Older Atlas Locomotive to DCC?


Zephyr

Zephyr

Rocket Red
Any idea if an older Atlas GP40 would be easy to convert to DCC? Or would it even be worth it? This would be from when they made them in Austria. It looks like this:
1fae1lv7.jpg
 
jbaakko said:
Should work similar to Athearn from what I recall.
Click to expand...

Josh,
I was told by quite a few DCC folks that older loco's have to have special work done on them to make them DCC ready & I have a lot of those loco's. That's 1 of the resons I never switched to DCC because of the upward costs to make the changes. Most of my engines have the motors connected directly to the frame w/out any insulators, etc. They also have to be totally rewired to accept decoders.

Larry
 
Nope.

Isolate motor with Double sided sticky tape. Run decoder wires to Pos, one to Neg (or to the frame if you're lazy). Decoder to motor: neg goes to the bottom on most, and Pos to the top. Isolate the decoder from the motor with electrical tape, and you're done, unless you have lights.
 
Oh, I should note, Bachmann split frames are tougher, but Jeffrey can explain that, I think IIRC (If I Remember Correctly), he's done a few.
 
those old Atlas are worth doing dude...I have 2 of them myself. It is done like Josh said. Very important to isolat motor from frame....
 
I've also done one of the older Atlas conversions and the main thing is to make sure the motor is really completely isolated from the frame. Atlas wasn't too careful about how the motor was placed in the frame and is sometimes comes in contact with the frame at the top side of the frame next to the motor. I used the double sided tape to remount the motor and had to add electrical tape to the side of the motor to solve a continuing short to the frame. Other than that, it's pretty simple rewire job as described by Josh. The headlights were incandescent on most of those models so get a decoder with 12 volt output to the lights unless you want to change over to LED's.
 
Oh those Atlas motors run beautifully on dcc, i scavenged one from a gp40 and put it into a RPP chassis and its so quiet and strong. If your wondering about the gp40, it was one of the older Atlas units with the goofy looking tanks, too thick handrails, and bad detail work. But it ran like a top.
As for dcc'ing the motor, couldn't be easier as Atlas has the 2 poles sticking out the front and with a little solder work, real easy to convert.:cool:
 
Thanks everyone for your help! That really reassures me. It sounds like I can get a good deal out of this (I'm buying a motor from a friend), so I will pursue it. I have been getting better at soldering lately and that will help.

I am planning on painting this in the blue/white scheme, so it doesn't need to be anything too fancy. It will be Rock Island 3006, one of the GP40s that in real life was sitting in the Silvis shop in March 1980, still being rebuilt, when the railroad shut down. It was never really finished, but it will be on my pike.
 
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