This set of postings is really a great learning experience for me - and I thank you all.
Question about decoders & installation…
Decoders will be a major expense for me as I have about 50 locos (6- ABBA all units powered make up half the roster). Fortunately (I assume), my 5 BLI locos have decoders and Quantum sound, although I use them on my DC layout with “Quantum Engineer” to facilitate the sound.
I have looked up the locos for decoder availability and should not have a problem with finding one. But which of my locos will be “easy”, and which will be difficult for a newbie to install a decoder?
The roster has several Lifelike P2K - E, PA, SW, and GP7/9 units, 24 Stewart FT/F units, two Kato diesels, 3 Atlas diesels, 4 Bachmann Spectrum steam locos, and 3 Bachmann Spectrum diesel locos. Assuming these are “DCC ready”, which ones will be easy to work with, and more importantly which ones will be inherently difficult?
By the way, I assume that “DCC ready” means that a decoder can be easily plugged in or soldered in place. Is that a good assumption, or ???
Also, where would you recommend to by decoders in bulk, which I assume I could do for the Stewarts and P2K locos???
The P2K Geeps are probably the easiest - the Digitrax DH163L0 is literally plug and play. It is harder to take the shell off then to install that decoder, and I’m not exaggerating.
The Stewarts should be rather easy as well, but if you aquired them over tiem they might not all use the same decoder. Older ones have a kato drive, newer ones have Stewart’s own which is essentially a knock off of the Kato but uses Beuhler motor instead of the Kato.
The P2K SW has a decoder made for it by NCE. It does require soldering on an LED to replace the headlight, but includes a resitor to retain the rear light which is nearly impossible to reach to change.
P2K E’s can be tricky. Some of the earliest ones have some lousy motors which draw current more like an O scale loco than HO. Those should haev the motor repalced with the newer one. If it has the flashing Mars light - it will work on DCC with a plug-in decoder BUT pretty much ANY DCC decoder can do a better Mars light effect than the P2K circuit. If no mars light - very easy but the bulb will have to be changed out.
Kato and Atlas - NCE, Digitrax, and TCS all make drop-in decoders for these. The older Kato and Atlas units only have a signle light bulb in the middle (no directional lights) and you’ll probably want to take this out, cut down the plastic light pipes, and install individual lights for the front and rear. Not very hard to do.
Spectrums - depends on how old they are. Older ones aren’t very DCC ready, newer ones a simple plug in decoder works just fine.
I have some pictures on my web site of various decoder isntalls, including the GP7 and an SD7. I thought I had pictures of using the NCE decoder in a P2K SW7, unfortunately they aren;t on my web site. I did take pictures when I installed it though. A good place to look for install pictures is the TCS web s