I am rebuilding after a long break from the hobby. I have older brass and and am curious if I can salvage any of my DC equipment-converting it to DCC.
Or, am I better off just selling the brass and starting over with state of the art stuff? Is it cost effective to try conversions?
converting to DCC is easy. few wires soldered, bit of tape, no bother. i certainly wouldnt get rid of your brass models over it.
Don’t sell the brass, it will always be worth something. You can usually send stuff out for other guys to put decoders in. I have heard of a few guys doing this. If you don’t want to do that just keep the brass and buy a new set of locos.
For older Brass locomotive, it may require remotoring. Keep in mind that DCC does NOT make your locomotives run any better. If it runs well on DC, it WILL run well on DCC but in NO cases any better.
David B
Programing seems to be the hardest project with the DCC engines in my case. Plugging the decoder in is easy
hello hal… i am new to DCC and at first it was SCARY once i wired up my first loco i found the others easy i managed to put decoders into approx 15 locos in one afternoon… i found that for me it was easier to not use the plugs and to soilder all the wires and use heat shrink … i also took advantage of cheap L E D ,s from xmas lighting the leds are very bright use a 680 ohm resister in series with the blue wire common i used double sided tape to mount the decoders and the hardest thing was finding space for the decoders… the main thing is to use a multi meter to check connections… insulate the motor ( athearn …brass etc ) and to check the loocos on DC FIRST… i have a forum online at the moment asking for help with a t55 loco this loco was the only one i had problems with ok now DCC IS EASY peter
Hal:
Converting a DC loco to DCC is not difficult if you are comfortable with taking a loco apart to service the motor. If the loco runs decent on DC, then it should run great on DCC. If the loco is only a so-so performer on DC, then converting it to DCC may not help and could make it run worse.
To convert a DC loco to DCC, you need to remove the motor and insolate it from the frame – usually a layer of electrical tape will do it – and you will need to replace any metal screws that hold the motor to the frame with nylon screws. Or you can do as some do and glue the motor back onto the frame with silicone caulk (no screws needed).
Once the motor is isolated, then you need to identify the power feeds for each rail coming through the wheels and connect one side to the red wire on the decoder and the other side to the black decoder wire.
On the motor, you need to locate the two feeds, and connect the gray wire on the decoder to one motor feed, and the orange wire on the decoder to the other motor feed.
You can also connect up lights to other wires, but for your basic decoder install, these are nice-to-haves and not necessary to run the loco on DCC. If you want to install a sound decoder, there’s also more work involved – but your best bet is to just stick with a simple motor decoder install to start with. You can always get more fancy later.
Once the decoder is installed, then you program it with your DCC system by setting the motor’s starting voltage, top voltage, mid-point voltage – and a host of other things you can tune like momentum, kick start (if the loco needs a voltage kick at startup), forward and reverse adjust (in case the loco runs differently in reverse, you can use this to adjust it to run the same either direction).
I find the ability to tune individual loco performance is a dream-come-true feature of DCC – and the fact you also get independent control of each loco makes it so going to DCC is a no-brainer for newcomers to the hobby.
If
It really all depends on the equipment. The main issue converting to DCC is isolation of the motor. These brass units, did/do they run well on DC? Depending on whether the equivalent models are available today, it may be more cost effective to replace them, than to havethe old brass upgraded with new can motors and DCC. What brass models are you talking about?