Hi,
My son and I are new to this site, and he is also 'new' to Model Railroading. He's received a number of sets over the years, and we finally have the space to occasionally lay down the track. and run some trains. I used to model in N scale (20 years ago), but we are now doing HO. Since we can only set up on the living room floor for a few days before my SO gets unhappy with us, we're sticking with EZ-Track and relatively inexpensive equipment. I've hit the junk tables at train shows and grabbed 3-for-$10 freight cars (usually life-like or model power with all-plastic wheelsets) and converted a few of the better cars to have Kadee couplers on at least one end.
His big request has always been to run two (or more) trains at a time; to that end, I bought a Bachmann EZ-DCC set with locomotive. Obviously, our older locomotives won't work on this without conversion, but we are able to run one non-DCC model with the DCC unit. We do have one special set, an Athern PRR passenger set train, that we'd like to use more frequently, but we're concerned about damaging it running on the DCC track (as warned in the manual) When stopped, the non-DCC loco we're using (an old 0-6-0) makes a terrible noise, so we've got a few questions.
How seriously should we take the warning of damage to the DC locomotives?
How difficult is it to install a decoder in the Athern locomotive? Are there any places that may do this for us? Is it worth it to convert this old locomotive, or should we save our money for a new DCC-Equipped or DCC-Ready model (it's an F7/9)
My son and I are new to this site, and he is also 'new' to Model Railroading. He's received a number of sets over the years, and we finally have the space to occasionally lay down the track. and run some trains. I used to model in N scale (20 years ago), but we are now doing HO. Since we can only set up on the living room floor for a few days before my SO gets unhappy with us, we're sticking with EZ-Track and relatively inexpensive equipment. I've hit the junk tables at train shows and grabbed 3-for-$10 freight cars (usually life-like or model power with all-plastic wheelsets) and converted a few of the better cars to have Kadee couplers on at least one end.
His big request has always been to run two (or more) trains at a time; to that end, I bought a Bachmann EZ-DCC set with locomotive. Obviously, our older locomotives won't work on this without conversion, but we are able to run one non-DCC model with the DCC unit. We do have one special set, an Athern PRR passenger set train, that we'd like to use more frequently, but we're concerned about damaging it running on the DCC track (as warned in the manual) When stopped, the non-DCC loco we're using (an old 0-6-0) makes a terrible noise, so we've got a few questions.
How seriously should we take the warning of damage to the DC locomotives?
How difficult is it to install a decoder in the Athern locomotive? Are there any places that may do this for us? Is it worth it to convert this old locomotive, or should we save our money for a new DCC-Equipped or DCC-Ready model (it's an F7/9)
). Cheapie older models like you have, will have molded handrails and such like, so can take quite rough handling. The fancier models have lots of extra detail, wire handrails, window wipers, sand pipes, etc, which can break off if handled without care.
