Large Scale Bachmann Forney decoder

[RIrail]

Hi all, I was wondering if any one has installed a QSI Titan Bachmann plug and play decoder in the outside frame 2-4-4 Forney. A month ago I talked with Josh at the QSI booth at the Amherst show and he mentioned I would need a specific model of the Bachmann decoder for it to work with the optical chuff sensor in the Forney. Just interested to see if anyone has had success / issues with this install.

Thanks

Steve

[nymark]

This is a topic I'm interested in also. Plug and play can mean a lot in HO and N but is over all pretty straight forward and "do-able". I put a sound decoder into an N scale Kato P-42 and felt like I accomplished something a bit beyond my skill level and have even soldered some N scale decoder installs. Large scale has different power requirements and much less choice. I have a 3 truck Shay that came with sound and a decoder and would like to buy a C-19 and a 4-6-0 at some point. I am researching decoder installs on these-there is a lot of info online so keep digging.

[Kevin Strong]

Steve, your question has been answered on other sites, so I'll just state here that "yes, it will work just fine" for the purposes of expediency and for the benefit of the readers here who may not visit those other sites.

Mark, the C-19 has the same plug-and-play socket as the Forney, so the QSI board would work equally well in that. Don't discount other non-plug-and-play large scale decoders, though. Bachmann includes a generic decoder interface board which is essentially a plug-in board with a whole bunch of wires sticking out of it. These get attached to the appropriate spots on non-plug-and-play decoders. Soundtraxx, ESU Loksound, and Zimo make very good sound boards as well for large scale. TCS is supposed to be releasing a large-scale version of their WowSound decoder in the very near future as well.

For the 4-6-0, there's no "socket," so you're going to have to do a full installation of whichever flavor decoder you want to use.

If you're going to be going battery power on these locos, QSI expects to have their "G-wire" receiver back in production very shortly. Now, it's QSI, and "shortly" is not exactly a concrete term with them, but I'm told they had a working prototype at a show a week or two ago. To run the other boards in battery environments, you can use the Tam Valley Depot Hi-Power receiver to control them. Both the Tam Valley Depot and QSI receivers use the same Airwire transmitters. The QSI receiver must operate on Airwire frequencies 0 - 7, while the Tam Valley Depot receiver must operate on Airwire frequency 16.

Later,

K

[nymark]

Thanks for this info Kevin. I am really enjoying my Shay and have been experimenting with different track plans. I've purchased enough track to develop a pretty good mainline in the backyard and also your "Garden Railway Basics" which has been really helpful in determining some basic ideas about what I want to eventually build. (Hope I'm allowed to mention that last part).

[Kevin Strong]

No argument from me for mentioning it!  I'm glad your enjoying the book.

Later,

K

[RIrail]

Well I got my Bachmann QSI Titan decoder for my Forney and installed it last night (plug & play). Motor control works fine and the bell and whistle work too (not as loud as my other QSI Magnum). There is no CHUFF at all and no fire box or ash pan flicker. Forward head light is rather dim. Before when it ran on DC with no decoder the ash pan and fire box flicker work well and the head light was brighter. So much for plug and play. Guess tonight I start the trouble shooting and trying to contact QSI for support.
Steve

[Kevin Strong]

If I recall correctly, the Titan by default uses the BEMF chuff trigger, so it will ignore any external chuff triggers until programmed to look for them. I don't know the CV off the top of my head, and I'm not near my laptop to look it up on the CV Manager software.

As for the firebox and headlight, now that I think about it, that may also be a CV thing. I believe the default setting on the headlight is to have the front headlight dim until the loco starts moving forward. So check that first. If the headlight goes on full brightness when moving forward, but goes dim when the loco is stopped, then this is the case. You can change that "easy enough" (much easier with the programming interface).

It could also be that perhaps the headlight and firebox are taking power from the track, not from the decoder. They're LEDs, and DCC is a bi-polar square wave, a form of AC. As such, they're only lighting up half the time, so they will look dim. Make sure the control switches for those lights are set to DCC, so they'll take power from the decoder, not the track.

Later,

K

[RIrail]

Hi Kevin, all switches are in the right position for this setup. The head light does light dimly at stop and brightens in forward but still not that intense for a head light. The ash pan and fire box do not light at all. Tony's trains installed the Q2-FX Steam file #3101-802 which may not be Bachmann specific. Greg suggested using a Bachmann specific file so tonight I will install the Bachmann Forney #3107-2 file and see if that gets things working.
Thanks
Steve