FRUSTRATION CITY.. Who's to Blame For This?

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W

Wahoo

New Member
Ok! Here's the Deal: Several years ago I started buying a few new HO engines, rail cars, and a new Digitrax Super Chief 5A System with the idea that when I got a place to put it all together I'd have a head start. All items were bought new at hobby shops. Either walked in or bought online. Just over a year ago I started putting it all together at my new home in a remote area of Wyoming. I have an island setup with about 250 feet of flex track, the Digitrax Super Chief 5A, and a boster, power every 5 feet and numerous isolated blocks and PM42 for the short reverse section. I'm using #14 for my bus wire and #18 wire for my feeders which are all no more than 12 inches long. Track power on the lower sections of track is running just under 15V and just over 15V on the upper sections of track powered by the Booster.

I've had no prior experience with model rail roading and it has all been a fun experience............until; some of my engines have run fine for a while and then just quit. No sound and no go. I have 2 Atlas Diesels with DCC and Sound, 3 Bachmann Steam Engines with DCC and Sound and two Broadway Limited, one with DCC and Sound and the other a Blue Line with Sound. These are all sitting around and will not make a sound or move an inch. No lights, no nothing. Two of them; one an Atlas and one a BLI actually shut the system down when placed on the track. I've not detected signs of over heating. I have other Atlas, Bachmann, Proto 2000, Athern and BLI engines that are running fine, so far.

I have tried resurecting them using the reset procedures in the instructions without success. I called Atlas and the tech. guy there said it's a Digitrax problem. The tech guy at Digitrax says it is a problem with the engines. Nice cop out from both of them. I have practicaly worn the instruction manuals out trying to figure out what I've done wrong.

I thought this would be a great retirement hobby. At this point I think it would certainly not be a hobby for someone with high blood pressure and my time would be better spent knitting or bird watching. I have spent $6K or $8K, maybe more, on all of this stuff. I probably should have been buying yarn or bird feed instead.

OK. OK. I know I've probably screwed up someplace but where? What would you do? Anybody want to buy all this stuff cheap? I need a knitting room with a corner to store bags of bird feed.
 
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Well I'd say lets start with the basics. Take a single section of flex track and hook it up to your dcc system. Remove the wiring from the dcc system to the layout and only hook up the section of flex. Do the loco's you listed earlier work with just the section of flex?
 
For so many engines to be problematic, the problem isn't the engines. It is your wiring or the DCC system....one or the two...maybe both because the wiring problem fried the DCC system.

When you are 'young' in the hobby, I agree....little things can really put a cramp in it for you. I now have six years in it, and I just don't get so phased any more. Dropped three prized engines off a shelf two months back....shrug. They can be fixed, and it'll take weeks and money...but the hobby is patient. :D

When you find that you are utterly confounded, you should step back and take a break. Some time later, days or weeks, go back and face the situation with a view to horsepowering the problem through your brain. There is a problem, probably straightforward, and it just needs to be seen. A track nail bridging at the frog, a weak solder leaving no connectivity at a key point, broken insulation leading to a short where two wires rub, a broken wire to the power supply from the wall socket, a broken solder inside the base unit for the DCC system....yada yada. Methodically eliminate the ones you can think of, and when all else is elusive, send the unit back for assessment.

This hobby requires calm and patience, and if you can manage it, redundancy. That's why we never throw things out. Have a second and third engine, an older DCC sytem easily hooked up, spare decoders,....

Sometimes the base units and sometimes the decoders get scrambled. You can reset the base unit by clearing all its memory, and you can reset the decoder to factory defaults. If the pair behave after a reset, but on address 03, then that's all that was needed. You'll have to reset the intended address and all the other bother, but it's a small enough price to learn that everything is fine.

For steamers, particularly BLI's, the problems can often be traced to the plug on the tether. Remove and reseat, but more firmly. Use a cheap grocery store wooden kabob skewer and press it home, or use the opened tines on a thin pair of needle-nosed pliers. Be assertive with that plug!

Sometimes any one of these can make the lights go on. In your case, I'm betting something more fundamental and castastrophic, and that usually means key wires or electrical components. This can't be traced to a whole bunch of locomotives at once. Way too unlikely.

-Crandell
 


Who's to Blame

Selector: Calm down. This can be solved and it may be very minor. Lets find out in a systematic way what is wrong here. Hamilton Blue is correct. Start with the power supply and its booster on a seperate piece of track. If that works then isolate each section of your layout until you are certain (one way or the other) where the trouble lies.
Old Robert
 
HamiltonBlue,

You shrewd rooster you. Here's the result from track wiring the section of track; I was able to reserect the Atlas DCC Diesel with Sound using the reset procedure (the magic wand), but no bringing the Atlas DC diesel nor the BLI DCC Cab Forward nor either of the Bachmann DCC steamers back up. Back to the drawing board for them. All of these engines ran for a couple of hours or so before laying down on me. Yet others just keep running.

I wonder if there is a way of my testing the Digitrax system other than merely testing the Voltage with my multimeter? I did notice one thing about it; the little yellow screw in the DCS100 doesn't adjust the track Voltage like the book says it will. It can be moved a total of 180 degress and doesn't change the voltage one bit. Voltage throughout my track system runs about the same.

I emailed BLI the other day and their response was; Track Voltage shouldn't be above about 14V and higher voltage will cause a BLI motor to shut down. The track powered by the DCS 100 is measuring a strong 14.9V and the Track powered by the DB150 Booster is measuring about 15.25V. I don't know of a voltage adjustment on the DB150.

Last winter I sent another BLI Paragon Series Steamer to BLI after it shut down. They sent it back in about 3 weeks saying: They tested it and couldn't find a problem. I put it on the track and it ran. Took it off and have been afraid to run it anymore for fear it will lay down again on me.

I really appreciate you guys trying to help.
 
Yup, simple first. Like the other two suggested, hook up one single piece of flex, hook up booster/cs only (no pm42) and test multiple engines. While hooked up to this single piece of track test out if it's shorting properly with a quarter.

I had a somewhat similar problem, ended up being the booster/cs and digitrax repaired.

http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13866
 
I've heard you can't measure track voltage with a regular meter because DCC is square wave. Why the locos don't work, I don't know. I haven't bought any with DCC installed so I have done all my own DCC starting about 12 years ago. Sometimes a loco will forget who it is and a trip to the program trip to reset the address has always made things right. I don't know why. FWIW, my decoders are Digitrax, NCE, two Soundtraxx and one TCS. Somewhere around 50 of them total.
 
Wahoo, it will work out. Selector had a pretty long post but what he was basically saying is right on. You made a monster and turned it on. There are sooo many new things on your layout that make it hard to say what your issue is. That's why I say start with a basic section of track only hooked up with your dcc system. Do this with all of your loco's to make sure all work ok.I also noticed you mentioned an Atlas DC diesel. Big no no to mix that in the system. After doing the isolated track with your loco's, try moving to your layout with no loco's or rolling stock. Then add 1, and only 1 loco and run it for awhile. Then move from there. Don't throw the whole roster in. In the end you'll be running fine and you'll have some lessons learned that you'll hopefully be passing on some day :D
 


Crandell... I thought Larry was the "long winded old fart"?
Guess we have two? :p

Wahoo, this is all good advice. I had a similar problem once as well.
Starting with one piece of track and trying all locos one at a time is usually the first thing to do. After that if nothing shows promise I'd have to say the base unit itself would have to be looked at.
Other than what's already been said, do you have a "normal" power pack that you can try the locos with?
Sounds like you're a long way from the nearest hobby shop, I fell your pain.
Keep us posted!
 
Speaking of DC, have you tried running the problem engines on straight DC? I also saw where you have at least two engines that are DC-only, that you are using on DCC. I learned the hard way not to let them sit idle on the layout, the voltage from the DCC system will burn out the motors.
 
Frustation city

Like I said; I now have the one Atlas DCC Unit running but none of the others. As was suggested; tomorrow I will try hooking up the DB150 to a piece of track, without going thru the PM42, and see what that does.

Also, Rico and Terry mentioned trying DC. I don't have a DC transformer except: I have one with my old Lionel "O" gauge which is about 65 years old and worked the last time I tried it, about 45 years ago. How about trying it?

Wahoo
 


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