Quote from: atlanticcentral on March 25, 2007, 08:26:09 PM
I believe it was Charles Kettering of General Motors fame who said "parts left out cost nothing and cause no service problems". An idea now lost in the digital control age.
Sheldon

As Rich has already determined that it is not a decoder problem, I fail to see the relevance of your quote to digital control.  I suspect Rich's problem is more likely related to a failled wire or a stuck brush.  Would you have BLI leave out the wiring and the motor brushes to keep them from causing problems?

A telephone call is cheap and they may have an instant fix.

Quote from: Virginian on March 26, 2007, 06:19:03 PM
I do not see how 2 chuffs per rev could sound better when that is wrong.

I think that 2 chuffs per revolution is a hangover from the days when people ran their locomotives at 90 miles an hour but still wanted to hear the individual chuffs, just like they heard standing on the platform when the train pulled out of the station.  It is common in synced sound in large scale.  And personally, I don't see it being any more wrong than the chuff occuring at the wrong point in the axle rotation.  But maybe I am unduly influenced by my large scale locomotives which are hard synchronized.  If truly synchronized, there is a chuff when the main rod is fully forward, another when it is fully back, and one more at each of the half way points.**  A couple of days ago, I watched an H0 sound equipped locomotive chuffing down the track with 2 chuffs every 7/8 of a turn of the drivers.  Watching the sound go in and out of sync with the wheels was mind numbing.  But please keep in mind that this is a personal opinion and I realize that the majority of people enjoy sound in the small scales.

_{** For the purist, this is not exactly true.  Because the valves or ports normally lead the pistons by a few degrees, the chuff actually starts slightly before the quarter points.  But this is usually invisible to the naked eye unless the locomotive is moving extremely slowly.}

I am going to make some assumptions here.  Please correct me if I am wrong.

First, I assume your Santa Fe locomotive is a diesel painted in Santa Fe colours and not a Santa Fe type steam locomotive.

Second, I am going to assume it came with a Bachmann train set and was not purchased separately.  If it is from Bachmann, it will say BACHMANN on the bottom.

Third, I am going to assume the motor sits above the rear wheels and forms part of the rear truck (the truck is the whole part that holds the rear wheels, motor, etc. and turns as a unit as the locomotive goes around corners.)

And forth, I am going to assume it was wired like the Bachmann locomotive I have in my hand.  It is of similar design but painted in different colours.

If these are all true, then this is likely the case:

The silver tabs are the brush retainers for the motor.  I assume these are what you connected the power pack onto to make the motor run.  Each tab shoud have three wires connected to it.  One wire from each tab goes to the headlight.  One wire from each tab goes to the left front wheels.  One wire from each tab goes to the metal back wheels.  Note that the wheel wires from the front tab go to the right hand wheels and the wheel wires from the rear tab go to the left hand wheels.

If your locomotive is different, let us know and maybe someone else can compare it to their locomotive.

Kadee coupler springs can jump into the fifth dimension.  I've lost enough over the years that I should  be knee deep in them.  But once they jump away, they NEVER EVER show up again.

There is a way to do what you want, but it is probably not cost effective.  That way would be to use an MRC device often referred to as a "Y-adapter" plus a booster.   Although these MRC devices have not been manufactured for 10 years or so, they occasionally turn up on eBay.  The outputs of the command stations connect to the two inputs of the adapter.  The signals from one command station feed right through.  The signals from the other command station are modified within the adapter by having 10 added to their addresses.  The output of the adapter is low level and must be connected to the tracks through a booster.  This arrangement would allow one operator to control up to 18 locomotives, all of which must have decoders.  Nine locomotives would be controlled by one E-Z Command Control Center and nine more by the other E-Z Command Control Center.  I have not tried this with E-Z Command system but I did use it at one time with MRC Command 2000 command stations which have outputs virtually identical to the E-Z Command.  And the output of the adapter would work with the NMRA compliant input of the Bachman booster.

Using an E-Z Command Walk-Around Companion would work a little differently.  Both it and the E-Z Command Control Center would control the same 9 or 10 locomotives.  This is a better arrangement if you want two operators running the railroad.  This arrangement does not require a booster unless you want to run more locomotives than the E-Z Command Control Center can power at one time.

Of the two choices, I believe the Walk-Around Companion is cheaper than a booster plus an adapter (if you can find one.)  One thing you cannot do is connect two E-Z Command Control Centers to the same track at the same time.  This will not work and might even damage your equipment.

For expansion, including the E-Z Command® Walk-Around Companion.

http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/ez/index.php?ezpage=3

Sorry, but I do not find the video particularly funny.  But thanks for linking to it.  It does carry a real message in a memorable way.

Maybe part of my lack of humour in this case is having seen a locomotive hit a car at a crossing.  The car was a mid size American car and it was stalled on a private crossing.  The locomotive was a GP-38, travelling at about 30 miles per hour.  When the locomotive hit the car, the locomotive's coupler penetrated the passenger door just above seat level.  It continued through to about the center of the steering column.  That was far enough to smash the driver's hips, sending bone fragments through one and possibly both femeral arteries, causing him to bleed to death in less than two minutes.  Fortunately, the driver had abandoned the car before the locomotive hit it, so he lived.  If he had stayed in the car, he would have died.

The car was carried down the track about 75 yards, still hanging from the coupler.  It took a large tow truck to finally pull it free.  One thing that is still very vivid in my mind is the moment of impact.  The car went instantly from stopped to 30 miles per hour.  The locomotive never slowed a bit.  I have often wondered since whether such a T-bone crash would have instantly killed the driver by snapping his neck, sparing him the agony of being crushed and then bleeding to death.

A lasting effect of witnessing this crash is that I tend to slow down and look both ways at crossings, even if they are controlled by flashing lights and/or gates.  My mind tells me that these safety devices very rarely fail, but my memory tells me what could happen if they did.  I also avoid stopping on railway tracks waiting for traffic lights to change.   If you are the driver behind me, I appologize for the inconvenience, but don't hold your breath waiting for me to change.

Mike, being "synchronized" in this case means the cuffing starts when the wheels start turning and speeds up as the wheels turn faster.  There is no implication that the chuff occurs at the correct part of the cycle, i.e. at the point where an exhaust port opens, nor even the implication that there are exactly four chuffs per wheel revolution (for two cylinder engines.)  In fact, most model locomotives  are set up for two chuffs per revolution, otherwise they "don't sound right."

Even when the chuffs are synchronized with a cam or switch they are usually set at two chuffs per revolution.  It is a little unnerving when the locomotive is moving slow enough to observe the action while listening to the sound.  It is like watching a locomotive that has the valves and cylinder on one side removed.  Using this two per revolution gets even worse when you have a three or four cylinder locomotive.  A Mallet, for example, really needs two sound systems to sound anywhere near right. 

Thanks, Nigel.  That has got to make installing synchronized sound a lot easier to install, including in dc.

Nicely detailed, runs smoothly and quietly.  DCC can be installed, but if you have not installed decoders before or at least done some wiring in tight spaces, then you might not want to select this locomotive as a first installation.  I am not sure about the 15" radius.

Beans and Don, I hope you will keep posting your experiences here.  Inquiring minds would like to know how you make out.

Twenty years ago, I was told that you could not do outdoor railroading in Saskatchewan.  The 90 degree range of temperature (about 160 degrees Farenheit) would buckle the tracks, frost heave would require releveling the tracks every year, and so on.  But for 20 years, I have been enjoying my large scale garden railway anyway.   I have repeatedly been told that plastic buildings cannot possibly stand up to the rigors of outdoor railroading and wood is the only material to use for scratch building.  I just keep on smiling as I watch my ten year old scratch built styrene buildings reemerge from the snow, knowing I won't have to repaint them because paint doesn't blister off plastic like it does off wood.  Fifteen years ago I was told DCC couldn't work in the garden because you couldn't keep the tracks clean enough.  But I tried it anyway, and found I liked it.  I am still being told that aluminum rail is no good for track power, even though I have been using it successfully outdoors and indoors for a decade and a half.  This is where I am coming from when I suggest to beans6645 that if he wants to try N-scale outdoors, then go ahead and try it.  I am sure there will be problems.  But half the fun of modelling outdoors is solving the problems, just like the 12 inch to the foot guys have to do.   

Are all of these soft synchronization or does anybody use hard synchronization in H0?  By hard sync, I mean a sound cam or a reed switch and a magnet or something similar so that if the axles do not turn, there is no chuff, no matter how much voltage is applied.  Soft sync implies that the cuffing starts at some motor voltage, and hopefully the locomotive starts at the same voltage.  I am wondering what happens with soft sync when more load is applied - starting up hill, starting with a long train, etc.  Do you reach a point where the chuff starts but the train is still sitting still?  With DCC, I would think back emf speed stabilization would help.  But what about dc?

E-Z Command DCC system is quite capable of operating locomotives with digital sound decoders in them.  There is some limitation on the number of sounds that it can control, a problem shared with many other systems these days.  Different sound decoders are available depending on the particular locomotives you install the decoders in.

Thanks, Stephen.  I modified an Athearns plow some years ago, using a gear motor originally used to drive the zoom lens in a movie camera.  It turned the wheel at a prototypical 180 rpm on a 9 volt battery.  I found that too fast.  The wheel was a blur and you had trouble seeing that it was actually turning.  Slowing it down to about 120 rpm helped and painting one blade white helped a whole lot more.

That was in the days pre DCC so I installed a trigger circuit to start and stop the wheel.  When you pushed the plow forward, like travelling from the yard to the snow area, the wheel did not turn.  When you got to the snow, you would stop the locomotive and switch to reverse, then forward again.  The polarity shift from reverse to forward would start the wheel turning and keep it turning for a couple of minutes.  Plenty long enough to plow out a small drift.  If the drift was longer, then from time to time the locomotive would have to reverse from time to time, and go forward again.  Not an unusual manoeuvre in heavy snow.  When the plowing was done, the plow would stop (after the couple of minutes.)  Then it could be pushed forward to the next town with the wheel stopped or it could be pulled back to the original yard with the wheel stopped.  Operated properly, it was a real hit, particularly with other model railroaders who could never figure out how I stopped and started the wheel.

(a note to my Canadian friends - sorry about the Americanized spelling of the word "plough" but here in Western Canada we too tend to use "plow.")   

pin     function                           standard colour

1    motor "right " connection          orange
2    rear light                               yellow
3    no connection                         n.a.
4    left wheels                             black
5    motor "left" connection             grey
6    front light                              white
7    lights common                         blue
8    right wheels                            red

The colours apply to the wires on the decoder, not necessarily the wiring in the locomotive.