You touched on one of my pet peeves with the modern hobby. You have these finely detailed models retailing for top dollar, but they simply don't hold up under regular usage. Why pay extra for all those fine details when they will simply break off if you use the car? I'm all about upgrades that improve the operating characteristics of the cars. Thus I am a fan of the Bachmann silver series. They hold up well under the rigors of my railroad, and cost only a little more than the necessary upgrades to an older, cheaper car. They run well right out of the box.

Before the advent of cars like these, the best running cars were the Athearn and Roundhouse ones that already came with RP25 wheels and Body mounted couplers. The only upgrades I needed to do were adding Kadee couplers, which dropped right into the coupler boxes, and adding a little weight.


For train set cars of that era (1960s to mid 1990s) I needed to do the following:
1.Replace the truck mounted couplers with body mounted ones.
2.Replace the horn hook couplers with Kadees.
3.Replace, at a minimum, the old wheelsets that had pizza cutter flanges with ones that met the RP25 profile. Usually this included new metal wheels, but not always. The wheel profile is far more important than what it is made of.
4.Ream the truck journals with a truck tuning tool so that the new wheelsets rolled far better than the originals ever did. If this was not possible, the trucks would get replaced.
5. Once the trucks and wheelsets were satisfactory, coupler height would be adjusted to meet the Kadee coupler height guage, and the trip pins adjusted.
6.Add enough weight to bring them up to at least NMRA specs. To be honest, I prefer mine slightly overweight.

Usually secondary improvements like repainting or replacement of missing details like foot stirrups would occur while the cars were out of service for primary upgrades.

WIth the Silver Series cars, and similar ones by Athearn or Atlas, such upgrades are unnecessary. The only upgrade I now do is to replace the plastic knuckle couplers with Kadees as they fail.

double crossover, aka scissors crossover has 4 switches and a crossing in the middle. Single crossover has two switches and no crossing. A scissors crossover saves alot of space by allowing two crossovers to occupy slightly more space than just one would.

I also use Anyrail and prefer it over SCARM. Both have their advantages, and disadvantages.

As for what you can build using the pieces in the track pack, you really don't have enough to build more than the most basic layout. SOmething that will keep your interest will require a few more switches. There are any number of sources of small track plans that could be modified to use EZ track, including the books Atlas sells, and the Kalmbach books 101 track plans and 101 more track plans.

Quote from: trainman203 on June 09, 2023, 09:40:29 PMI'm a retired architect, I desiged my layout with Autocad too.  Just like I always found in 45 years of real projects, reality on site doesn't always align with projections perfectly.  Uncontested fact, EZ Track passing tracks with no.5 switches, with perfectly aligned track and fitted section on the main left gaps in both of my passing tracks. I model a 15 mph branch line and my layout is short, so high speed testing was irrelevant in my case.  Mine got tacked down and glued down with ballast as well, but I'm here to say that no planning of any kind could have avoided the gaps I encountered on the passing tracks. I even knew about the flaws and accommodated them in the work. Off of my main line, I have quite a bit of flextrack and sectional track by other manufacturers, but painting and ballast makes all of them blend together indistinguishably.

None of this really matters, I have flawless operation and cannot remember the last derailment I had wasn't caused by pilot error like an incorrectly thrown switch or inadequate switching clearance.

In any case, my next layout will use code 70 and code 55 flextrack with number eight switches where possible, affording a realism that no sectional track would ever be able to provide.

And all of the above are the reasons I handlay my own track. I can build switches to a much higher standard than any commercially made track I've ever seen. And I can curve them any way I see fit, or build them to fit specific locations on the layout. And all the critical tolerances, points, flangeway width, track guage, will be dead on. All of the tune ups others have to do on their switches are moot, because those flaws in the pre made switches are engineered out of the ones I build myself.

Strictly on a personal note, I no longer use dummies, and haven't in many years. I run a mountain railroad, and although my trains are small extra powered locomotives help with the grades.

I think that if you are running newer, can motored locomotives the current draw thing is overrated. If you only run sound equipped locomotives, then you might have problems with current draw. But for me, i don't want the cacaphony of a dozen or so locomotives sitting around idling while only a couple are running.  I also feel that if you have a DCC system of sufficient capacity, and have taken steps to reduce the overall load such as isolating the tracks where you park your locomotives, then you should be OK. I've never needed more than 2 or 3 amps power at any given time.

That said, dummies can have a place on the layout. They make good stand ins sitting around a turntable, or in a long line of stored locomotives on one of your yard tracks.

Dummies made alot of sense back in the days when locomotive motors often drew an amp or more each. But these days a basic locomotive draws maybe 1/10 that, and even sound locomotives are only about 1/4 amp each.

If you are currently using DCC, lace the locomotive on the track. If it makes a high pitched squeal on DCC powered track, it is a DC locomotive.Make sure you don't let it sit and squeal for too long, as that can damage the motor.

WHat do you mean by weak? How are the trains powered? WHat exactly did you add to the layout that seems to be causing the problem?

When you tried reprogramming did you by chance reset the deceleration rate (CV4)? If not, try increasing the value until your locomotive runs smoothly. I've run into this problem with similar DCC OnBoard locomotives, usually when heading downgrade with a train. Adjusting the deceleration rate so they coast a little seems to cure the problem.

For what it's worth, You can make the double crossover you want out of Atlas CUstom Line components easily. A #4 double crossover takes up 20" with the mains on 3" centers. A #6 takes up 26" with the same 3" centers. The center crossings would be 25 and 19 degrees respectively.

Just a thought, but us old heads used to take these switches and trim the unnecessary straight track off them to get them to fit custom situations. EZ track switches have a LOT of extra track length. If you're willing to sacrifice the interlocking roadbed feature of these switches, you could trim them to fit the same 3" centers as the Atlas track, and probably get close to the dimensions I listed.

It all depends on what you'd rather do, modify your track plan to fit the component pieces, or modify the pieces to fit the track plan.

You are correct in your assumption that the locomotive would run the opposite way if you turned it around.

As for other DCC systems, I can't give my recommendations on the board here. But I will say that there are a couple of very good entry level systems that cost within $50 more than the EZ Command. I am using one of those, and have been since 2004. It's served me well and did everything I needed it to do for almost 20 years.

Terry on this board also suggested a workaround if you want to keep your EZ COmmand that probably costs less than buying a whole new system. He uses a stand alone programmer that can only rewrite the CVs. It can't run the trains. But it would do what you need to do here, and alot more that you might want to do later.  (speed matching with another locomotive, adjustments of top speed, acceleration, deceleration, etc)

DCC decoders have an analog mode that recognizes DC powered track and responds to the track voltage. If the decoder is fooled into thinking it is on DC when the track is in fact DCC, it will respond to the voltage present on the rails, which in DCC is constant. The only way to stop it is to shut off the power to the track.




Analog mode can be disabled by rewriting a different value to CV29, but this requires a DCC system capable of programming. I'd suggest you take the locomotive to a model railroad club or hobby shop and see if they can do this for you. EZ Command does not have this capability.

Another problem these days is that people expect everything to be plug n play and are lost when it isn't. Anything worth doing is a learning experience.

I'm not sure what you mean by fluorescent dayglo hues. Those have never been widely used in the rail industry and I don't see them on models either. DO you perhaps mean bright colours? Those have been used by the railroads since at least the first streamliners. They seemed to become widespread in the years after ww2, and they've been on freight cars and locomotives since then. Yes, weathering has subdued the colours, but I don't mind them at all. They are far less offensive to me than the graffiti that covers everything to-day.

I remember when the first CHessie System locomotives appeared in 1972, they and the red and white Western Maryland units were the brightest things around in an area dominated by reilroads with black and blue engines the local railroads used in that austerity era when simple paint schemes were in favour. I was immediately a fan. Conrail's bright blue further livened things up. But other areas of the country had Frisco red & white, Burlington red and grey, Santa Fe, Soo Line and KCS white, Milwaukee orange, and other bright colours. I would much rather see them than the drab Norfolk Southern locomotives that run past the house.

I thought this was a craftsman's hobby? Soldering is one of the crafts every modeller should learn. It comes in handy in so many applications from trackwork to locomotive repair to building construction. Metal is great to work with, especially when what you are trying to model is also metal.

With regards to the original poster, sets like these "may" have had a market 40 years ago, but I'm not sure they'd sell to-day. The trend in the hobby has been trains that are at least plausible in the real world, if not absolute prototype fidelity.

That said, personally I'd love to see somebody do models of the Frisco F7s or FAs, in the original black and yellow paint. There aren't even decals available to do these that I have found.


As for sets, how about heritage sets? You already make locomotives for the various big railroads presently operating. A heritage set would have these locomotives pulling cars from the railroads that merged to create these mega railroads.

NS pulling cars from N&W, SOuthern, Conrail, etc.

Union Pacific pulling cars from Katy, Missouri Pacific, Western, Pacific, etc.

BNSF  pulling cars from BN, Santa Fe, Northern Pacific, etc.

CSX pulling cars from CHessie Systen, L&N, Seaboard COast Line, etc

CN pulling cars from  Illinois Central, Grand Trunk, EJ&E, Wisconsin Central, etc.

CP pulling cars from D&H, Soo Line and Milwaukee Road.

The Thoroughbred set is a good example of what I'm talking about.