QSI is for all intents and purposes comatose at the moment. You can still find the Titan decoders at dealers here and there, but QSI apparently has not been filling orders for some time. I'd opt for Soundtraxx, TCS, or LokSound at the moment.

Later,

K

I'm using Micro-Engineering. I would agree that you need to be a bit careful with it, but the results are well worth it.



Here's a list I did comparing the various commercial tracks and how their ties scale in 1:48.

Micro Engineering code 83 - 6' long, 6" wide, 21" center-to-center
Peco On30 code 100 - 5' long, 9" wide, 21" center-to-center
Atlas HO code 83 - 4' 6" long, 4" wide, 9" center-to-center
Atlas HO code 100 - 4' 6" long, 6" wide, 14" center-to-center

With regard to the prototype, much depends on the look you're going after. The only reference I could find to tie lengths on the 2' gauge railroads was a mention that they were 5' long, 5" wide, and 5" thick. (I forget which railroad that was.) On the 3' gauge, ties ranged in length from 6' (some outliers were slightly narrower) to full-length standard gauge (8' 6"). Center-to-center spacing on the ties hovered around 20" give or take an inch in pretty much all cases I've seen.

Later,

K

In the Great White North, check out all-out graphics in Vancouver. They do custom dry transfers. I use them for many of my projects. Great people, great quality, and fast turnaround. Not cheap--especially for one-offs. When I send artwork to them for dry transfers, I try to fit 6 or 7 cars' worth of artwork on a 9" x 12" sheet. That brings the cost down to about $8 per car, give or take. (I'm in the US, so I currently have a favorable exchange rate.)

Later,

K

There are direct plug-in DCC decoders for the socket in the Climax available from QSI, Zimo, and ESU. All others can use the wired interface board (looks like a purple and blue porcupine), though space under the coal bunker may be at a premium for larger boards.

Later,

K

None of those.

The tender of the Emma Nevada has the large scale de facto "standard" 23-pin socket in it. There are a handful of decoders designed to plug directly into this socket. Not all of them are DCC, but some are. QSI's older "magnum" and newer "Titan" boards come to mind. You may want to check ESU and Zimo to see if they make plug-and-play variants of their decoders which are compatible with this socket. I can't remember all of their various form factors off the top of my head.

Failing that, however, the Emma Nevada comes with a plug-in board which I lovingly refer to as the "porcupine." It plugs into the socket, and has 23 wires coming off of it, each one directly connected to the individual pins. This allows you to wire any decoder on the market to the existing on-board electronics. Works like a charm! There's a wiring diagram which shows you which wires go where, and many modern decoders (TCS, Soundtraxx, QSI, ESU, Zimo, Massoth, etc.) for large scale have screw terminals, so you just put each individual wire into the correct screw terminal on the decoder and you're all set. I've run my mogul this way with QSI and Massoth decoders for testing purposes.

Later,

K

Sounds like something got cooked, but the question is what. The boiler should definitely not warm to the touch. In fact, I pulled the cooling fans out of mine, and still have not had any heat issues. I've got hundreds of hours on mine. The smell coming from the stack (the primary open-air vent for the boiler) would seem to indicate there's some electronic component that's no longer doing its job as it should.

Later,

K

Was that the Large Scale Journal, which John Nichols published for a while? I seem to recall the article, and I know at the time John was publishing it, we got each issue. I think they got lost in the flood my parents had a few years back, so we don't have them anymore.

Sorry I can't be of much more help. Last I heard, John was still in Annapolis, but that was a while back.

Later,

K

Presuming you mean the 4-6-0, the answer is yes. (The "Spectrum" 4-4-0 is likewise easy to convert.)

Easiest way is to gut the existing electronics. Run 6 wires from loco to tender; two for the motor, two for the headlight, and two for the chuff contact. You can omit the chuff contacts if you opt for magnetic chuff triggers on the tender wheels or if you're using a sound system that allows for motor-controlled chuff. (QSI, Zimo, Soundtraxx DCC decoders, for example.)

Most folks just put everything in the tender for convenience sake. That way it's easy to get to in order to replace the battery when they go flat, or troubleshoot, etc. There's plenty of room in the tender for battery, speaker, and control electronics. If you're a bit more adventurous, you can put the control electronics and speaker in the locomotive boiler. The advantage there is that with the speaker being in the boiler, the sounds will come from the locomotive instead of the tender, which is more realistic. Also, you can wire the motor, chuff trigger, and headlight directly to the controller instead of needing to run wires between the loco and tender. I'd still recommend in this case putting the batteries in the tender. It'd just be two wires (maybe 4 if you want to wire up a back-up light on the tender) running between the loco and tender, which is what exists on the stock loco anyway, so you can use the existing connections, just wire them to different things.

I can get more specific, but I'd need to know which flavor of battery R/C control you're considering. The basic concept for installation is identical for all the various systems, though the exact components will vary depending on what you want to do and control.

Later,

K

If you've got the boiler and cab off of the frame, then most definitely, you can remove the valve gear from the frame. If I recall, the reverse bar is what ends up keeping both sides joined together with no easy way of separating them, but you can remove them easily enough.

Later,

K

The tricky part will be the reverse quadrant hangers. They're attached to the top of the frame, and won't come off without taking the boiler off of the locomotive.

Later,

K

While on many fronts I can understand Bachmann's position about waiting until the market is stronger to release new items, there's the other side of that coin which looks at the almost complete lack of anything new coming out over the past 5 years from many manufacturers and believes there to be a strong correlation between that and a lack of market enthusiasm. Are sales down because demand is down, or is demand down because there's nothing new to excite people to buy?

We need a spark, and I think Greg's onto something. The 1:29 market has been flagging with the demise of Aristo, and I could get a sense when Bachmann announced the eggliners' return to production that the sap started to rise in the hobby in sincere hope that they'd once again see some more of their favorite models return to the shelves.

It's not my money on the line, so Bachmann can ignore my comments to their hearts' content, but at the same time, they've got considerable money invested in existing tooling. Sitting idly by while the market declines takes value away from that investment. From my perspective, I think it would make sense to use the tools you already have on hand to try to invigorate the market, even just a little bit.

Again, it's not my money on the line.

Later,

K

I'd plan on 2.5 - 3 amps stall current. Most likely in "normal" operation it will draw somewhere around 1 amp give or take. My 2-motor Climax and 45-tonner both pull just under an amp on average. You'll draw more on starting the train and also if you've got steep grades (which many folks who run Shays tend to have).

Later,

K

To my knowledge, the 4-4-0 was never offered "DCC-ready," unless they did some minor updates when they released the Eureka & Palisades version a few years after the original 4-4-0 release. Those original 4-4-0s did not have anything that resembled "DCC-ready" accessibility. Most certainly, the 4-4-0 was never offered "DCC equipped." The only DCC-equipped locos from the factory were the 3-truck Shay and the 2nd-generation Climax. The updated 2-6-0 (the one that just came out) is--to my knowledge--the first of that class (the 4-4-0 and 2-6-0) to be available truly "DCC Ready" with an easily-accessible PC board which controls all the functions of the loco.

The wiring diagrams linked above appear to me to be different than what I found on the original 4-4-0. Specifically, the connections between engine and tender. There are 6 wires, a 2-wire plug for the chuff switch on the rear axle, and a 4-wire plug, which carries power from the tender forward to the loco as well as and power from the loco's lighting board back to the back-up light on the tender if it were so equipped. The wiring diagram doesn't show the wires going from the chuff switch on the rear axle to the tender (it shows the wires on the rear axle, but not where they go) and the 4-pin connector is weird. On the tender board, the wiring diagram shows the first two pins as being the left and right rails, and nothing on the right two pins. The connector going to it in the loco has the left rail and right rail on the outermost pins, and a speaker connection on the middle two pins. So, something's definitely wrong on that diagram. Also, if the chuff switch is wired from the rear axle to the tender (which it is), that presumes the sound system would be in the tender, along with the speaker (the opening for which is molded into the tender frame), so presumably there would be no reason for speaker wires to run between loco and tender.

My guess is that if your loco has sound already, it's probably got a Phoenix or similar board in the tender. If it's a Phoenix board, then the toggle switch would be the volume control for the sound. Check to see if it's a "center-off" toggle switch. If it is, it's likely the volume control. Depending on how the sound system is programmed, the bells and whistles will function at various voltages or changes in voltage. There may also be magnetic triggers which would be triggered off of magnets in the track. Look for magnetic reed switches probably mounted to the tender trucks if they're there.

With regard to converting the loco to full DCC, I would not describe the 4-4-0 as "plug and play" by any stretch of the imagination. In looking at the DCC wiring diagram Bachmann supplies, it looks like they're presuming a boiler-mounted decoder, but that would seem to preclude a any kind of sound-equipped decoder. (Why have the chuff contacts go back to the tender?) Most folks who have done DCC or R/C installs on the 4-4-0 opted for the "cut and gut" method. In terms of cost, I'd expect an install like that to be anywhere from $100 - $250 depending on what's involved and how you wand to do things. There are lots of options.

First, I'd recommend opening up the tender and having a look-see at what's inside of it. That'll help us figure out your best future course of action.

Later,

K

The 4-6-0 is a 1:22.5 model of a large engine, and the Climax and Forney both are 1:20.3 models of small locos. Visually they play well together (at least in my opinion.)

Later,

K

The motor's in the firebox. I know there was none on the earlier versions of the mogul, I didn't even look on the new version.

Later,

K