Decoder Assisted Consisting - Update

[Jim Banner]

I tried to enter a consist address into CV19 of the decoder in a DCC On Board GP-40, but was unsuccessful.  Yet the List of Supported CV's at http://www.bachmanntrains.com/home-usa/ez/1_Amp_Decoder_Instr.pdf seems to indicate that CV19 is supported.  Has anyone else tried decoder assisted consisting (otherwise known as Advanced Consisting) with Bachmann decoders, either pre installed of installed after sales?  What was the result?

[Jim Banner]

With some help from Hunt, I got the DCC On Board decoder to accept values for CV19, but still not in Operations Mode programming.  It appears that the decoder does not accept OPs mode programming.  What this means in terms of Advanced Consisting is that you have to program each locomotive to the Advance Consist address on your programming track.  This in turn means that there is little if any advantage over Basic Consisting.

For anyone interested in consisting, let me explain.  With Basic Consisting, which works with every DCC system that can program a locomotive's address, you simply program all the locomotives in the consist to the same address.  When you send out a message to that address (using your throttle and command station) ALL the locomotives on that address, i.e. your consist, obey the message.  This is very similar to Multi-Unit operation of strings of locomotives in real life.  Not surprising, then, that consisting is also know as "MUing."

With Advanced Consisting, you leave all the locomotives addresses as they are but you also give each locomotive an additonal "consist address."  When a locomotive has a consist address, that is the address the locomotive will respond to in terms of speed, direction, and possibly other functions.  So with all the locomotives in an Advanced Consist having the same consist address to monitor for speed and direction, they will all respond together.  That is exactly what you want, and so far, is exactly the same as Basic Consisting.  But, and this is a big BUT, there are additional features.  One is that most decoders that support Advanced Consisting also support Operations Mode programming.  That means you can change a locomotive's CV's even when the locomotive on the mainline, whether it is stopped or running, and even if there are other locomotives stopped or running on the mainline at the same time.  So you can set one locmotive to a consist address, add another locomotive to it, and change the address of the second locmotive to the consist address even as they are running down the track.  Similarly you can add a pusher on the end of a train "on the fly" and turn its operation over to the operator of the head end locomotive.

The other "big but" is that with Basic Consisting, if you turn on the headlight of one locomotive in the consist, you automatically turn on the headlights of all the locomotives in the consist.  BUT with Advance Consisting, you can set CV's to enable the functions or disable them in each particular locmotive.  You can, for example, enable the headlight of the lead locomotive for running forward and the rear light on the last locomotive.

There are some other tricks possible with OPs mode programming, but let's leave that for another time.