I am not sure if this is right or not .It may blow up in my face yet but it is working now. I wired my 6 volt batt to the dc 6 v input. this seems to power the optical sensors. Then I wired the sound system leads that normaly would go to the chuff trigger to the board optional solder pad, plus lead to j2-2 and the- lead to the ground right next to it. If I am in danger of frying the whole thing ? some one please let me know. the Bachmann instructions are pretty slim on this . Probably because of the number of systems out there.

if on dis-assembly you find the 1st  gear next to the worm gear bad . It will most likely be caused by the loose motor screws. on the other end, the last or next to last gears, the cause is more likely loose counter weights that are clashing with the rods and taking out the gears. Any way that has been my experence.   Phil

I like your layout. very scenic, and it looks like you moved a lot of material to construct it. My spam filter sure got a workout with the popups but no harm done. I saw some pretty sharp curves that I will bet you are going to be working on  to be able to run the K-27 in more areas. I went thru that last year.I had to rebuild my entire outer loop and as a result ,most of the inner loop also. Have fun. Phil

I bought 3 boxes.Mine came 2 cars to the box. 1:22.5

Cool vids. Love that sound sys.

I am still voting for a spectrum 1:20.3 10 wheeler

Like most others, I dont know for sure yet because I have not gotten my railroad running for the season. (too early) I think we will be o.k. as long as we have straight track before and after the bridge so the over hang seen on curves will be taken out of the picture. I am going to have to build at least one new bridge. Looks like my covered bridge will go to the inside loop, and I dont have any thing ready to replace it. 

You might as well bite the bullitt and get the track you want . You know you will end up there anyway. why wast time and resourses trying to avoid the inevitable?   Have fun   Phil

Thanks for the help Bud. I use aristo smoke fluid. I run on track power. We do not run fast.  My guess would be  around 12 volts average.  I will try your advice. 

The Test I did  Found that 6 - 8 volts gives the best smoke.  That is too  much voltage for the fan. I plan on setting up the unit that I still have stock  and check the volts to the motor while it is running. I suspect it will be in the range of 2 - 3 volts. If that is true, I will need 2 regulators, mounted to a fair sized heat sink. This is all beginning to look like the long way around. The short way would seem to be, modify the original board. Back to square one. I wander if this all could be the reason the guys on the aristo board are simply sending them back. (such is life) 

I do not have any good ideas as yet. I do however plan to keep trying. If I stumble acrost something that works ,or even helps ,I will let you all in on it.

I dont know enought about dcc to comment. I do have some experence with aristo pwc and I know the smoke units work much better with it than with linier power. I do not want to run pwc for two reasons. [1] some of the guys in my club are of the opinion that pwc will damage their motors and I would not go against their wishes for any thing. [2] I have not had consistant luck running soundtrack sierra on pwc. [ lgb sound definitly dont like it.] And yes I am talking about the fan driven unit. I told you above what I am going to try with 1 unit , I have another one that I think I will leave the board on and try different things with, like pwc, mess with the wick, ect.  Phil

You are correct. Turn off the power , then turn it back 0n. problem is I run track power so that means stop and restart the train.  I played with one this past weekend. I totaly destroyed the pc board and hot wired the fan and heat element. Track power is way too much for it so I started with zero and ran it up to the best power setting I could find. 6 volts gave the best smoke but that is too much for the fan. So I think I will go to radio shack and get a 6 volt bridge rectifier  and a resister for the motor and see what happens.  Phil

The one on my -9 has ran as long as 1hr when it was new. I have them in my k-27 , 2-8-0 ,2-6-0 , shay, 2-6-6-2,  They seem to really work fine untill they get a little age on them then all of a sudden every lap of the track they quit for no obvious reason.  I have no idea what is causing this and I do not have the expertize in electronics to run it down. I was hoping some one with similar interests had run accrost, or devised a cure. The people on the aristo board seem mostly interested in getting their units that fail replaced by aristo. I have not seen any one that sugested a possible cause or fix that could be done by the consumer in the field. The only thing I have seen any where is the opening up and making sure the wick is placed in the res. properly. I plan to fool around with a couple of them and see if I can come up with an answer that wont burn down the loco or the house.  Phil

I had a problem with mine also. My solution was to raise the cab an inch or 2 and slip the smoke box over the tab first. then work the cab down to its final position. I have to admit it had me worried there for a few min.