[quote user=“AustraliaJim”]
“So does anyone know of a “Medium Steam” sound decoder that has a horn?”
The Tsunami Heavy has the 4449 air horn, so would be your easiest path. The chuff should be OK because you can shape its sound with the spectrum filter. Don’t know about the pump, etc., but doesn’t seem to me that the Medium and Heavy are that different except in a few features such as whistles, bell and articulated options.
Hal
Thanks for all your posts guys.
Hal, if you read this what is a spectrum filter?
Cheers
Jim.
It’s a multi-band equalizer; the Tsunami is the only decoder with one. You can change the tonal balance of the sound to best match the speaker/enclosure to the soundfile. Tsunamis have many other adjustments that are not found in other decoders.
Hal
just got mine thru concor, looks great, some wheels were off but quickly corrected. One truck had a brake cylinder connection broken, hanging on to the other side. Superglue is a quick fix. Looks like the tsunami is the one to use.
The instructions mention a lighting kit, asking Fox Valley now about it.
runs fairly well, I think a little speedy tho, I may look into a bit of gear reduction, seems to run with a slight wobble if a driverset might be off a bit, but test runs are fine. Ran aropund 24" radius fine. some of my lumpy track they derailed at or disconnected, I noticed some coupler height issues, will look into that. My Milwaukee terminal I have a planned 18" radius reverse loop, mostly for local freight work, but the passenger trains may have to be able to traverse this for the MIlwaukee depot, unless I can work out a broader radius somehow.
Or else the engine and observation get turned on the turntable.
I put a couple of shelf couplers between 2 cars, well, since my test track is a little lumpy, this stopped some uncoupling, I had to file up the diaphram for the larger coupler, the coupler design is wide swing, nice, I tried it on my 18" reverse loop and they coupled up, so 18 inchers, yer good.
So I guess I can reverse loop the train. Some of the coupler height variations, I found the frame end of the car shoved down, maybe from handling, I nudged it up, found that one problem when I had a high spike hitting a coupler, pushed the spike down and tweaked the car. After some layout and train tweakyness, it ran around with a good speed without a hitch even over some of the lumpyness. Train show this weekend I’ll look for a decoder there.
I tried a DCC install last night. Somehow, even though I did a plug and play of a known good decoder, I let the smoke out of the factory circuit board - the blue-wrapped (inductor?) cylindrical object soldered in about halfway down the board and across it. Blue plastic now melted and engine inop - even on DC with decoder taken out - but the lights work properly… Upon further investigation I found that a tender pickup wire had been pinched between the metal tender frame and the plastic frame under it. The tender truck (with three axles) seems to bind a little as it rotates. Not sure if that caused the issue or not, but be careful out there!
So, anyone know the specs for the part I need to solder in? In the alternative, the frame has a clearly labelled 8-pin plug coming to it from the engine and those wires are traceable by number up onto the DC board as well. Maybe i can just solder in a proper sound decoder bypassing the factory DC board with the burned inductor? Yes, it is always fun!
Thanks - DJC
Got a picture of the board? If it’s an inductor it’s just there for RF supression and can be removed and replaced with a jumper wire. If there’s an inductor there’s probably a small capacitor or two parallel to the motor - for best DCC operation they should also be removed, but since they are parallel to the motor, no jumpers are needed.
If it’s something other than an inductor, it will probably need to be replaced to make something - the lights, mainly, work properly, as it’s probably a resistor to dropt he headlight voltage or a diode for the same thing and/or directional lighting.
This is a good place to remind people to first TEST your decoder install on the program track where the current is limited and it won’t fry the decoder if something is wired wrong. If you can’t program it, something is wired wrong, so do NOT put it on the main track.
–Randy
Randy,
Thanks for the hints on next steps. Funny thing is - I did test it on my pgm track first and even programmed it successfully (Digitrax in 'Pg" mode) to take short address of 01 as this engine has the name “Hiawatha” and just that 01 on the cab side… When I put it on the main line it smoked up before I could get it off, go figure… I have a good photo of the board on the tender with the burned electrical device resting in front of it. It is aligned so you you can see above it where it goes on the tender… I do not know how to upload the photo but I am glad to email it…
Finally received my Hiawatha set in Australia a couple of days ago and I must say I’m disappointed in the loco. Both main driver sets wobble. The loco goes along the main straight like a dolphin. Although the axles are not sprung I have on wheel that goes up and down and one that goes in and out. I have contacted Fox valley but as yet have not had a reply. Also another weird thing, I installed a digitrax decoder and the loco ran terribly. It would speed up and slow down without me moving the throttle. I reset the decoder to factory default and it was just the same. I pulled out the digitrax and put in a Lenz Gold and the loco ran like a charm? Go figure! However it still bounces along the track.
Any one had the bouncy problem?
Jim
My LHS has had the new Hiawatha on display for about a week now. It’s a very impressive looking passenger train to say the least. I hope they can get the bad drive wheel issue fixed.
This actually isn’t the first time the Hiawatha’s been released in plastic. Anyone remember the bakelite Rivarossi model?
Jim, I’ll be picking up mine on Tuesday. I hope this driver thing isn’t too common; anyone else have wobble problems?
Hal
I’ve decided that if I buy this set, it will be from my LHS and only after I see the loco test driven. It there are problems with the passenger cars, I’m sure I can work that out, but I’m not going to spend more than five hundo if the loco is a piece of junk. I don’t care how good it looks, if it doesn’t operate well, it’s not going to be worth the investment.
No, that is one I never knew had been made.
I just unpacked my six passenger cars and put them on my test track, The coupler height on all but one were all over the place. All the cars seemed to suffer from coupler droop! The Kadee couplers are very sloppy in the boxes. The floors in some of the cars push up very easily into the shells causing coupler height problems. Some of the screws holding the coupler housings were not screwed down tight allowing slop. Also some of the Kadee (copper) spring pockets protrude and rub against the housing. Worst of all was the baggage car. I had to place washers at the truck king pins to lift the body and couplers to near to the correct height. It took me a good couple of hours to get all six cars couplers to match the Kadee height gauge.
The train overall does look good but it needs a good deal of work to get it running well.
Jim.
UPDATE - I installed the Tsunami sound decoder onto another engine after this episode and it works perfectly on the other engine. Therefore, this issue is linked to the circuit board or wiring present on the FVM Hiawatha as it came out of the box… I have emailed FVM to ask for at least a pin-out wiring diagram (as well as another DC board if they can…) for the leads coming from engine into the tender through their 8-pin plug. Even though the leads are numbered onto a small circuit board under the bigger DC board, I cannot assume that they follow DCC protocol. Obviously, an easy fix for all of this is to install a DCC Sound decoder by soldering wire by wire directly onto the relevant leads (once I confirm those…) and just bypass the factory DC board with NMRA 8-pin plug altogether… And I can also take the engine apart further to trace the leads but I prefer to work from a good diagram even if I do that…they may have a pinched or incorrect lead soldered in by mistake. More to follow…
I bought a Tsunami yesterday, Cab Forward version, it has the 4449 horn. It has a 9 pin designed in with wire leads, I bought a 9-8 pin interface, sliced out the wire harness and installed the interface. Based on the numbers on the DC plug I installed it that way. The engine ran backwards when forward. The headlight would not work, usually when its backwards creepy things can happen, I flipped the connector around adjusting the decoder placement, now everything is fine. The engine is geared high and the chuffs never line up tho I boost the chuff rate. I may look into the cam use, or see if chuff rates are further adjustable. I thought about trying to regear the engine slower, but would not be easy, I will try to have the BEMF enabled to control the slow speed better.
At DCC throttle 10 this engine is already flying.
digitrax has bemf enabled, if the wheels have a wobble problem causing friction issues that can force moptor slowdowns and the decoder tries to throttle compensate. wobble wobble. The other decoder might not have bemf or not enabled. My main driver has a slight wobble amd I notice a tiny crack in the plastic where the wheels are mounted. So far its solid, but sometime I may open it up in a workshop and see if the wobble and be ironed out.
The solution would have to be removing the drivers and checking for evenness, being careful not to break the wheels. I would use a NWSL Wheel puller for adjusting.
But its pretty obvious its a manufacturing flaw, I would see if you could tweak it better but might still have a slight wobble. Hope there are replacement drivers or FV do a warranty repair/replace.
You can adjust the CV’s to limit the engines speed. Synchronizing the chuffs to steam engine can take a long time, I got it “pretty good” on one engine by lowering the engine speed and adjusting the chuffs, then every so often went back and did more adjustments, until now it’s really pretty good. But it’s never going to be as perfect as an engine with a cam.
BTW re an earlier post, the AHM/Rivarossi hiawatha engine was the later 4-6-4 streamlined engine, not a 4-4-2 like this new one.
If you checked the site, the Rivarossi model indicated is the 4-4-2, just like the Fox Valley model, in addition there was another version with a black paint scheme
http://www.rivarossi-memory.it/ENGLISH_VERSION/Riva_American_Locos/Riva_Atalntic_Hiawatha.htm
Because of this thread I pulled my loco out of the box this weekend and put it on a test track.
I did not see any of the wobble wheel problem the others mentioned. I did however break off one of the marker lamps - grumble.