"Hard wiring" a DCC Ready loco

3780 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by hereward, Jul 25, 2008

Keith Underwood

Discussion Starter · Jul 18, 2008

Just thought I'd post this in case it helps anyone who may have had the same problem as me.
Some while back, I bought a Bachmann class 37 to add to my fleet (I always do a "test run" on DC, especially if I am putting the loco back in it's box to use later and fit with DCC). I was surprised to find that, on taking the loco out of it's box again after some months and fitting a decoder to the 8-pin socket, it did not read back on the programming track, neither did it now work on DC! So I ran some tests and found that the motor was fine, the pick-ups were fine, but for some reason the power was not getting from the pick-ups to the motor via the circuit board (if the pick up wires and motor wires were connected directly together on DC the loco ran fine).
So, to convert to DCC, I whipped out the circuit board and hard-wired the decoder directly between the pick-ups and motor (taking care to follow the mantra "red and black to the track, orange and grey the other way") and the loco is perfect on DCC now.
The moral of this story is: all that is labelled DCC Ready is not always as it seems to be! However, with a bit of solder, patience and care, you can succeed!
I don't know why the circuit board would not transmit the power, but, as I had found an answer by taking it out all together, I didn't bother to investigate this further!
I'd just like to add that, in the three instances so far where I've had a problem fitting a decoder, the problem has been with the locomotives and not with DCC. Suffice to say, I'm really happy with DCC as it has advantages over DC - plus the loco problems I have solved have been as a direct result of going through the process of fitting DCC in the first place!

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Martin71

· #2 · Jul 19, 2008

Hi Keath

I hard wire just about every loco I have. Last Tuesday I was being lazy, took the body of my Britannia to fit a loksound. Could hardly get it to move under 30 speed steps. Tried a TCS no problem wheels moved on 1st speed step. The problem was I had not removed the suppression cap. Removed it no problems at all. If I had taken the 10 minutes to hardwire in the first place I could have saved myself all that testing and worry "have I stuffed a loksound?"

I feel better hard wiring and rarely use any plugs except for testing. They take up space, another contact point that can fail, you can put it in backwards by mistake and who is to say it was wired correctly from the factory in the first place?

m

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hereward

· #3 · Jul 25, 2008

QUOTE (Keith Underwood @ 18 Jul 2008, 15:16) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Just thought I'd post this in case it helps anyone who may have had the same problem as me.
Some while back, I bought a Bachmann class 37 to add to my fleet (I always do a "test run" on DC, especially if I am putting the loco back in it's box to use later and fit with DCC). I was surprised to find that, on taking the loco out of it's box again after some months and fitting a decoder to the 8-pin socket, it did not read back on the programming track, neither did it now work on DC! So I ran some tests and found that the motor was fine, the pick-ups were fine, but for some reason the power was not getting from the pick-ups to the motor via the circuit board (if the pick up wires and motor wires were connected directly together on DC the loco ran fine).
So, to convert to DCC, I whipped out the circuit board and hard-wired the decoder directly between the pick-ups and motor (taking care to follow the mantra "red and black to the track, orange and grey the other way") and the loco is perfect on DCC now.
The moral of this story is: all that is labelled DCC Ready is not always as it seems to be! However, with a bit of solder, patience and care, you can succeed!
I don't know why the circuit board would not transmit the power, but, as I had found an answer by taking it out all together, I didn't bother to investigate this further!
I'd just like to add that, in the three instances so far where I've had a problem fitting a decoder, the problem has been with the locomotives and not with DCC. Suffice to say, I'm really happy with DCC as it has advantages over DC - plus the loco problems I have solved have been as a direct result of going through the process of fitting DCC in the first place!

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hereward

· #4 · Jul 25, 2008

QUOTE (hereward @ 25 Jul 2008, 22:40) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Keith,
The prob;em with the loco was probably the two coiled wires on the pcb,but as you say a simple solutuion is to hard wire any problematic DCC ready locos

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