I have two Athern Genesis F units with Sound and DCC. I also have the Prodigy Advance system. When the locos are in the upper 3/4 speed range and especially at full throttle (I normally don’t operate them at full throttle) I noticed the engines on occasion will briefly slow down along with the prime mover sounds idling down. Then after a short while will speed back up. This does not happen at 3/4 and lower throttle settings. It also doesn’t happen with any other locos I have.
Has anyone encountered this? Is it the decoders in my F units or is it the DCC system? I don’t believe it would be the decoder/dcc system combo because they are both MRC. I have considered selling my Prodigy and getting a Digitrax system. Any advice would be great!!
I can only tell you what I have experienced with my 2 Athearn Fs using a Digitrax Zephyr.
These locos love power. Lots and lots of power. A Zephyr is billed to be able to handle 10 locos. I’ve found that with a lot of sound systems running, the max before bizarre things start happening is closer to 8 locos. The Zephyr tends to work perfectly running my normal operations of 6 sound equipped DCC locos and one DC loco. These locos include 2 Athearn F’s with sound, 2 Intermountain F’s with sound, a P2K GP7 with sound, a Bachmann 2-8-0 with sound, and a non DCC equipped Kato NW2. I’m waiting to replace the Kato NW2 with any factory sound equipped switcher in Santa Fe zebra stripes…non are made yet. Almost forgot, not likely eating too much power, but I also have a Kato business car being serviced in a passenger yard with the lights on.
I suspect the MRC Prodigy is simply not giving you enough power to run the hungry locos. The full speed likely requires more power. With the added demands of sound, you could be close to a max out limit. But this is all speculation. 2 locos with sound seems a bit light to max out a power system, but you never know.
With regard to power output and MRC transformers, on my first O scale layout a small MRC power pack would overload when I tried to run locos with sound and passenger cars with lights. Had to bump up to the MRC Dual Power O-27, no problems since then.
I have had some non-MRC, non-sound decoders slow down because they were overheating and their internal thermal protection circuitry was slowing down the motor so the decoder could cool down. So now, I just remember to never run those locomotives above 3/4 throttle and don’t have the problem.
Thanks for the responses. I will have to live with this issue, however it shouldn’t be a problem because I would rarely operate them in that speed range anyway.