[Peter Armond]

I decided to try and fit decoders today to the rest of my locomotives. Having spent most of my spare time on scenery and relaying some of the track in recent months I realised I had only fitted decoders in 4 locos over the past year.

To cut a long story short, a faulty decoder gave me problems and I did not try another decoder in the loco concerned until this evening and that took only a few minutes to program.

When trying various experiments with the faulty decoder I decided to try and program on the main instead of the programming track and of course I forgot to take 2 DCC fitted locos off the track. Some time later one of these locos moved a short distance until it hit a point set against it causing a short circuit. I then found that both of these locos could not be controlled either with their original addresses or the address I was attempting to program at the time.

So I now have two runaway locos. Putting them on the track and trying to change the address while they are running simply does not work, the locos cannot be controlled and I have no idea what address they now have. My DCC system is the Digitrax Super Empire Builder and both the locos concerned are fitted with digitrax decoders and both have had the capacitors removed.

Is there any easy way to get the original addresses back on these locos or changing to default without removing the decoders from the locos?

 

[Richard Johnson]

You said:
When trying various experiments with the faulty decoder I decided to try and program on the main instead of the programming track and of course I forgot to take 2 DCC fitted locos off the track. Some time later one of these locos moved a short distance until it hit a point set against it causing a short circuit. I then found that both of these locos could not be controlled either with their original addresses or the address I was attempting to program at the time.

So I now have two runaway locos. Putting them on the track and trying to change the address while they are running simply does not work, the locos cannot be controlled and I have no idea what address they now have. My DCC system is the Digitrax Super Empire Builder and both the locos concerned are fitted with digitrax decoders and both have had the capacitors removed.

Is there any easy way to get the original addresses back on these locos or changing to default without removing the decoders from the locos?

[/quote]

Hi

to reset a digitrax decoder to factory default, set CV8 to 8. This will give address 3 and all other CVs at factory settings.

BTW - were you programming on the main or did you attach programme track wires to the main???

True "POM or Programming on the main" shouldn't require you to remove any other loco's - if that were the case, then there would be no point to having POM in the first place. ie: if you first select the loco or decoder number to be programmed on the main, it should not affect other loco's at all.

Digitrax calls Programming on the main "operations mode programming" and the shortened version of this that will appear on your display os "OPS".

BTW the empire builder is the ONLY digitrax system without deocer readback - I'd suggst an upgrade to the "command box" supplied with the super chief would be helpful for you.

Regards

Richard

 

[Peter Armond]

Richard,

Many thanks. I will try this tonight.

I realise now that I have not read the instructions correctly and enabled POM.

When I purchased the system I did think it strange that there was no decoder readback when there are in other Digitrax systems including cheaper ones. At the time I did not really consider it a problem but I will now give thought to an upgrade.

Regards

Peter