I have been trying to locate at least three of the dummy plugs that are installed in the Athearn DCC ready line of engines. I have three that have encoders in them I want to remove and change back to DC. So far Athearn has not been much help in locating them. Does anyone know who else might have these plugs? If anyone here has some you do not need please contact me e-mail and I will get back to you. The engines run on my son’s layout which is DC.
Thanks very much,
George
now, I’m not entirely sure what Athearn uses in their standard-line DCC-equipped locos (which, from the sounds of it you have), but many of the newer non-sound decoders work with DC power fine. I have a Genesis 2-8-2 that has a factory-installed (well, sort of) Lenz dual mode decoder. In fact, Digitrax and NCE decoder manuals reccommend that you test a new decoder install by placing the loco on DC track and seeing if it runs.
The worst thing that I’ve noticed is that on my “good” powerpack (MRC Tech IV) the locos stutter a bit in the low power ranges, because the pack pulses the DC power. The other LL/B’mann trainset powerpacks that I have don’t do this, and the locos seem a little hapier with the low ranges of those packs.
Before trying any of this though, you should read the manuals that came with the locomotives/decoders to be sure that they are in fact dual mode (able to run on DC/DCC without any problems).
They are “dual mode” and do run either way, DC or DCC. The problem is that they are programmed so that the front and rear headlights flash on and off the entire time the train is running. That is not right and I have no way to program the encoder any differently. That was the reason behind just removing them and replacing it with a dummy plug. I do have others that have encoders but I do not have that problem.
George