I am fortunate to have a friend with a quarterer to get the rods correct on my steam locomotives. Without that, I wouldn't attempt to replace a gear on a steam locomotive. If the drivers are out of quarter when you put it back together it'll never run right because the rods will bind up.

Quote from: trainman203 on March 16, 2024, 10:08:49 AMThe 127 limit is a holdover from the earliest days of DCC back in the Digital Jurassic Of low chip capacity in every dimension. It's so embedded in everything, though, it can't be gotten rid of.

DCC is digital, which is based on the binary system at its root. In Binary, things are either on or off, a ) or a 1 value. Strings of binary digits, each one controlling something, is the basis of DCC, and computers in general. Everything in the protocol is based on mathematical powers of two. Alot of it is hexadecimal which is binary on steroids. This is why you have short addresses up to 127 (128 it 2 to the 7th power) and many CV values up to 255 (2 to the 8th power or 16 squared.) Understanding this makes understanding the rest of DCC much simpler. CV29 in particular, controls various features by turning on or off bits.

Will not run on any short address? You've tried all 127 of them?

DCC is a form of AC. The decoder converts it into something that won't hurt a DC motor such as those in locomotives or your turntable. The decoders I mentioned are for motor control only, and functions such as headlights that can be turned on or off. A sound decoder is a different beast, containing sound files as well as motor control circuitry. It requires a speaker in order to get sound out of it. Sound decoders are NOT what you want here. Your best bet is to measure the enclosure on your turntable to get an idea what will fit. The decoder manufacturers will have the dimensions on their decoders on the web site. Train World will not have this information, so you;re better off googling the manufacturer. BTW, scale doesn't matter much in decoders, other than the size of the board itself. An N or Z scale decoder is perfectly capable pf controlling an HO locomotive, and vice versa. Space available is the primary consideration. I have used Z scale decoders in HO locomotives where space was at a premium.

200 locomotives spread across a wide variety of railroads made the RUssian decapods a good better choice for a model than most steam engines. That is a far different case than the Green DIamond as a one off streamliner that only ran on one road would be. The popularity of the railroad itself probably doesn't enter into it. You don't see Bachmann producing the PRR T1 either. And I guarantee they would sell far more of those than Green Diamonds.

Looking at the instruction sheet I linked to earlier, it appears the decoder uses a standard 8 pin plug. Keep in mind the sheet is for an HO turntable, I couldn't find one for the N scale turntable on Bachmann's site so I assume the interface is the same. If this is true any decoder with an 8 pin plug should work, but it looks like there isn't alot of room for it so I'd keep the  decoder wire harness as short as possible. SInce there don't appear to be appropriate Bachmann decoders for this anymore, here are two to consider. Digitrax DH126PS has a short wiring harness with the 8 pin plug and is an economy decoder, meaning it doesn't have alot of functions that you won't be using anyway. Another option is the Digitrax DH165IP, which while more expensive has the 8 pin plug directly on the decoder. There is no wiring harness so you can just plug the chip itself into the socket on the turntable.

Have you tried reading the voltage with a known working locomotive on the rails? If so, what was the voltage?

What are you using to power your track that you are getting 15+ volts on the rails even with a locomotive on the track? I could see getting that reading if there was nothing on the track, due to meter loading. But having a load online like the locomotive should drop that track voltage down to 12 or less if you're using an HO controller.

While I can't speak of this locomotive in particular, similar springs on the pilot truck were used by Mantua/Tyco for the same purpose.

Thanks for sharing. This is one of the most influential model railroads of all time. It's great to see it in action. The Irving street layout was torn down in 1953 when John Allen moved to a larger house with a basement where the third and most well known version of the G&D took shape. It's amazing how well he got those early HO steamers to run.

Wiring feeders to every track section seems to be overkill to me. I've never needed to do that. My layout wiring is the old DC block control, with the block switches used to isolate various sections of track. Basically, I can turn tracks on and off at whim. Using this system, I run one set of feeders per block, with no block more than 6 feet in length. I do not have power issues using this system. If your feeders are located in the center of your layout one set should be fine. You can always add more if you need them.

Quote from: trainman203 on February 19, 2024, 05:14:59 PMThey used to sometimes call coal "diamonds."  I haven't heard it or seen it in a long time, but steam firemen were sometimes called diamond shovelers or something like that.  Plus there was the term blue diamond that I think sometimes meant coal.  Someone from the coal regions like Jeffrey Ward will have to elucidate on that.

The term is black diamonds, and comes from the fact that both coal and diamonds are forms of carbon. Lehigh Valley, one of the bog carriers of Anthracite (clean) coal named its premier passenger train the "Black Diamond." Geologically speaking, it takes intense heat and pressure to turn carbon into diamonds. Even though Pennsylvania is home to areas where such heat and pressure literally turned rock plastic and deformed it into spectacularly bent rock formations, in those areas most of the coal deposits burned off in the process long before they could become diamonds. What didn't burn off in those regions became Anthracite or hard coal. Those places subject to less extreme folding are underlaid with multiple layers of bituminous (soft) coal deposits. So I wonder exactly what conditions coal would have to be subject to in order to turn into diamonds. Apparently those conditions didn't exist here.

Basements aren't always the best place for a model railroad, especially in N scale. Even though they are usually the largest room in the house, they can be a cold damp place to work in the winter, as the surrounding ground keeps them at a relatively constant temperature year round. That makes them a nice place to be in the summer, but in the winter they often need space heaters to be habitable. If you are willing to spend the time and money to seal the walls and put a proper heating system in they can be a great place to be year round.

But having been around them all my life I can tell you that in most older homes here they are unfinished. Some even have dirt floors. The last house I lived in we had running water coming through the walls when we got a heavy rain until I sealed the outside along the sidewalk. Lack of proper ventilation kept me from sealing the inside. Even then, the humidity level was so high commonly used model railroad material like Homasote would swell and warp from the moisture. The used of stained and sealed white pine solved the warping problem on the layout, but the water under the footer led to holes in the concrete floor that had to be patched and maintained.

Honestly, working conditions in the apartment I now live in are far better even though space is at a premium. If you look at alot of the basement layouts in the magazines, thousands of dollars have been spent on room prep before the layout construction could begin.


I think alot of the attraction of trains in the north has more to do with the number of trains here. We have lines that run more trains in a day than the southern mainlines run in a week. On a recent warm weekend day at one of my favourite spots there were over a dozen people out watching trains. They ranged in age from late 70s down to pre-teens, with over half of them under the age of 20. Those people are the future of model railroading, as there is alot of overlap between the model and railfan communities.


 

There are non sound decoders that just control motor functions. SOme are hardwired into the locomotive, some plug into a socket on the PC board. Both these non sound decoders and the sound versions are called mobile decoders. DO not confuse these with accessory or stationary decoders. A mobile decode is what you want for the turntable.

I assume by the turntable length you are running N scale. The only instruction sheet I could find on the Bachmann website is for the larger HO scale version, but it may provide some guidance. It looks like the decoder is a plug in version, and if this is also true of your turntable, and mobile decoder with an 8 pin plug will do the job.

https://shop.bachmanntrains.com/documents/46298_HODCC-Turntable.pdf

DC or DCC?