Hunt is, of course, correct.  These things with tungsten filaments are "lamps."  Bulbs are what you plant in the ground.   I suspect the term "bulb" meaning lamp was a result of their bulbous shapes.  So why do so many people and stores insist of referring to compact fluorescent lamps as compact fluorescent bulbs?  Why not "worms" or "snakes?"  Beats me.

All that aside, if you call them "bulbs," I will not be thinking you are planting tulips in your locomotive (note: not your "engine," your "locomotive.") 

Thirty two feet, four and one-half inches, give or take a couple of yards.

It looks like it has a pressure dome on top.  Maybe this is a water car for use at a work camp and maybe they pressurize it with compressed air.  The valves at the bottom seem particularly well protected which may indicate it contrains potable water.  On the other hand, small water tank cars are sometimes used for scale testing.

Up here in Saskatchewan we don't change our clocks either - we couldn't teach the cows to get up an hour earlier.

And Mickey Mouse is a poor representation of an actual mouse, but we all love him anyway.

Personally, HOplasserem80c, I got a good laugh out of it.

To properly size the resistors, you need to know both the bulb voltage and current.  You also need to know what voltage your decoders put out to the headlights etc. when running on the DCC system that you use.

Here is what you need to do.  First figure out the necessary voltage drop.  This is the difference between what comes out of the decoder and what goes into the light.  For example, if you get 14 volts out of the decoder and the LL bulbs are 2.5 volts, the voltage drop is 14 - 2.5 = 11.5 volts.

To get the resistance, you divide the voltage drop by the current. Suppose the headlight bulb draws 60 milliamps (or .060 amps, which is the same thing.)  Then the resistance of the resistor is 11.5 volts / .060 amps = 19.17 ohms.  They do not make 19.17 ohm resistors but they do make 22 ohms, which is close enough.

But resistance is only one of the ratings of a resistor.  Another important rating is its power rating, that is, the amount of power it can dissipate without over heating.  The power in this case would be 11.5 volts x .06 amps = .69 watts.  A common 1/2 watt resistor would not last long and would run very hot.  A 1 watt resistor is bulky and might be hard to find room for.  An alternative would be to use two 10 ohm, 1/2 watt resistors in series.  In a series circuit, the resistances add together, giving 20 ohms (even closer to 19.17) and the power ratings add, giving 1 watt total.

Now, hopefully, someone will give you the voltage and current rating of those bulbs so that you can do the actual calculations.  Personally, I just toss them out and install warm white diodes and a 1000 ohm resistor.  The diodes only need 10 milliamps to operate and the resistor dissipates only .1 watt so heat is never a problem.

I have not done one of these, but it should not be too hard if you know how to take the locomotive apart and put it back together and if you have good soldering skills.  There is lots of room in the tender for the decoder.  There are many decoders that can handle the current, which I would guess is less than one amp (you can measure it to be sure.)  Then it is just a standard installation:
(1) disconnect the motor from the wheels.
(2) connect the motor terminal that was connected to the right wheels to the orange decoder wire.
(3) connect the other motor terminal to the grey wire.
(4) connect the right wheel pickups (locomotive and tender) to the red wire.
(5) connect the left wheel pickups (decoder and tender) to the black wire.
(6) connect the headlight to the blue and white wires.  Make sure that the headlight wires are insulated from one another and anything metal that they run past.
(7) connect the backup light (if there is one on the tender) to the blue and yellow wires.
(8] make sure you insulate all the joints with shrink tubing.  Do not use tape!
(9) mount the decoder with a small piece of double sided foam tape.
(10) if you have to extend any of the decoder wires between the tender and the locomotive, be sure to use fine, flexible wire.  And leave a little extra wire between locomoitve and tender to allow for turning on curved track.

Enjoy.

DCC onboard - Bachmann's term for having a decoder already installed.

DCC equipped - general term for having a decoder already installed.

DCC ready - NMRA term meaning the wiring is arranged to make installing a decoder relatively easy.  This may include having an 8 pin NMRA socket or having wiring brought out to solder pads or having the motor and wheels connected by wires that are easy to separate.

Is this a plastic sleeve that the motor shaft fits into?  Is it split?  In such cases, I usually use a brass sleeve over the plastic sleeve.  Then the plastic sleeve can no longer expand when press fit onto the motor shaft.

If you use 1/4" cork roadbed under it, you can use most brands of flex and sectional track, including Atlas.  Atlas track and cork road bed are available at most hobby shops selling trains.

For temporary setups, E-Z Track is easy to set up and stays together well.  For more permanent layouts, I prefer the cork road bed but have tried foam and even 1/4" plywood.  Actually, anything that is 1/4" thick will raise baseless track and turnouts up to the same heights as E-Z Track.

Thanks, Hunt!!

Everyone looking for more information on hybrid drive (DCC plus batteries) should follow Hunt's link and read these pages.  I found them very encouraging, especially reading results of trials beyond just one five foot length of track.  Stan's successes give me all the more reason to test the limits of the technology for myself. 

Colorado, from the limited testing I did over the weekend, that would seem to be a good possibility.  I intend to try just that if/when spring comes to Saskatchewan and my railway reappears from under a hundred (scale) feet of snow.  I plan to keep readers of Bach-Man's board up to date with my findings and also put the results on my website so that all the information is in one place.  I have three different command stations to try it with and can probably borrow more from my dealer.  And I have at least three different railways to try things out on.  Hardly an all inclusive test, but if all these combinations are successful, I hope it will encourage others like yourself to give it a try.  If the concept does not work out, I will certainly let you know that too.

Glad to hear you got it up and running.  Pin 1 is the right hand motor connection, pin 8 is the right hand wheels.  If there is a leakage (lower than normal resistance) here, dc operation will not be affected but DCC operation can be as this means a partial wheels to motor connection, a no-no with DCC.

Keep in mind it was your diligent testing and your replacing the board that ultimately solved the problem.  Gene and I just made suggestions.

Actually, it is locomotives without decoders that you have to worry about running on DCC equipped layouts - do not let them sit "idling."

The decoder in you DCC on board 2-8-0 is designed to automatically convert to dc operation when you place it on a dc layout.  You should not have to do anything.  The only exception I can think of would be a locomotive purchased used where the previous owner had turned off the automatic dc conversion.

So, plug in the plugs, put it on your tracks, and enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you, Bob, for taking the time to come up with the questions and comments.  As there are so many of them in your posting, I will repeat them here in bold face to distinguish them from my own answers and comments.

Yes, 7 years ago I did a demo for some visitors where the locos slowed gracefully to a stop on the tape, reversed the headlights, sounded the correct toots from the sound decoder, and gradually accelerated back off the tape. All that using thick black electrical tape on BOTH rails. I did it using two different brands of decoders and carefully setting up the proper CV's. I admit that several other brands of decoders I tried could not be made to do that even though they had access to the + & -. at best they could only cross the tape. Some could not even do that because they did not handle DC conversion in a standard way.

I also tried a Digitrax decoder but the one I tried was far less than 7 years old.  It did not respond the same way.

I too use thick electrical tape on BOTH rails when testing the Lenz Gold Maxi decoder.  The only difference was I used red tape for better visibility.  I did not change any of the CV's.  I just took it out of the package and slapped it into the locomotive, no special adjustments required.  I did not test dc conversion, but will add it to my list for summer testing.

I would be more interested to know what happens when you INTEND to stop at a spot on the tape. Does the creep on stop feature work. Does it continue to creep off the tape in an attempt to regain track power?  According to the web site, it will not stop on a dirty piece of track but will creep to a clean spot. Does that work when loco stops while backing up?
I was able to get that to work years ago by adding a resistor and small relay, but I never got it to work in both directions. One thing I did not like was the drivers creeping when I picked the loco up and set it on a shelf. I had to add a cutoff switch. Does the gold decoder solve that problem?

When I intended to stop at a spot on the tape, I turned the throttle down to zero and the locomotive stopped.  It did not creep.  This worked equally well in both directions.  Incidentally,  I could not find the word "creep" in the description but I may have been looking at the wrong page.  Could you please post the URL for the page where you found that?

Can you stop the loco on the tape and still be able to control the loco an hour later, 8 hours later? When the battery goes dead.
Yes, although I discovered that accidentally.  I turned off DCC command station at 6 p.m. Saturday but forgot to turn off the battery.  At ten am Sunday, I went to demonstrate it, turned on the command station, and ran the locomoitve off the tape.  I do not recommend doing that as there is an 8 mA drain on the battery which would have flattened my little 320 mAh batteries in about 40 hours.

Is there a way to have the decoder go to low power mode, IE turn off the smoke generator etc. when it looses track power?

Yes, I believe the battery charge control output could be used to do that.  As I never use smoke, I had not thought of that, but it would be a great thing to do.

I guess I have to get one to find out. All I've ever seen is a description of the test as Stan described it a and a repeat of the same test. Getting it to run on and off the tape is only the first step. There are a lot of other issues that have to be solved. Can you run a COMPLETE set of tests? Please include how the decoder handles DC stopping sections. How about DC conversion for analog operation?

I do not have any dc stopping sections on my large scale layout but I will set one up to do just that.  It would also make the dc conversion test easier.

What happens when one of the drivers get jammed in a turnout, and shorts out the DCC signal so the booster shuts down? Does BMEF just keep applying more power until something breaks?

No.  There is a time out feature built into the decoder to shut it down in case of loss of DCC signal.  That can be a nuisance because a short such as you describe would shut down all of the other trains as well.  But it can also be a blessing because it stops all those other trains from smashing into the stuck train.  The command station does not care - they are designed to protect themselves from shorts; and the batteries in the locomotive do not care, they are isolated from the rails and cannot discharge backwards into them.

There was an earlier question about return loops that I missed answering.  As the DCC signal can be picked up from just one rail, I suspect that isolating a section of one rail at each input to a return loop would be all that would be required.  Testing will tell. 

Kevin and Tony, I am grateful for your comments and thank you both for taking the time to post them.

I do not expect this technology to wipe out battery power with radio control.  There will continue to be situations where radio control has a distinct advantage.  And I suspect these are the situations where it has its stronghold right now.    A major one of these is when you have a large layout, capable of supporting many trains and you operate it with many operators, each moving along with his own train.

Many of us will never have layouts that big.  Some of us have occasional access to one, and may even have one battery powered radio controlled locomotive that we can take with us.  But many of us have smaller layouts, what I have been referring to as suburban backyard layouts, where we like to run a few trains.  Once we reach the point of wanting to run more than one at a time, we have essentially three choices.  We can use dc power and block wiring, we can use DCC, or we can use battery power and radio control.  They all have advantages and disadvantages.  What I am hoping to do is find out whether battery power and through the rails command control can provide a fourth alternative for those suburban backyard layouts, an alternative that combines the good points of the other three without their bad points.  So what are the good points?

(1) independent locomotive control.
(2) lower cost than radio control, particularly if you have a DCC command station that you use indoors in the winter but leave idle during the summer.
(3) lower cost than DCC - no boosters required.

There is still some down side, and this includes:

(1) more expensive than dc, one-at-a-time control.
(2) requires batteries, all of which have limited lives and require special care and attention.
(3) to break free from a fixed-in-place controller, radio throttles are required, many of which are more expensive than full radio control systems.

I should also point out another major difference - with DCC control, your trains are never out of range of your command station sitting beside your comfy chair on the patio.  But if you use a radio throttle and walk along with your trains, you may go out of range of the receiver back there on the patio.  With full radio control, the reverse occurs.  Walking along with your trains, you never go out of radio range.  But if you sit in your comfy chair, your trains may go out of radio range.

Will this fourth method of control work?  I hope so, but until I do some serious testing, I cannot say yes it will or no it will not.  All I can say is that so far, it looks promising.  I would like nothing better at the end of the summer than to be able to say that all you need is a Bachmann E-Z Commander, some Gold Maxi decoders, and some batteries, and boom - you are running multiple trains with independent control.  But you can bet your boots that if it will not work for me, I will not be recommending it to you.