Hi all. I am looking at finally up grading to DDC. As my layout is HO 1940's era it is all steam. My question is, I have a Prairie 2-6-2 item #51524 and a USRA 0-6-0 #50606. Is the conversion worth while on these 2 (less than an hour runtime on each), or should I put them on E-bay and look at DDC equivalents ?
Thanks for your help.
If they are Dcc ready, then they are easy to just add a decoder.
They are not DDC ready but straight DC. There would be room in the tender for the electronics but am wondering how much of a pain it will be to re-wire the motor and lights.
I'd start clean with engines already dcc and sound equipped. You can start operating right away in dcc like that.
The Bach Man's mogul is a good start. These newer engines look better and run better than earlier products. After you know more about dcc you can try to convert the older engines. Selling them won't make much money.
First the prairie is not very prototypical, but whatever floats your boat I guess....
To convert them to DCC would likely cost $40 a locomotive give or take $10, to add sound would cost $100 or so roughly per locomotive. Probably not worth it, since you can buy them with DCC or DCC and sound already installed and save yourself the trouble and money and they are not exactly the best projects for a beginner in DCC.
Good luck with whatever route you choose
I had a DC 0-6-0 when I converted to DCC. After taking it apart and seeing no room in the locomotive, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to try to put the decoder in the tender and rewire. I looked around and I could get a new DCC (no sound) from modeltrainstuff.com for $70. I actually got a DCC 0-6-0 off ebay new in box for about $55 including shipping. It was from a set.
Ok, this is STRANGE. I pulled the casing off the 0-6-0 and 2-6-2 and there is a small PC board mounted on top of the metal casting. Power wires to the motor run directly from this pc board to motor terminals. I was expecting the feed wires to come directly from the wheel pick-up points and not run to this board as they are DC and NOT DCC ready. Would this pc board be an attachment point for a DCC Decoader ? If so I will still have to add pickup trucks to the tender as well as the decoader wiring. Not a big deal if this is the case.
on the usra 0-6-0 that I have converted, I did remove the circuit board and splice the decoder wires to the wires I desoldered from the board. I used a digitrax dz125 decoder, because of the size. I removed the smoke unit, and dropped the decoder in the cavity where the smoke unit sat. one thing you will probably want to look into is adding pickups on the tender trucks, as the locomotive will stall out on atlas #6 switches because of the short wheelbase. on my own layout, where I handbuilt the switches and they do not have dead frogs, this locomotive has no problems. I have 2 more of these to convert, along with a 2-6-0, when I get the time.
At $100 or more to get sound in an engine that probably needs more attention than you want to invest, when for $30 or $40 more you could get a better looking, better running engine in the form of the mogul ....... if it was me, there would be no trouble making a decision. I'd sell those two old timers and get halfway to a much better engine that is ready to go and warranted at that.
Thanks guy's. Going to convert the 2-6-2 first. It would be quicker to just buy a DCC equipped one from the onset BUT they are not available in Canadian National road name and having a Southern Pacific or Pennsy loco just would not look right. Now to find somewhere that has 60' Heavyweight coaches in CN in stock as well.