the LocoBuffer -USB at http://www.rr-cirkits.com/locobuffer-usb/LB-usb-flyer.pdf
and at Digitrax's PR# at http://www.digitrax.com/prd_compint_pr3.php

Jim

Rich

I am surprised that the list of CV's does NOT include a reset.


nywarthog

Programming at a higher level (using the names of CV's rather than their numbers) still requires your command station to send commands to the decoder via the rails.  I do not use MRC technology but do use a computer running JMRI for much of my programming.  Like your Prodigy, my system communicates via the rails with the decoder it is programming.  Once in a while, the result of the programming is not what I expected.  In these rare cases, examination of each and every CV shows one or more that has changed even though it was never altered in the higher level programming.  I do not really know the cause of this but suspect it is marginal contact between the locomotive wheels and the rails during programming.

Jim

I am curious to know how you managed to program the decoder without changing any CV's.

My guess is that you accidentally reprogrammed one of them without realizing it.  Best bet at this point is to reset the decoder back to factory settings and go on from there.

Jim