Switching on GEC's layout

[Green_Elite_Cab]

GEC,

Thanks for the reply. Your 44 Tonner got me thinking about 2-44 Tonners and 2-70 Tonners (all Spectrum with two motors) that I have in my collection. Most of them were marked for eBay, but now I have a renewed interest in them. I test ran all of them yesterday on DC and most ran pretty good considering they haven’t been out of their boxes in years and were never really broken in when I got them. There were no issues that I could see except some jerkiness between the trucks at very slow speeds and I read on the net that DCC will solve that.

Great another project to look forward to……

Mark

Yeah, I haven't been able to cut the jerkiness out of mine. The important thing in this case may be to just totally remove any printed circuit boards (adding in apprpriate resistors for lighting). While I couldn't quite tell you what about the circuit board is flawed, The expirience I've had with bachmann engines (especially some made 5-8 years ago), is that the circuit board saps the juice something awful.

While the locomotive will operate with it's circuit board, nearly every one of them other than the very most recent production runs operate significantly better without the circuit board. Case in point, I have an Amtrak HHP8 by Spectrum, and that thing is supposed to be able to run very quickly. However, even at speed step 28, the engine does not go very fast. When the board was removed and the decoder wired directly in, the locomotive not only ran faster but was pulling larger, heavier trains.

I believer your double motored version is also going to be a major rebuild project to get DCC in there. I remember seeing installation instructions with photos on the web a LONG time ago when i was wiring my 44 tonner, but I couldn't say where that is now.

I reccomend checking out TCS, since they have decoder instructions made by other hobbyists on their site. If you have a model they haven't done, take the pictures, and send it to them, they'll send you a free decoder! Clearly though, it has to be more than just a drop-in installation!