I think I may have fried a digitrax decoder in my atlas SD-60… I had a piece of ballast get caught in the gears… I cleaned it out but my decoder won’t respond except for the lights anymore. I popped in the old stock Lenz decoder and it works fine. I have 9 other digitrax decoders and all work fine. What other brands of decoders are good? I like the 3-step speed tables and the back-EMF of the digi but I may try a different brand just for the heck of it.
Assumed you reset the decoder to default values first.
Train Control Systems or TCS would be my decoder of choice for motor and headlights only. NCE would be my choice for locos with ditch lights. Try a TCS decoder just one time and program it to see how easy it is. All the newer TCS decoders have built in BEMF plus its programable to turn off at a pre set speed step set up with a CV. Thats a great feature for MUing locos so say BEMF turns off at speed step 3 the locos would not be fighting each other after speed step 4 and above.
Pete
Excellent! That’s exactly what I want! I may have to try a TCS. All I’ve tried is Digitrax and the stock Lenz that came with an Atlas. I like the digitrax, don’t like the Lenz. I also found a flaw with Digitrax’ UniVersal consisting… I’m gonna eventually switch over to all advanced consisting soon.
If you use a TCS A6X decoder, it has a voltage regulator built in, so you don’t have to use resistors for 1.5v bulbs. It has a major advantage…you can take the locomotive to different layouts if needed, and regardless of the track voltage, the headlights/ditch lights/beacons/whatever will always stay the same brightness. And as mentioned, the newer versions of their decoders all have BEMF now.