Got several Bachmann tenders marked 'DCC Ready'. These have a circuit board in them with provision to hard wire a decoder to the circuit board. My question is whether the circuit board is really necessary or can I wire the decoder without it. I would like to add sound and losing the circuit board frees up a lot of space.
Needed, no. It's just a question as to how proficient you are in electronics. It's EASIER to do with the Bachmann board, but not necessary.
I was planning on removing the circuit board and adding two contact strips inside the tender to carry power from the trucks. The speaker would be mounted in the floor of the tender so I would not have to drill holes in the coal load. Decoder (red and black wires) would be hardwired to the contact strips. Four wires would go to the engine for motor and headlight (orange, gray and white, blue) And two brown wires to the speaker. Another question I had was that the Bachmann tender has a six pin male connector in the tender for the wires to the locomotive. If only four wires are needed for the motor and headlight what are the other two pins for?
Speculation -- might be bringing track power from the drivers. That way, you aren't dependent on simply the tender trucks. ??
Possible but redundant. There are two stiff wires in the drawbar that connect the two halves of the engine chassis to the front truck of the tender.
Just went thru this diagnosis when my EM1 decoder went into meltdown. On the 6 pin connector in the tender the 2 most innermost was the pos/neg feed th the front headlight. The next two outward pins are for pos/neg feed to the motor. The two outermost pins are pos/neg pickup from the front driver wipers. If you look at the pcb under the cab, you will see how the power is routed thru the 6 pin connector and the drawbar wires also. It is redundant as the power is also routed thru the 2 drawbar stiff wires. Guess Bmann thought as much power to the pcb in the tender was important. The EM1 does not have the split chassis engineering of past locos,so depends on wires to route power. Not sure how the other Bmann locos were engineered.
I gutted the tender in a DCC on board 2-8-0 to hardwire in a Digitrax decoder . Its pretty easy to trace the wires in the loco , and yes the two extra wires are loco pick-up . Probably not needed , but I wired them in anyway . That way I wasn't depending on the drawbar wires to transfer power . And don't forget to put a resister on the light wires . Oh , and the copper strips were already there , at least on the short USRA .
I have hired the installation of dcc decoders in Bachmann steam locomotives; in some cases these were to upgrade to dcc with sound. I took one of the older 2-8-0s to the same person with a new dcc-ready Bachmann tender of the same type as came with the locomotive. The installer returned the locomotive with no decoder installed. I note he removed board attempting to do the work. It had been my impression that changing tenders on a dcc locomotive with a dcc ready tender was merely plugging the decoder into the existing board. Please clarify what is really needed. Thanks.
Not quite sure that I follow what you are trying to say. If the engine was DCC and the tender was DCC Ready then the only thing to do was to to either hard wire the decoder to the circuit board in the tender or remove the board and wire the decoder in the tender without it. If adding sound it is probably best to remove the board to make room for the speaker. If the engine was not DCC and the tender was DCC Ready then some surgery is necessary on the engine to add a wiring harness to connect the motor and the headlight to the decoder in the tender. Best way to determine if the engine is DCC or not is to see if there is a wiring harness in the rear that plugs in to a receptor in the tender. By the way the decoder installs for the B'mann 2-8-0 that I have been able to locate are dated. They all are for the original issue (2001) of the Spectrum 2-8-0 and none for the newer DCC equipped one. If you see installation instructions that has the decoder in the locomotive rather than the tender then it is for the original 2001 Spectrum model and not the DCC one. Also some of the install instructions do not indicate whether for N scale or HO.
Sorry, the problem occurred with a 2-8-0 that was NOT dcc, but the new tender I took was listed as dcc ready. This was one of those 2001 Spectrum 2-8-0s. The installer has also successfully upgrade some Bachmann dcc locomotives with a new decoder and sound.
The same installer successfully added dcc decoder and sound to two other of the 2001 Spectrum 2-8-0s; they had their original tenders versus a new "dcc ready" tender. Decoder and speaker are in the tender of those successful projects.
