[zmil]

Hi All
Having done a few conversions now ( and not blowing up any decoders , he added fingers crossed

)
Most of my conversions have been Fleischmann loco's

Fleischmann use a lot of tender driven loco's and for simplicities sake I put the Decoder in the tender or Loco depending on how much room there is.

I also run the lights on "half-wave " power which means 1 less cable to fit through from Tender to Loco and the existing
lights don't need to be modified

In my last 2 installs (decoder in the tender) there has been a power pickup (-ve side) on the tender but no +ve.
In both cases I removed the pickup and supplied the rear light with power from the black wire( from the Loco power pickup)

My concern was (even though I have no separate block system) that the loco and tender pickups can end up on 2 different DCC blocks and cause a problem.

Regards Zmil

 

[SPROGman]

QUOTE (zmil @ 30 Jun 2008, 13:50) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hi All
Having done a few conversions now ( and not blowing up any decoders , he added fingers crossed

)
Most of my conversions have been Fleischmann loco's

Fleischmann use a lot of tender driven loco's and for simplicities sake I put the Decoder in the tender or Loco depending on how much room there is.

I also run the lights on "half-wave " power which means 1 less cable to fit through from Tender to Loco and the existing
lights don't need to be modified

In my last 2 installs (decoder in the tender) there has been a power pickup (-ve side) on the tender but no +ve.
In both cases I removed the pickup and supplied the rear light with power from the black wire( from the Loco power pickup)

My concern was (even though I have no separate block system) that the loco and tender pickups can end up on 2 different DCC blocks and cause a problem.

Regards Zmil

If you have a lot of locos, I don't think it's a good idea to run all the lights from the same "half wave". You should try and load the system evenly.

It doesn't matter about tender or loco pickups since the signal is the same in all DCC blocks apart from special cases like reversing loops which can be protected by auto-reverse modules.

Andrew Crosland

 

[Brian Considine]

QUOTE (zmil @ 30 Jun 2008, 13:50) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I also run the lights on "half-wave " power which means 1 less cable to fit through from Tender to Loco and the existing
lights don't need to be modified
Quite a number of my earlier FLM steam locos are "DCCed" this way - I just leave the front lights in circuit all of the time & change the bulbs/lamps for 24v ones.

 

[zmil]

QUOTE (Brian Considine @ 1 Jul 2008, 00:41) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Quite a number of my earlier FLM steam locos are "DCCed" this way - I just leave the front lights in circuit all of the time & change the bulbs/lamps for 24v ones.

Hi Brian
Do you mean the front lights on , permanently , not switched through the decoder ?
I have mine switched through the white wire and then they can be dimmed if necessary.
I generally program mine to dim at stop.
Regards Zmil

 

[Brian Considine]

QUOTE (zmil @ 1 Jul 2008, 02:44) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Do you mean the front lights on , permanently , not switched through the decoder ?
Hi - yes, I very rarely do any shunting with larger locos, which nearly always run "forwards" on my layout so it just makes it easier !