George, I’m looking at a move in the next 6 months and starting a new layout. The layout room will need to be refinished before construction starts. At this time, model railroad dollars are better spent on priority needs. DCC and sound are “nice to have” down the road but rank below refinishing the layout room and actual layout construction. It has been fun to identify a wish list for the stipend, I can buy lots of track, turnouts, turnout controls, cork, and supplies for scenery + scratchbuilding.
Unfortunately, even with a LokProgrammer, the ESU Loksound decoders are by far the most complicated. I would suggest for future projects choose an easier sound decoder, like TCS WowSound decoders (which have a “talk back” programming option) or MRC sound decoders.
Remember too that sound decoders come with factory defaults already set up. You’ll want to change the decoder ID number from 03 to your engine’s number, but everything else is optional. You can adjust all the sounds and lights if you want, but you don’t HAVE to. The defaults will work just fine. When you eventually do want to change something, and start getting into more complicated things, it will be worth it to get something like a Digitrax PR4 so you can connect up a programming track to your PC, and download the free “Decoder Pro” program from JMRI.
Except for needing to find room for a speaker and it’s enclosure, installing a sound decoder isn’t any harder than installing a non-sound decoder.
I went from running BB engines on DC slot car trigger throttles to a Marnold panel to MRC power packs to Aristo Craft hand held controls to Lentz DCC. The previous HO layout system was all Aristo Craft DC then the Lentz DCC system was added to one quarter of the layout. Now it is totally a Lentz DCC system.
I modified the Aristo Craft controls just a little. I spoke with Mr.Polk a long time ago at TCA shows but he never took my advice on the colored buttons.
Green for ‘‘FAST’’
Yellow for ‘‘SLOW’’
Blue for ‘‘DIRECTION’’
Red for ‘‘EMERGENCY STOP’’
Kevin: There are five different degrees of momentum, adjusted by a single different button when setting up the throttle. I prefer the lowest setting. The highest setting was just to slow to react. The emergency stop button sets the power in your block to zero immediately, stopping your train, but not affecting any other cabs. DCC emergency stop stops everthing on layout, very embarassing first time at a new club!
Hope this helps
I run only one train at a time so I opted for the orange Basic Train Engineer, since that’s what was available at the time. Bought a second one as a spare, and will keep them both.
As has been said, the lights come on with the first couple of pushes of the “speed step” button before the loco begins to creep slowly after about the fourth push.
With LED headlights, they come on bright, so the loco can sit there in DC with the lights on full brightness at “idle” like many locos do.
It does NOT do well with modern dual mode DC/DCC decoders. So if you want to run onboard sound on DC (and I don’t know why you would), the TE is not the throttle for you.
and that is the quote of the last three decades or so. It has been challenging to install sound since my first PFM system in 1982. After tens of installs, I still find it challenging with the older locomotives that don’t have frames with a precut/premolded location for the speakers.
What speaker(s) to use, where to cut the frame/body, where to port the sound to, down firing, up firing, how to keep things from vibrating, how to get full frequency response, where to fit crossover capacitors, chokes, and not tangle all the wires… YIPEs. No surprise it is frustrating to a new person just getting into the noisy part of the hobby.
And I haven’t gotten to all those CVs that control all those things on a DCC sound decoder.
If I didsn’t like sound I would still use my aristo craft. Surprised some Chinnese company hasn’t copied them like so much stuff. I do hav e a dead rail setup by arita that I may use some day, this is the HO version.
The Lentz DCC System hand held throttles can be set to
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Stop only the Loco number shown on the throttle.
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Stop all the trains on the layout, but keep the layout energized.
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Shuts down the whole layout. The track is dead.
You can buy a 1/2" by 1" speaker in an enclosure that will fit in pretty much any GP, SD or similar engine’s long hood with no modification to the engine needed. “Firing up” and “Firing down” just means the speaker is facing up or down. If you’re putting the speaker in the end of the long hood of a diesel, the best way to get the sound out is to install it with the speaker facing down so the sound comes out around the opening for the rear truck.
You don’t usually need a capacitor, not sure what a “choke” is (my lawnmower has one, but it’s not electric). You can cut the wires short when installing them.
CVs are optional, except I would argue for the engine ID. You can make the horn louder or the bell quieter if you want, but you can leave all the default settings and the decoder works fine.
For any engine built since
A ‘choke’ is the old name for an inductor (an electrical component like a tiny coil of wire with a magnetic core). Called that in radio because it lets DC through but attenuates higher frequency.
By combining capacitors, inductors, and resistors you can build tuned filter circuits (LRC) and these are useful in building crossover networks that send different frequency ranges of an audio signal to different speaker drivers.
A “choke” is the new name for what a Philadelphia sports team does during the season.
I became a fan of the New York Giants in 1963. In the ensuing near quarter of a century I saw and learned far more about the various ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory than Philadelphians can likely conceive.
The Eagles did not choke, rather they engineered the end of the game to allow Washington into the playoffs rather then the Giants, effectively beating the Giants again. Then they outmaneuvered the Giants during the draft. Pretty well played, actually.
Now as for the Flyers…
Fly Eagles Fly
Well I’ve been a Vikings fan since the 1960’s so I know all about that type of “choke”.
[sigh]
Yes they did. And a couple guys lost their jobs over it.
And so far as “outmaneuvering” goes, time will tell about that. The last big time they “outmaneuvered” they called that “Wentz”. And he “wentzed” somewhere else. And because they all said he was “broken”, the Beagles got very little in return.
And it is not only the Beagles. We’ve got the Flyers, the Filthys, and probably the Sixers. But there is always an excuse. They call it the “process”.
Please dont bring facts into Philadelphia sports. We cannot handle those. And besides, we trust the “process” (until it hits us in the face).
btw, are you from the Philly area?
As a friend of mine once said, sometimes a team just has a superior ‘will to lose’ that can’t be overcome no matter how hard the other team tries to let them win.
Not originally. About 52 years’ worth.
Prior to that from Massachusetts. There it was the Red Sox.
Philadelphias motto
So, if you don’t mind me asking…is it true Philadelphia fans are as tough / bad as they say? I recall the story of the Philadelphia A’s Gus Zernial breaking his collarbone on an outfield play in 1954, after it was announced the A’s were moving to Kansas City the next year. When asked how he felt as he lay in extreme pain in the grass knowing most likely his season was over, he supposedly said all he thought was “thank God I don’t have to play in Philadelphia anymore”.
[:O]