More info

[Sammo]

I have 52 pictures of my layout but they were taken before I started going over to DCC
I do not think I will ever be going totally to DCC due to me having Wrenn loco's with Escap RG4 units.
Can anyone who has had experience using these motor gearbox units with DCC let me know how they respond? and if indeed they can be converted?.

The DCC loco's I have are as follows

Orient Express train set with Select controller and 3 pullman coaches I also purchased the coach set seperately This set contains the Britannia class 4-6-2 loco

Castle class Sandwich 4-6-0 loco

2 Jinty's 0-6-0s

LMS Coronation City of Birmingham

In the past I steered away from Hornby due to there tender drive ringfield motor, However the latest series of Hornby loco's have the motor in the loco and it is in most cases a skew wound motor,
This is far superior (in my opinion) to any production made loco.

I have in the main got Bachmann loco's apart from 3 Wrenn and 3 lima diesel units

All loco's are of the steam era apart from the 3 lima diesel units.

Back to the pics
I have as said above 52 photo's and they are .jpg at a size of approx 300 KB each.

Will it be ok for me to upload these? I will probably only upload about 40 as I will make a point of being choosy.

[swisstrains]

Sammo,
The general rules for posting photos are here:
http://www.railwayforum.net/showthread.php?t=34

[Foghut]

Originally Posted by Sammo

I do not think I will ever be going totally to DCC due to me having Wrenn loco's with Escap RG4 units.

I don't have any DCC equipment, the closest I've ever been is owning Hornby Zero 1 equipment as a lad.

What is it that prevents the RG4 units from accepting DCC ?

[Sammo]

I do not know why the Escap RG4 units cannot go DCC BUT I have tried to contact Portescap but had no joy,
I think it was a couple of years ago when I was advised not to chip these units.
I am still hoping someone on here can advise as I do not wish to ruin what are brilliant DC units.

[Foghut]

Fairy Nuff

[swisstrains]

I don't use DCC at the moment but I have made a few enquiries in anticipation of a possible future changeover.
I have some locos that are fitted with Faulhaber coreless motors, which I believe are similar to the Portescap ones and I'm told that these can be safely chipped using a "noiseless" decoder such as the Lenz Gold.
Apparently in the early days coreless motors were prone to damage by the pulses from DCC because of their lighter internal construction.

Another thing that I have picked up is that you should never, under any circumstances, run a coreless motored loco without a decoder on a DCC layout under address '0'

P.S. I will move this thread to the Railway Modelling section.

[Sammo]

Hi John of SWISSTRAINS

Thank you for the information
All of my loco's that are chipped for DCC are fitted with the Hornby decoder. and I purchased 15 of these so may stick with them.

Applying your explanation, I think that it may be possible to use a different decoder provided one continues to protect the motor with the fuse and diodes, The diodes could be wired between the output of the chip and the motor, Luckily the Wrenn Loco's to which I have used the Escap motors have plenty of room in the loco as the weight for the loco does not rely on the chassis alone.

I think I will try converting if I am successful in converting all of my Bachmann loco's as these are a lot trickier due to the chassis electrical connection for the motor.

I am not sure I want to spend the time to do this as we are probably looking at 3 hours for chipping each loco and I have about 15 of them.

I am not yet retired so may save this project for when I am.

Sam