I have just DCC'd Two Poole built duchess locos using the digi hat, one with a second hand Lenz 0.4amp decoder and one with a new Lais decoder costing £13 on ebay, both are extremely smooth, even on number one speed, I use a gaugemaster prodigy advance and the basic settings I have programmed are: Start voltage 40, acc 8 dec 8 TV180 these settings work well for me, but other smaller farish locos only need start voltage set at 1, for some reason 40 seems okay for the duchess engines, maybe as they are heavier than the plastic bodied jobs. If you use the digi hats, be aware that you can't remove them easily as the insulation sleeve tears easily- I tired the fit and did a insulation test before fitting the brus and spring, and destroyed the kynar sleeving, in the end tamiya masking tape did the job insted, but the second loco i fitted the brush and soring then tested for insulation and all was good. Hope this helps, but do it as they are well suited to this conversion. One loco was new old stock, the other was used but in good condition when I bought it.My first posting but I'm sure you guys can help me.
I'm starting a layout after many years absence and reading through this forum and the usual publications it seems obvious to go down the DCC route for a new layout However I have a number of old Poole built Farish loco's that I would like to convert to DCC but I'm not sure what effect DCC will have on these as they were built to either be running or left in an isolated section. They were not built to sit idle in a powered section of track, is it likely to burn out the motor and should I plan to add some isolated sections or do the decoders help protect the motor? Finally I only intend to use two function wired decoders on the loco's (can't see any reason for more functions as I don't plan to use sound), are there any types I should avoid installing on Farish kit.