A series of unfortunate events

[Daylight4449]

Bad things have been happening to me. I ordered a decapod a decapod from the favorite spot and it had a short, sent it back and got another dud. The tender on my 2-8-0 was damaged  so i am planning on on sending back that tender with the 2-10-0 loco. I called and the man, tom, was very nice and said it was fine. So my problem is that when I attached the 2-10-0 tender to the 2-8-0, It ran the wrong way and the back up light (2-10-0 tender) went on in foward, the front mlight (2-8-0 Engine) won't come on, any particular reason?

[ta152h0]

Not enough info to diagnose the problem correctly but for starters, it is very possible you have ( they have ? ) istalled the decoder backwards. It is absolutely essential pin 1 is correct. You are in luck for it is a 50% chance it is correct.

[richG]

There are two ways a decoder can be plugged in using the NMRA plug. One way, the loco will run opposite from normal. The orange wire on the decoder plug fits into pin 1 on the PC board receptacle.
All my Spectum PC boards have the pins marked.

Rich

[Daylight4449]

if this is the problem how do i FIX IT, i am not experienced with dcc as i run dc.

[richG]

Unplug the decoder and plug it in the other way. There are two ways you can plug in the decoder. The orange wire on the plug has to match pin 1 on the PC board receptacle for proper operation.
You said you attached the tender to the 2-8-0 and it ran backwards.
There is a single Phillips head screw at the bottom of the tender. Remove the screw and open the tender.
If reversing the decoder does not work, you will have to do some soldering or send back the 2-8-0 with tender also.

There are many tender wiring issues with Spectrum tenders. Try to pay attention to what different people post in the HO and General forums as there may be information of interest. If nothing else, you might even be a help to others who do not bother to look at many messages.
In this way you are contributing to the Bachmann community as well as taking.

Rich

[Atlantic Central]

Daylight4449,

With or without a decoder, 2-8-0 tenders are not compatible/exchangeable with 2-10-0 tenders.

Read the following for more info:

Tender Swap – Bachmann medium Vanderbilt oil tender (Item #89905) with 63" driver 10 wheeler (Item #82307)

Initial test using jumpers provided with the tender – dead short, no operation.

Original plan – move 10 wheeler circuit board into new tender. This proved unworkable for several reasons, 10 wheeler circuit board too large and wires too short to fit into Vanderbilt tender without major modifications to both the tender and the circuit board.

New plan – can existing circuit board from Vanderbilt tender be rewired to work with 10 wheeler. A simple examination of both circuit boards revealed that while different, they both have the same basic connections, so the problem must lie in pin assignments in the connectors.

Tracing wires and a few simple checks revealed that the two wire connector simply brings the loco pickups to the circuit board. Reversing the wires on one end of the two wire jumper corrected this. Now the loco runs but in the wrong direction.

Two of the wires on the four wire plug are the motor leads. Reversing them gave us correct operational direction.

This only left the front headlight. The circuit board in the Vanderbilt tender is for the 2-8-0 which has 12 volt lamps for lighting. The 10 wheeler uses LED's, this is the main reason the circuit board is different. Rather than trying to modify the circuit, I simply replaced the loco headlight LED with a 12 volt lamp.

Additionally I added weight to the Vanderbilt tender bringing it weight to about 5 oz. and replaced all couplers with genuine Kadee #148 on both the loco front and tender.

Result – loco now converted, runs well with original 10 wheeler draw bar and looks great. 

This issue seems to be tied to what tender cam with what loco in the first place. I do not have all of the Bachmann spectrum locos, but from what I have seen, read and experienced, the following may be a good beginning of a compatibility chart:

Light Mountain & Consolidation will work with all of the "medium" tenders.

Heavy Mountain and 2-6-6-2 will work with the long coal tender, hicken tender and long vandy tender

Russian shares same tender with some 10 wheelers, so I am guessing they share the same circuit board.

The 10 wheeler is really a wild card here because it comes with three different tenders, depending on roadname. Some have the low, small "pre 1900" looking tender, some have the small tender from the Russian and one has the same tender as the consolidation, but obviously with a different circuit board.

But again, I think most of these differences are just the pin assignments and the type of headlight.


Sheldon