Note that in the ebay ad, the seller did give the dimensions of the buildings. The one house was described as being 6-1/2" high. A quick "rule of thumb" for working out HO dimensions is to figure 1 real inch is about 7 HO feet. So a house 6" high would be about 45' high. A real two-story house would be about half that big so it's clear the model isn't HO size, but a larger scale like O (HO is "Half-0" by the way.)

My guess would be around 2000, just going by memory.

The issue was that Kadee had a patent on their coupler design, and since they refused to offer model train manufacturers a bulk discount for buying couplers to install on their equipment, most of the manufacturers just provided the old "X2F" or "NMRA" coupler with their products.

After Kadee's patent expired (around 1998 as I recall??) many companies began to  produce similar "clone" (or "knock off") couplers. Some of them were more than happy to offer bulk discounts so in recent years many manufacturers either provide knuckle couplers from one of these companies (like McHenry) or make their own "Kadee-compatible" couplers.

Quote from: Richard-tx on July 21, 2012, 09:48:53 AM
THe tenders are hard wired, not pluggable.  I will post pictures later today.

A new 2-6-6-2 would come with a tender with an eight-pin "plug and play" receptacle . If the unit is "DCC-equipped" (or "sound equipped") it has a decoder already plugged into the receptacle. If you want to replace it, you pull the decoder out and plug the new one in.

As noted, Bachmann tenders aren't all wired the same. I'd try the engine with the original tender first and see if that works. If it does, it may turn out that the easiest way to change tenders is to disconnect the two wires going to the tender trucks from the lightboard/decoder assembly, and remove the whole thing from the original tender. Then remove the lightboard/decoder assembly from the new tender, and put in the "guts" from the original tender. Connect up the two wires to the two trucks and it should work fine.

I would check CV 2 to see what it shows, and change it to zero if there is a number there, and see what happens. My guess is that when changing something (like the loco ID no.) someone may have accidently put something in CV2 that's making it go full blast even at speed step 1.

Might not hurt to be sure CV 5 and 6 are zero also.

Two engines, even the same model by the same maker, normally don't run exactly the same.  You can program the slower-starting engine to start moving at speed step 1 by increasing the amount in CV2. It's probably set to 0, try changing it to say 5 and see if that makes it start faster. Then adjust the numbers up and down until both engines start at the same time. You can also check CV3 re start momentum, if that is too high it might be delaying the engine from starting right away.

Don's Depot has some good old pics of the MN&S decapods. These were built by Alco-Brooks, then seized by the USRA in the latter days of WW1 and sold to US engines.

http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr455.htm

The MN&S also had a later built one. Back in 1945, the US again was building engines for export to the USSR as part of the war effort. One engine was damaged at the dock (in I think Philadelphia?) and returned to the builder for repair. By the time it was finished, the war had ended and the US no longer sold engines to the USSR. (You'll remember this if you're familiar with the story of the Milwaukee's "Little Joe" electrics.) Anyway, the lone decapod ended up being bought by the MN&S, who already had several from the first war.

Quote from: MarkInLA on July 09, 2012, 06:48:33 PM
Thanks for the above explainations..Yes, I thought I'd heard the Russia/Wilson story..But I didn't know what US RRs did use them..E Whiz Kid, could you explain what needs to be changed to Americanize loco ? I'm guessing smokestack modified . Or something on the tender, maybe...I'm going to look at her again on ebay, see if I can spot unamerican-looking parts or such..It does look like I'm going to buy one now,though ..Thanks again.....Mark in L.A.   

You're a little mixed-up. The real engines were built to be used on the Russian rail line. When they weren't able to sell them, the builder converted them to US track gauge and added standard American parts and sold them to US railroads.

The model engine is of the engine AFTER it was modified for sale to US railroads. I'm sure some Russian model railroaders have modified the engine to look like the similar engines that ran in Russia for many years, but the model is right to use on a US layout as it comes out of the box.

OK, don't panic!! 

First we're not talking about sound cards, those are in your computer...we're talking about decoders to control a model railroad engine.

You have three engines with decoders, two have sound decoders and one with a non-sound decoder. The non-sound Bachmann decoders are pretty basic decoders, and don't allow you to adjust the speed of the engine with CV 5 and 6. (They're about the only decoders now out there that don't have that capability.)

That means you can't slow that engine down to make it match your sound engines, but all you have to do is take it out and replace it with a better non-sound decoder. If you want to spend $100 for a Tsunami sound decoder, that would work. However a good non-sound decoder from NCE, TCS, Digitrax etc. will run you around $18-25. Personally, I'd go with TCS because they work well and have simple easy-to-follow instructions.

Once you have a new decoder in the non-sound engine, you can adjust CV 5 and 6 down to limit it's speed, and you should be able to run all three engines (or any two of the three) together with no problems.

My 2-10-0 is one of my best engines, I got one with factory sound a few years back. As it happened, the railroad I grew up watching, the Minneapolis Northfield & Southern was one of the roads that actually owned these, so I decorated it for the MN&S.

May be not everyone knows their story...during the 1st World War, Imperial Russia was an ally of the UK, France and (once we entered the war) the USA. To help their war effort, a US builder (I think Baldwin) was contracted to build engines for export to Russia, based on their standard 5-foot gauge 2-10-0. However, before they were completed, the Bolshevik Revolution turned the country into the Communist USSR, and they withdrew from the war. President Wilson embargoed the engines from being shipped, and they were converted to standard gauge and sold to US railroads.

Putting a sound decoder in the silent engine won't make it go slower. Two sound equipped models of the same engine don't necessarily run the same speed.

If you have a programming track and can read back CVs, put the fast engine on the programming track and read CV 5. It will probably come back "0" meaning the engine is bypassing the speed control CVs. Change CV 5 to say 200 (256 is the max) and see how it runs compared to the other engines. If it still needs to slow down, put in a lower number. If it's now a little too slow, increase the number a little.

Assuming the decoder is plugged in correctly, so the engine goes forward when you want it to go forward, then the light should go on when you press F0 when the engine's set to go forward (since most all decoders default to directional lighting). Only guess might be the headlight is an LED and the decoder as installed was giving it more power than it could handle (i.e. it was set for a 12V lightbulb) and that burned out the LED??

I'm sure the "Bach-man" will know for sure, but usually pre-lettered model railroad stuff is pad-printed. I find using Walthers Solva-set and a rubber pencil eraser (or just the eraser on the end of a pencil) works well for removing factory-applied lettering. Just be patient, put on a little Solva-set, erase for a little while, another few drops of Solva-set, erase a little more etc. Eventually the lettering sort of disolves and is easily erased away. I find it works best to do a small area at a time.

If the trolley runs fine 'as is', I wouldn't bother to change anything. Unless otherwise noted in the instructions or box, you can expect any factory-installed decoder to be a two-way one, which will work on DC or DCC. DCC systems use AC on the track, and the decoder can detect which type of power it's getting. If it's DC, it just passed the DC signal thru to the motor.

If the engine has a lightboard, removing the lightboard and decoder will speed up the engine, since the lightboard gets DC power and routes it to the lights first, then after a certain power amt. is reached, gives power to the engine. This allows you to stop the engine and still have the lights on in DC. The decoder itself really doesn't use power (unless it's a sound decoder), and removing it won't really change anything in the way the engine runs.

Quote from: LDBennett on May 23, 2012, 03:55:19 PM

Besides the fact that Bachmann is a German company, why are their instruction for their products written in poor English? Is our USA market for their products not large enough to give us USA customers a better translation job and more complete instructions?

Never heard that one before??

I could see it if you had assumed they were Chinese....

FWIW the Mantua (now Model Power) 2-6-6-2 has only the front drivers articulated, but being a smallish engine, can take 18" radius curves.

There was an articulated model maybe 8-10 years ago that had an option where you could use a screw or something in a certain place and it would stop the rear set of drivers from articulating. If you did that, I think the minimum radius went up to like 30". I'm not sure who made it, might have been the Lionel HO Challenger??