breaking rules...?  That hpp-8 has been pulling super liners.  The deal is that we have a small layout and he likes the double-ended hpp8 over the regular acela power.  He has one amfleet car (Riverossi), but it is an older version.  He wants to run a short Acela consist and that's why he's asked Santa for those cars.  He really doesn't need another engine of this type and he can use that hpp-8 with just about anything.

I saw the conversion couplers in a catalog the other night so we'll get a pair of those.

Thanks for the responses.

My son is searches the Internet so....

Last year Santa brought him an acela hpp-8.  It had the product registration card and nothing else in the box.  Took me a while to figure out how to get in and install the decoder.  It has standard knuckle couplers.

Santa has been asked this year to bring him some acela cars.  These cars, as I have looked at a pair of them up close, do not use standard knuckle couplers and instead use some weird pocket/clip thingy.

My son has asked santa that if he brings any trains to please set them up on his layout-in-progress.  I have no idea how Santa is going to connect these cars to the hpp-8.

I know Santa is a smart guy, but if I could help him figure that out, it might just speed things up for him and lighten the load.

Summary is:

hpp-8 with the stanard knuckle couplers and no instructions or additional parts in the spectum box

need to connect to

acela cars that do not use standard couplers.

thanks.

The mallet sounds interesting.  We are using LL snap track (because we had a LOT of it) and 18" radius turns.  The long stuff doesn't like it much, but I have made a few modifications to get it around.  I'm banking the curves now before we permanently attach the track to the foam.

Christmas is coming up and we need to get him something.  He's got at least one address space left on his EZ.  Got a pic of that Mallet...

So, we have an EZ-command controller and more than a handful of bachman HO (mix of steam and diesel) trains with Bachmann decoders.  We also have one Athern Genesis dash9 with another brand decoder we picked up used.

We are wondering about the functions of the bachmann decoders beyond carrying an address, turning the light off/on(F10), and dimming the light (F1).  Are there any others and where is the information regarding these...?  With only 10 functions I can't imagine there is much we can do with the EZ-command, but we'd like to know what else there is.

When we got the Athern it already had momentum braking set up and a few other things that we had to get set back to defaults by a friend with a Digitrax system.

Now my son wants to get at least one Soundtraxx decoder and speaker for one of his Bachmanns and I need to know what various functions the EZ-command can control with only 8 of the 10 function keys available.

So, to make the questions more concise:
1. what do all the function keys on the EZ-command control on a backmann-decoder-equipped train...?

2. what functions are available for sound-etc with other NMRA-compliant decoders using the function keys on the EZ-command.

We have a 4x8 multi-layered layout with plastic road bed track and usually don't run more than 2-3 engines at any given time.  My son would really like to add sound to his layout and has even asked Santa for the 2-6-6-2 Allegheny DCC /w sound for Christmas.

Thanks for good products that even a non-model train person can get working.