Wiring Spectrum 3-Truck Shay for use with Crest Revolution Train Engineer

[Cloud9]

I recently purchased a Bachmann Spectrum 3-Truck Shay in G scale, equppied with DCC and Tsunami sound and would like to install a receiver to allow me to control it with a Crest Revolution Train Engineer.  I am fairly new to this hobby, and have only wired one other engine for use with the Train Engineer.  Does anyone else have experience with this, and if so, can you provide any information/wiring instructions for this?  Thanks for your assistance. 

[Kevin Strong]

Good news and bad news. The good news is that the nature of the wiring of that loco makes it easy to install the Revolution, as it's easy to isolate the leads going to the motor. The bad news; you can't use the Tsunami board with it. The Revolution receiver is not DCC-compatible, so it can't send DCC commands to the Tsunami. You could take the motor output of the Revolution to feed the track inputs of the Shay and run it that way, but you may need to run the output through a PWM - Linear filter. (Aristo makes one). I don't know how tolerant the Tsunami is of PWM voltage. Many DCC decoders kinda wig out on that, needing filtered DC to work properly in "analog" mode. That, and you won't be able to trigger the bells or whistles manually.

Having said that, with the new Aristo receivers having sound built in, you could just use the steam sound from that and bypass the Tsunami altogether. It's not the world's greatest sound, but it's pretty good. I just did a Revo installation in the Shay a few months back. I forget the specifics, but it was pretty easy. I think the wiring diagram is on this web site, so check there for the diagrams. Feel free to e-mail me for more specifics if you need help.

Later,

K