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?

Quote from: trainman203 on February 15, 2024, 05:32:10 PMAll you have to do to get a bad running train set is to buy a used one at an online auction!  as seen here on this very forum! Again, and again, and again, and again!

Broken record...... broken record... broken record....... Zip!  Zip! Zip!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke

That's not necessarily true. There are indications that a train set is poor quality if you know what to look for. Truck mounted couplers on cars and locomotive, especially the older horn hook type that looks nothing like a real coupler. Traction tires on the locomotive. Track with brass or steel rail. When I buy online these are the things I am looking for, and if I see them then I don't buy. It applies just as well to individual pieces as well as sets. The ironic thing is that in many cases a good locomotive will cost about the same as a poor one.

In many cases the owner will disable the DC mode on their decoder. I do this on mine because DCC has a constant track voltage while traditional DC uses variable voltage to control speed. A Dual mode decoder that thinks it is on DC track when it is actually on DC will cause the locomotive to take off at top speed and not respond to anything except disconnecting power from the track.

In your case I'd be willing to bet the seller did this. It works fine for him because he is running it on DCC. Ask him if he ran it on DC.

You'll have to find a person who has a DCC system who can reprogram the DC setting in your decoder.

Try flipping the connector from the switch at the control box. If the switch throws the other way, but not the original way you have a bad control box. Of the problem stays exactly the same as before, then you've probably burnt out one side of the switch motor.

burnt out switch motors are one of the inherent hazards of the twin coil type of switch motor. This problem isn't a Bachmann issue. When operating the control box you can't keep the button pressed for more than a second or two before you overheat the motor coil. There is an aftermarket device that uses a capacitor discharge circuit to provide an instantaneous shot of electricity to the switch motor, regardless of how long the button is pressed. Once the capacitor is discharged, it won't recharge until the button is released, preventing this overheating and burnout issue. If you are having this issue it may be worth looking into. The discharge unit is expensive, but not as expensive as replacing entire switches because of a burnt out coil.

I will say this. Bachmann has upgraded its rolling stock and locomotives to be as good as or better than the old Athearn and Roundhouse locomotives and cars from the old days. So have most others. If you buy new, it's hard to get a bad running train set in HO. That couldn't be said as recently as the late 1990s.

Quote from: Terry Toenges on February 12, 2024, 12:07:03 PMDCC track power for the On30 Mogul which is pulling these. I switch controllers when I'm running DC stuff but I don't have any DC On30 locos.
I'm thinking I'd better off just staying with batteries. I thought it would be easy to just add like 1000 ohm resistor. It's hard to hide the batteries. I have two more cars to do - another gondola and another flat with different type of light strings.
No other specs on the lights. The batteries are 3 volts. That's how I know they are 3 volts.

The problem comes in the fact that DCC (constant voltage and polarity) and DC (variable voltage and polarity) must be treated differently if you are going to use track power to power your lights. LEDs only conduct in one direction, if the polarity is reversed they go dark. LED stands for light emitting diode. ON DC you'd need to have other diodes to route power of the proper polarity to your LEDs, and that gets a little complicated. ON D, as long as the resistors drop the voltage to what the LEDs can handle you wouldn't need anything else in the circuit. Being as you are running a dual mode layout, you're better off sticking with the batteries.

Are you running them off DC or DCC track power?

This should work.
https://estore.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=752_717&products_id=4371

Does your locomotive have a plug in decoder with an p in NMRA socket? If so, test your locomotive by removing the decoder and inserting the dummy plug in the socket. If I'm not mistaken there should have been a dummy plug included with the locomotive. This will convert the locomotive back to DC and is a good way to see if the decoder is faulty, or if the problem lies elsewhere. If it's not a decoder related problem, then replacing the decoder with something else will not get you running again.

First of all, what railroad were these for? Every railroad had their own numbering system for equipment, so without knowing which railroad you are referring to we have know way of providing the correct answer, or point you toward a place where you might find the answer.

Quote from: Ralph S on February 03, 2024, 02:05:45 PMOkay.  Silly me, but can anyone explain to me what a "diamond" is on the crossing?  I don't understand.  It is the track, or crossing signal...

I think you're confusing the road crossing with the track crossing. We are referring to the track crossings. They don't have crossing signals.

Looking through the Bachmann catalog it appears that NONE of the track packs contain DCC switches. You can't program it if it's not DCC. If you want DCC switches you have to either convert them with an accessory decoder, or buy them already DCC equipped.