My experience with TCS has not been quite so good so far. I have installed a CN and a CN-GP in two (older) Kato SD40s. This installations went just fine but I have some problems with performance. First, when I tried running one of these on analog at our club, as a test, it fried the decoder. (Sent it back to TCS and got a new one, which I'm not complaining about.) This may be because of the type of pulse cabs we use at the club, but I've not found a satisfactory answer to why this happened and am now reluctant to try these on analog (although I believe that in one case at the club where I accidentally ran into an analog powered block, the loco performed as it should have). Second, I could not get speed tables to work as I expected. Speed changes were choppy and arbitrary from one speed step to another. I have since read that perhaps the solution is to turn off BEMF? I haven't had time to look at that... I settled for using the simpler speed curve settings. Finally, and most annoying...While running nicely in the middle a DCC consist, these locos sometimes, for a second or two, will suddenly turn on lights and run at high speed in one direction or another. It's almost as if they suddenly think they are running on high-voltage analog power. It will last for second or two and then stop. Doesn't really affect operations but it sure ruins the illusion of modeling real trains. I still use these locos regularly but have been reluctant to buy any more TCS decoders, unless the CN or CN-GP is the most logical choice. It would be great to know if there's any solutions or answers to these issues.
I got my first TCS decoder a week or so ago and fitted it to a Trainman GP15-1 and got similar problems when trying to use the speed tables. I also get the problem that if I set a speed table value to '1' the loco goes to high or full speed when it hits that position. I'm not the only one who has this problem since someone on the Atlas forum reported the same problem. I find that the loco works best with BEMF off on basic low/mid/high settings with a bit of fiddling around with the dither settings to get good low speed performance. Someone on the Atlas forum was going to chase up TCS about this problem and I'm waiting to hear what their answer might be. Jim.
I don't use speed table, so please send your reports to them. Like any good company, they are interested in feedback.
