I recently purchased an Athearn Genesis 4-8-8-4 Challenger locomotive used. When I put it on a program track, the engine sound, lights, increase and decrease speed, whistle, bell all work with my NCE Power Cab controller. However, all the CV’s, Manufacturer and decoder type all read 255 in program track mode. I tried to change CV’s in program track mode and program on main mode and no changes are made. I tried to unlock the decoder to no avail. How can everything on the engine respond to the controller properly but not be able to read the decoder?
You might want to tell us more about your layout. You might want to post this in the Model Railroader section of the forum to get more responses.
Are you saying that you can run the locomotive on the main line without any issues regarding movement, speed, lights and sound?
Rich
Verily, verily I say unto thee. Bewarest thou of the pig in a poke known as the used model railroad locomotive. Knowest thou not of the travails the lamb has suffered in its previous life, from dropping off the table to being a weapon with which to assail the younger brother. Seeketh thou rather the path of righteousness of the new purchase, often with warranties, to avoid the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Selah.
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One thing…. When Reading cv’s on the program track, normally you shouldn’t be able to play the sounds or run the engine on the program track. All you have is access to the CV values. If you were able to do all those things on the program track, something is very wrong with that decoder.
I’m assuming that you can run another locomotive satisfactorily with your power cab and that the problem is not with the power cab.
Are you able to do a CV 8 reset at all? If you can, put the locomotive on the layout, not on the program track, and change the value of CV 8 to 8. Cut the power, turn it back on and you should see the headlight blink 16 times. This resets all of the CV is to factory default. I suspect that the previous owner didn’t know what he was doing and gummed up all the CVs playing with them. A reset is certainly in order to start over clean.
At this point I’ going to interject only that this user needs to set up JMRI so he can actually human-read all his CV settings coherently and get to them sensibly.
I’ve never done that since I don’t have a PC which apparently you need to set up JMRI, but those who have it swear by it.
I’ve got JMRI installed and I don’t even use it for DCC!
That being said, more often I swear at it.
If you’re going to follow that advice above about resetting a decoder on the main, best make sure you have all your other locos off the railroad. If you don’t, you’ll end up resetting all of them.
That’s only true if you’ve made the whole main line your programming track, which NCE power cab lets you do. You can use a CV8 reset to a locomotive address via programming on the main all day long without affecting any of the other addresses.
I myself have never tried doing a CV8 reset in the programming track mode. I “have”, however, made the mistake of changing CVs via programming mode without taking the other engines off the track and ended up changing every engine inadvertently.
This can actually work to your advantage in certain situations. At one point I was programming about five of my friend’s engines at once for him. I wanted them all to have the same bell, whistle, reverb, coupler crash, and volume settings. So I had all five engines on the programming track at once and saved a lot of time by setting them all simultaneously.
I do not believe that is correct. If you have engine 2000 on the main and use programming on the main to do a cv 8 = 8 reset, the new loco address will be 3. Therefore any other loco on the main will also have an address = 3.
I have a section of track that has rollers to allow a locomotive to run without it going anywhere. I use this as a program track to check and set CV’s. I can change my NCE power cab from program on the main to program using program track to running on the main. In this way, I can set the read the CV’s when set as a program track, set, but not read, CV’s on the main, or select the engine number and run the locomotive as though it is on the main line. I have done this with success with the 10 or 12 other locomotives I own in the past. I have tried to reset CV8 on both the program track mode and program on the main with no results. The locomotive operates and functions properly with sounds when running it on this section of track. I want to read and change the CV’s and cannot. I have read that the power cab may not always produce enough power to read the CV’s. I will be moving forward with JMRI on my laptop to see if this can read and make changes to this DCC decoder. Thanks for the input and suggestions. I just joined Trains.com and may not have put this question in the correct location. Sorry for my lack of knowledge if I have done this incorrectly.
When re-reading my original post, I noticed I called this locomotive a 4-8-8-4 Challenger when it is actually a 4-6-6-4 Challenger. This in no way affects my question, but just correcting my error so I do not look so ignorant. Thanks.
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Not in my experience. That would only happen on the programming track. Addresses do not matter on the program track. Whatever’s on the program track will get programmed, one engine or multiple engines, all get the same changes. On the main, you are programming into a specific address. Only that address will receive the command. I’ve done this many times and never had a problem with the three or four other engines are on my layout at the same time.
No problem. I’ve done worse and seen even worse.
Oh, I’ve made bigger goofs too. If, like me, you want to correct all the errors you find you have made (including grammar 
), there’s a handy little edit function near the bottom of your post. Just click on the little pencil and it’ll open up the editing window. I’ve used that thing so much to fix my unimportant little typos and the like…
I didn’t think you looked “too ignorant”. After all, a bunch of us looked at your post and none of us noticed, so … 
i have an Atlas switcher that my PowerCab can read the manufacturer of. It reads 0 (which could be the correct value) but also reads 255 whenever it attempts to read a CV.
Sounds like you need a reset,
Greg, zero is not a valid manufacturers number. The NMRA assigned all of these manufacturers unique numbers back in the DCC Jurassic, and zero is not one of them. Here is the list.
Do the cv8 reset and one of these numbers should appear as the manufacturer when you put the engine on the program track. It also should clear up all those 255 numbers also.
I noticed. But I’m polite and let a lot of things go, especially the little ones.