[quote user=“richhotrain”]
richhotrain
I have two F7A Blueline locomotives and, suffice it to say, I have had it with the dual decoder system. Tonight, I had to remove the motive decoder on one unit to reprogram the sound and lights decoder. Just the latest in a long string of problems. Consisting is the worst of the problems, but so is just trying to program the motive decoder without losing sound and lights.
So, I a
Brian,
The Blueline locos that were the subject of this thread are the onlu Blueline locos that I have ever owned. I bought them because the price was right and it suited my need for an additional F7 Santa Fe consist. The consist is made up of two F7As and two dummy (unpowered) F7Bs. I bought them new and they came with factory equipped lighting and sound. I paid the vendor (Factory Direct Trains) an extra fee to install motive decoders in the two F7A units.
This thread discusses my problems with programming the F7A locos in an Advanced Consist using my NCE PH-Pro 5 amp wireless system. I never did replace the dual decoder setup with a single sound decoder nor did I mess with the Lock feature to synchronize the two decoders in each loco. What I did do is to use the same long address in each loco and ignore the Advanced Consist feature. It works like a charm. I would recommend this approach to all Blueline users.
With my two F7As, the lighting includes the headlight and a Mars light. Not all F&As have the Mars light feature. I can control the headllight and the Mars light independently although with the Advanced Consist feature enabled, both F7As respond to the lighting commands which is, of course, not prototypical, but it works for me.
Rich
THANK YOU RICH !! I am very encouraged by your experience, and I intend to experiment on several of my blueline locomotives.
Good luck, Brian. Keep us posted with your results.
Rich
Hi Rich,
I am new to the forum but not new to DCC. I have been given a couple of BLI Blueline locos (AC6000) to covert to DCC, speed match and prepare for consistin
Hi Dan,
Welcome to the weird world of Blueline locomotives. As a generalization, BLI produces a very good product, but the Blueline series is the exception to the rule.
The Blueline Series was an attempt by BLI to produce a DC locomotive with sound and light features added to the circuit board for later user conversion to DCC, should the user so choose. In your case, you chose the TCS M1P-MH motive decoder to convert to DCC. So far, so good.
However, the inherent problem with this type of setup is that you now have two decoders, one motive and one sound and lights. Each decoder has its own address, so programming one decoder has no effect on the other decoder.
To solve this dual decoder dilemma, the LOCK feature was initially relied upon to prevent accidental programming or to enable programming two decoders in the same locomotive separately which share the same address.
Multifunction Decoder Programming Lock is a technique that allows one decoder to be locked, defeating the ability to program it, while allowing the other to be programmed. This feature can also be used to prevent accidental programming of a multifunction decoder. This feature uses CVs 15 and 16. In practice, however, the LOCK feature creates more problems than it resolves, so Blueline modelers no longer use the LOCK feature.
If the user wants to program and run a single Blueline locomotive, the dual decoder system works fine. The problem arises when two or more Blueline locos are programmed as part of a consist.
I have had some success with Old Style Consisting, but that method is not as efficient as Advanced Consisting. Unfortunately, Blueline locos and Advanced Consisting don’t like each other.
When you initially set up an Advanced Consist with two or more dual decoder Blueline locos, everything seems to work fine. However, once you power off and later power back on, the Advanced Consisting feature seems to be lost and either the sound
Hi Rich,
Thank you for responding so quickly. It is great to know that there is support out there.