Spectrum 4-6-0 with factory Tsunami sound

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

I just got my first Tsunami equipped loco, an HO scale Bachmann Spectrum 4-6-0. This engine is fantastic when it comes to operation and sound and is now my favorite steam loco; HOWEVER I have a problem with it starting and running when I power up my Zephyr system. Tonight I started my system up and the loco started with a brake release sound and then ran forward while the throttle was at 0 and it wouldn’t respond to any command. I used Decoder Pro to program the decoder when I first got it about a week ago. I haven’t had this problem until about two days ago. I set the decoder to turn off the Analog operation and set the momentum to a reasonable value ( I think it was 20 on acceleration and 10 on deceleration). This engine runs so well and is more realistic sounding than all of my BLI engines except for this one problem. Any suggestions as to what might cause this? I know I have this happen occasionally on a couple of my Bachmann DCC equipped non-sound locos (which I plan to replace with NCE or Digitrax decoders) but I didn’t expect it on a Soundtraxx Tsunami decoder.

  • Bob
2

My first suspect would be a ghost throttle. Do you have it’s address selected on more than one throttle?

David B

3

Or address 0 selected with a non-0 speed.

–Randy

4

Randy,

What do you mean by address 0 selected with a non-0 speed?

-Bob

5

Exactly that - address 0 was selected and not dispatched, with the speed not set to stop. So there’s a slight DC compnent on the track and the decoder sees it as DC and starts moving.

Select address 0, set the throttle to stop for sure, set the direction to the brake position, then dispatch address 0.

ANd set CV29 on the Tsunami to disable automatic analog conversion.

–Randy

6

Randy,

I did the 0 address and dispatch and so far have not had the runaway issue. Thanks, I hope that was what caused it. I had already programmed the decoder to NOT allow DC operations using Decoder Pro? don’t know if maybe it didn’t write that to the decoder. I will have to check it.

Bob