2 excursions planned Labor Day weekend at Cass West Virginia with this "bad boy".

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Cass Scenic Railroad State Park is the place for railroad enthusiasts or for taking a first train ride, especially over the Labor Day weekend.

With standard daily trips to Whittaker Station and Bald Knob, the park also has two evening train events planned, plus a new Heisler No. 6 Special Excursion for two trips only over Labor Day weekend.

Special excursions to Old Spruce and to the Spruce Town site are scheduled to be featured that weekend. Heisler No. 6 will be the featured locomotive on the 10 a.m. departures on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1. Each excursion is limited to 100 passengers and requires advance reservations.

I am curious as to how many model railroaders actually use all the function buttons when operating one train or 3-6 trains for a session. QSI, I believe, has the most functions for sound and or lights, 17 at the present time and I've read somewhere where they are adding 2 more functions.

Most throttles have 10 function buttons and some have 27, correct me if I'm wrong,

my throttle has 10, I still use Bachmann EZ Command after 7 years. I mostly use the default buttons such as:

1-bell

2-horn/whistle

3-loco addressing

4-ditch lights (remapped, not defalult)

8-mute

9-dim light

10- light/lights on/off

I don't use all the function buttons for all the sounds/functions available on a decoder. Though I know how limited I am with my throttle. Even when I program using PR3/JMRI their throttles too only have 10 function buttons. I assume that using other throttles,Dynamis, Digitrax, NCE for example would have something on the screen such as touch for the remaining functions. I really can't remember all the function's on my decoders whether it's Bachmann, QSI, Soundtraxx, Tsunami, or Digitrax.

The only other function button I use is #4 for my ditch/mars lights, I remapped so I could remember what function button to use.

Do any users really use more than the bell, horn/whistle and the light function buttons when operating or am I really alone. I do run 3-4 trains with 2 loco consist's on my 11'x17' layout but can run up to 6. It seems that running even 2-3 trains and trying to apply all the different functions is almost impossible. Heck I can't really remember what loco is on what address, let alone the functions for it.

LOL, I've never sent text messages with my cell phone either, maybe it's just the younger generations that can move their fingers and mind that fast, at 68 I sure can't.

Thanks in advance, Jim

I installed a NCE D13SR decoder in an older, split frame 4-6-2 loco, this was not my first venture with the exact loco, but my first ever hard wire using this decoder. In the past I installed TCS and all went well.  I had to do a little more fumbling and weight cutting to install the decoder. 4 of the wires broke off at the decoder pads. Oddly the 3 wires I soldered for functions 3 and 4 for ditch lights with digitrax wire were fine. In the end what I found out was NCE is apparantly using non lead solder which is brittle. The other thing I didn't care much for was the coating on NCE wire, is about the hardest I ever worked with. I used a 30 ga wire stripper I purchased, just to let others know, but with the stress needed to strip the wire may be enough to pull the wires from the decoder if you slip. I desoldered all the NCE wire pads and replaced the wire with the more flexable digitrax decoder wires and my normal lead solder. In conclusion, my first adventure with NCE hard wire decoder was a bit more than frustrating. You simply can't bend them too much, more than twice before they break at the solder pads. I'm quite satisfied though with the decoder performance, but in the future will stick with TCS for hard wire installs. Jim

First off I'm glad to be back, been lurking though, left model railroading for about 2 years, kinda burned out for awhile and pursued other interests, LOL guitars and singing country music all over West Virginia, love it and made a lot of knew friends and met a few model railroaders along the way too! A lot of train songs. Here's my concern, I really want to upgrade from EZ Command to Dynamis and the only reason is to be able to use more of the functions and other goodies in my sound decoder loco's and engines. I have been programming cv's with the Digitrax PR 3 on a mobile programing track. I don't operate more than 3 trains at one time, but could do 6, but I like the idea of 4 digit address's and 40 entry's. My concern is in the title I've read on some forums that flourescent lights interfere with the transmitter signals. If that is the case does anyone know of a filter either for the lights or the DCC command station that I can use? Thanx in advance, Jim (Rangerover)