Thanks to Tstage (what is a Tstage?) inside joke I have a entery level DCC system coming soon. Have to be better than the MRC 1440 DC I am using.
After speaking with Tom tonight ( I now know what a tstage is, great guy) I have to wonder if the Protos are turly DCC ready like the boxs says. Tom bought a S-1 Proto from Train world and had to insulate the motor like a Atheran Blue box. Never done it but I know it needs to be done.
I have 5 Proto’s
Two Protos 1000 Powered Erie Bulit A and B with no part numbers on the box. Box is white with red trim. Owner manuel has 29800 and a letter I can not read in blue stamped on it. That is for the A. I will added the boxes says they are 8 wheel drive but they are 12 wheel drive? Manuael blowen up view matchs the engine and shows gears for all axels. I opened the trucks and they are 12 wheel drive?
2 Protro 2000’s E-6’s in a blue box, iteam number 23225.
1 Proto 2000 E-6 in a gray box iteam number 31185 with mars lights. Here is a PIC of the Gray Box board.
Well for what ever reason I cannot post a PIC. I will try again.
All you should have to do is pop the shell off and a plug a decoder of your choice in. I recamend a Digitrax DH163P it has a 6 pin plug you should be able to plug right into the DCC socket. I know about the problem with the S-1s, i have an S3 but i suspect that they are built the same way, its not a very good design.Its a split fram thats a but screwed up and if your not careful you’ll short it, but you shouldn’t have to isolate it, although it would be a good idea to do that.
the 1000s to my knowledge you will have to hardwire. A DH163 is a good choice for a decoder, but my favorite would be a TCS T1. I think the DH163 has one or two more light functions than a T1, but a P2K only uses 2 functions so unless you add your own lights the T1 will do all you need. The reason I would go with a T1 is because its a couple $$$ cheaper but more importantly if it stops working for any reason TCS will replace it free of charge.
I already e-mailed you directly but wanted to say again that it was good to talk to you last night on the phone, too. [:)]
After reading the good advice that Joe and Jay have already given you, I was reminded of a link that I mentioned to you on the phone but wanted to e-mail you the direct info about:
All of them are wonderful resources for DCC supplies and info and each one is VERY knowledgeable about DCC. I’ve contacted all three to get their recommendations for decoders and have been very happy with the product they sold me. You can’t go wrong with any one of them.
FYI: Tim (Empire Northern) is in the process of moving to a new location so he may be slow to respond to either e-mails or phone calls until July 6th.
The Proto1000’s you need to hard wire. Easier to remove the board than cutting the traces and trying to solder wires where they indicate. New lights will be needed. A golden-white LED and a 1K resistor makes a good replacement for the bulb.
The E’s should also be rewired, you can plug a decoder in but will still be stuck with the goofy mars light effect. A decoder can do that much better than that jumble of electronics on the P2K circuit board.
I didn;t take any pictures but I recently did an E-unit A-B set for a customer. Also have done the DL109’s for my father-in-law which are also P1K like the Erie-builts.
I have had hit and miss results with P2K engines, so I would advise caution if you want to go the plug-and-play route. Check the 8-pin socket and either trace or use a current tester to make sure that the wires go where they’re supposed to. I had a GP60 fry a decoder when I put it on the track and tried to run it because the socket was wired improperly.
I do like P2K engines. I just don’t trust the DCC-ready part.
The only ones I’ve found so far that have been truly DCC ready ar my GP-7’s, which can use the DH163L0 decoder from DIgitrax, and my father-in-law got an SD45, came in the newer small box, which also took a DH163L0 with no changes. Other ones I have done, such as an SD7 which had an 8-pin socked but some REALLY screwy circuit design, I removed the board and hard-wired. They are easy to hard wire because it’s very obvious where each wire is coming from (left pickup, right pickup, motor terminals, etc) and sometimes even color-coded (although the truck pickup wires are usually all black).
Need to? No, but personally, I like to rip out the built in circuit board and just use the new decoder in the raw. It gives one much more room to work. It has less wires and therefore cleaner. It seems like every time I used the socket I ended up with a mass of wire running in a direction I didn’t want it to go. And as someone else already said, the lighting effects are in the hands of the DCC rather than whatever is there.
So Texas, I don’t need the orginal board and just run the decoder?
Randy, will you back in up on that?
On the P1K’s, can I do the same and just run the decoder?
I have wonder why the PK’s had the board? I knew it worked the mars lighs, had caps to store power for the head lighs, and make the mars lights work. Goofy I like them. I sort of thought it had something to do with the 5 -polemotor as well.
Tom, thanks for the links and I will check them out.
If the work gets over my head, I think I will farm the work out to K-10 trains. There are customers / friends that help him with the track. If you drop off something one of them will do the need work cheap if not free.
Been a bad train day so far and the day is over in 6 minutes.Out fitted the new E-6 and breaking in the engine as I miss spell. Just as the new E-6 was ready the track I had to kill the power that feeds the tranformer (not do to the train) and currnet E-6 A and B came to a instant stop hauling a 35 car’s. On restarting the E-6 A is making a awfull squealing sound from the front of the engine on and off.
Not that old time wise, may 3 months max. But well over 100 hours. Guess i will be seeing what makes them tick Friday.
Yeah, that’s the way I do it most of the time, remove the stock circuit boards and wire in the decoder. That way I KNOW what I’m getting. Some locos have ‘circuit boards’ simply as a way to get power fromt he trucks tot he motor and headlight without wires all over the place. But the P2K models have constant lighting and stuff, and also use 1.5 volt bulbs (usually) so the circuitry is related to that, although in the case of the SD7, it was really odd, more than would be needed to have a constant directional headlight. I drew a schematic by following the traces and there was a resistor that wasn’t even in the circuit. It was about then I decided to remove the board and be done with it. And my Stewart F7 - if I just plugged in a decoder to the socket, it would have been using half-wave function power, in itself not a bad thing, but really prefer to completely hook up the functions between the function wire and the blue common, not half-wave which is function output and one rail pickup. DOn’t worry about that at this point.
The board on the E-units has all that ‘junk’ on there to blink the two filaments of the Mars light. If you repalce the Mars light bulb with a normal bulb and use the decoder’s special effects, it looks better AND there is no need for the board. The ones I did did not have the Mars light (PRR was too cheap [:D] ) so what I did was locate the decoder near the front and run the wires to the back, disconnected the stock wires from the plastic clips on the side of the circuit board, and soldered them to the decoder wires. That way, the decoder wires can be clipped off, the decoder removed, and the wires put back on the circuit board where they came from and the loco will be like new. If I had any personally, I doubt I would bother, since I have no intention of EVER going back to straight DC control.
Same here. Just pop out the board and pop in a T1. I have never had any problems. I also get rid of the bulbs that come in protos and use nice bright LEDs.
