John

Only one device can be placed in the socket at a time.

The jumper board with wires was designed to be used with a device that has motor control, and provided DC power. 

To get the lights to work you must provide DC power to the locomotive.  No DC voltage to the locomotive no lights

The simplest way to install the sierra board is to use the DC dummy board as described in a message I posted on June 4th at 8PM.  This requires you solder two wires to the DC jumper board. plus connect the speaker.

If you desire to use the board with wires then the installation is more complex as it requires you to figure out a way to supply DC voltage to the locomotive.

Stan

The board with wires is intended to be used with a DCC decoder or wireless device that has both motor and DC power.

If you look at the DC dummy board you will notice that there are several components on the board.

There are a series of rectifiers on the DC dummy board to let the lights light before the motor begins moving.

There is also a rectifier on the DC dummy board to provide DC voltage to the locomotive.

In your configuration there is no DC voltage being supplied to the locomotive so none of the features which require DC voltage (such as the lights) will work.

The solution for your installation is to put DC voltage back to the locomotive.

This can be achieved by either placing a rectifier from the track inputs to the locomotive + and - wires or hooking the locomotive +- to the sierra battery.  If connected to the battery you will use battery power when there is no DC track voltage on the rails.

Hope that helps

Stan

If you have the Bachmann DC dummy board in the socket in the locomotive and you have the light switch to DC then the lights should be on.  If not something is damaged.

You can check to ensure that you have DC voltage on J1 6 and 7.  Best to turn the motor off and put 12 v track voltage on the rails and check to see that you have around 11 volts on pins 6 and 7.

Stan

Yes I have installed both a DCC decoder and sound board in the 1st gen climax.  Unfortunately I have long ago misplaced any diagrams I had for this locomotive.

I would recommend any DCC board with screw terminals but would not recommend installing a plug and play sound board such as the one that comes with the 2nd gen climax.  The reason is that 1) you will need to find a socket for the plug and play board (the socket is not in the 1st gen climax) and 2) the lighting in the 2nd gen climax is designed for this purpose while the lighting in the 1st gen is not.

I might suggest you you look over Geroge's excellent pages on the 1st gen Climax as he has some excellent tips.

http://www.trainweb.org/girr/tips/tips5/climax_tips.html

Stan

Since the Sierra sound board does not have the ability to have its lighting functions controlled by an external control there is no need to hook up the light functions to the sound board.

To control the lights refer to the light switches which are located under the tanks at the rear of the locomotive.   Your manual provides a description of these switches.

There are three positions labeled DC DCC and off.  A better description might be DC = Always On, DCC = switched by the device in the socket, Off = off.

Switch the light switches DC and they wil be on.

Hope this helps.

Stan

John

As pointed out by Yardmaster, the adapter board with wires is the solution to use if you are installing a DCC decoder a radio control interface or other motor/sound control system that does not have a plug and play interface.

When installing only a sound board  that does not have a plug and play interface you must attach wires to either the main board using the supplied solder pads or solder wires to the (DC) Dummy PC Board.

Your Climax manual provides a table which shows the purpose of each pin.

For example using a Sierra board refer to Fig 9 of the Sierra's manual which displays its master wiring diagram.

To start simply connect track power to pins 7 an 8 of the Sierra board.  Using the pin assignment diagram for the climax you connect these pins to J1 1-2 and J1  11-12.

You will also need to connect wires from the Sierra's speaker connection (9,10 ) to either the speaker in the climax directly or to pins J2 -1 and J2 - 3.

Its as simple as that.

Stan

Two things which you might check out.

There are 4 plungers that carry power and motor from each truck.  I might suggest cleaning these and putting on some conducta lube on these contacts.

The second is to clean both the wheels and the space behind the wheels which make contact with the pickups.  We have found on our railroad that the sound boards in these locomotives are a little more sensitive to clean wheels the some of the other locomotives we have.

Hope that helps

Stan

In your Climax box is a dummy board with wires.

This allows easy installation of after market sound and motor control products.

If you are only installing a sound board and not a sound with motor control product it might be best to solder wires to the track wire terminals.  Not sure how many other wires are needed for the product you wish to install other then track and speaker wires.

Hope that helps

Stan

The 3 truck shay was developed before Bachmann factored RC control into the design of their locomotives.  Later Spectrum locomotives have provided for RC control in the design of the electronics.

Take a look at how the connections are done in J1, J2, and J3.

i do not have the semantics for the electronics in the 3 truck shay but I suspect the reason the lights do not work may be because there is no power on the Bachmann 3 truck shay main board and/or no common between the Airwire and Bachmann boards.

When wired to the DCC decoder in track power mode the track power goes through the Bachmann board and then to the decoder. I suspect this power is being used by both the Bachmann board and the decoder.

I would hook up track power DCC per the instructions on the DCC sheet and check it out to ensure everything is working properly

I would then contact CVP to see if they had a app note for connecting AirWire to the 3 truck Shay using the Bachmann electronics.

Hope that helps

Stan

From your email am I correct that you installed the decoder yourself.

On the firemans side of the decoder are the power and motor connections in screw terminals.

Have you connected the power to connections to the Bachmann 3 truck board board or only to the Airwire?

On the engineers side of the decoder are the function connections which plug into the decoder.  You need to unplug this set of wires from the Bachmann board and plug it into the decoder  I assume this is plugged into the decoder?

On the rear side of the Bachmann 3 truck shay board are screw terminals.  I assume you followed the instructions which came with your shay to convert from DC to DCC operation?

Stan Ames

Bill is correct.

Increasing your clearance is always the best solution.  6 1/2 inches is rather low.

If this can not be done and you still wish to run the 4-4-0 you would need to do the folllowing

1) remove the whistle.  It is rather high.  You can always get a short whistle through one of the parts places and saving the original one will always let you replace it later if your clearances are raised.

2) to lower the smokestack you would need to cut about 1/2 inch out of the middle of the stack and then glut a plastic rod inside so that the 2 pieces of the stack are held together.  Not difficult but it will change the overall looks of the locomotive.

R2 or R3 radius track is recommended.  I have not tried the 4-4-0 on R1 radius to know if it will work or not.

Hope that helps.

Stan

The highest part of the 4-4-0 is its whistle which is about 7 1/2 inches above the rail.

If the whistle is shortened or removed the next highest point is the smokestack which is about 7 1/8 above the rail.

If you shorten the stack the headlight is about 6 3/8 above the rail

Hope that helps

Stan

There is a function plug in the locomotive.  In DC mode this set of wires is plugged into to the board in the locomotive.

I DCC mode these wires are connected to the decoder.  2 of these wires are speaker wires.  The speaker is in the 3rd truck.

A single motor/sound decoder is fine and 4+ amp decoder will work.

Hope that helps.

Stan

Do you have the instruction packet that came with the 3 truck shay?

If not they are online

http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/dwg/dwgs/82494.pdf

The instructions show how to install the Bachmann/Soundtraxx decoder.  You can use the same instructions as a guide to install any other brand of DCC decoder.   The only difference is that you will need to use individual wires rather than the function plug.

Hope that helps

Stan

There are several possible approaches.

You could install a decoder and use F0 to turn on the headlight.

Since this is a static display you could remove each truck and place a piece of tape on the motor connections.

On the top of each truck are 4 plungers.  2 go to the track and 2 go to the motor.  Place a piece of tape on the 2 motor plungers and the motor will not move.

You could also place the shay on rollers.  Then you could see both the motion and lights.  The shay does not draw much current when it is not pulling a lot of cars.

Hope that helps

Stan