I bought an old unopened Bachmann CSX Dash 8-40cw DC at a flea market last summer.  I was planning to convert it to DCC with sound during this winter. When opening her up, I noticed a bright green corrosion like you find on corroded copper battery cables. I did a lot of sound decoders conversion on my fleet of DC locomotives and they were all made from aluminum or magnesuim alloy. However, this one looks like its made of copper because of the color of the bare frame when I scraped off the corrosion. I'm planning to cut/grind the frame to fit a speaker. After the cutting and the grinding, I will spray paint the frame. My question why copper? When did they change over to the other alloy? Can I cut copper? I never cut or grinded anything copper before.

Hi, I'm converting all my Bachmann trains from DC to DCC.  I converted 2 already. A F7 and GP50 and all went well. No problems with the LED lights and decoder installation. The 3rd one, a GP40, works find, but no lights. Front or rear does not light up. Is there an easier way to test the lighs to see if it works or to test the board? I have a resistor already attached to one leg of the LED's. I know the difference about the polarity. Like i said everything worked on my other 2 trains.

I have a Spectrum DCC SD45 that I got in the beginning of last summer. I read today online that Bachmann had some board problems. My problem is my Spectrum SD45. It started running jerky with lights coming on then off by itself. Then the locomotive stopped. The SD45 now sits there jerking backward while the sound decoder is run in repeat mode and then chirps and then it repeats itself. It has a MRC 1643 8 pin sound decoder attached to the Spectrum H6034 board. I removed the 8 pin sound decoder and still does the same thing. I put the SD45 on an analog track and it sits there with the sound decoder going through its cycle in idle mode sounds. What could it be? I think its a bad board because the wiring connection looks good. All the other DCC trains runs flawlessly on the DCC track.

How many DCC trains can I run simultaneasly in one layout? Do I need any special connections to run more than 2 locomotives. I'm looking to run atleast 3 locomotive at 1 time on my layout.

Hi, I'm new to the this forum. I'm also new to HO trains. Doing it about a year now. My collections of HO trains are Bachmann's DC lines. I have a couple of GP30's, GP38-2's, SD40-2's, and a several F7's. Can I convert them to DCC? If yes, how do I go by doing that?