I have done this with all my dcc locomotives for over ten years now, a good friend of mine showed this to me over 10 years ago, we call it "enriquizar" in honor to him, great tip.
@@TheDCCGuy Hi, I was not criticizing, not sure if that is the word, I was just stating that I have used for a long while and that it works great, I am sorry if my comentary sounded anything but that.
@Bill Chisholm It may be set to address 3 and you may have address 3 in the PowerCab set to a nonzero value. Try calling up that address on your throttle and make sure the speed is at 0. Also, in the future please create your own comment thread instead putting it in another one. It took me a while to find it since it was buried under another topic.
I've thought I thought up this idea, WRONG. I did this on several of my "G" scale trains. I have a couple of train set ups which certain passenger cars are pulled with a particular engine (unit train). I only have steam engines BTW. Passenger cars have lights, get power from the track. The have trolley cable connections, so the entire train gets track power for the entire train. This started with 2, twin car trolleys so lights didn't flicker. I also wanted to sometimes run a 4 car trolley setup at my clubs public displays, so I included the ability to "trolley" connect all 4 cars together. My club outdoor displays always have dirty spots, whether from overnight sitting or all day running. There's a variety of engine set ups, DCC track power & battery. I have a reputation of most reliable track powered train on display (all cars have ball bearing wheels) & power pick up. Yes expensive, but was done over time. I also have very short engines in inventory which was why I worked out this idea. I get dangerous with a cup of coffee, time, stare at running trains, pencil & paper. My wife once said "Me or the trains"! I don't miss the bitch at all.
@@TheDCCGuy She doesn't mind you play with the toys. My ex complained because our son liked doing anything trains with dad. He liked that I let him paint the cars I scratch built (from scrap wood from home repairs). My favorite was "What if he breaks them?" Did I mention I scratch built the cars? Only money spent was on trucks. At 5 he was more careful with the cars than I was. PS: She divorced her 2nd husband, our son hates talking with her because of her thinking. Also I collect cans & bottles, I turn in for deposit money so my hobby didn't take from family funds. Save enough, buy an engine or decoder.
That was wonderful n now you can convert regular athearn ho locomotives from the old way to the new DCC n Sound technology which it took years to develope until early 2000 when they expired it on steam and diesel locomotives n it worked this is worth investing money into ho locomotives, o gauge, o scale, American flyer, s scale, n garden scale locomotives.
Great video Larry. I really appreciate all the warnings you provided. Since I model in N-Scale I think I will look into your suggestion about sharing pickup between two locomotives.
Sort of a functional MU cable set. Neat idea. Would work with any of the early Diesels that were configured ABBA and with properly tuned consisting could be awesome to run.
Hi Larry, I recommend that you use JST 1.25mm 4-Pin Connectors, readily available on eBay. I've been using the 2-pin version for connecting speakers to my decoders in my HO locomotives. The pins are protected from contact with the rails and misalignment by the connector body. The body is white but can easily be made less obvious with a black Sharpie. I think you'll find that there connectors are an excellent option for joining your locomotives together. As always, an excellent video. Best of luck, Bruce
Yes, I showed those in the last video and used them in my FP7s that I showed. They work fine with a 2 pin setup but if you go to 4 pins then I would be concerned the heavier wires would be less flexible and lead to derailments. Of course you could use one 2 pin harness for sound and another for power, but as I said I mainly use this trick with switchers. If I were to do this with N scale locos I would be even more concerned with derailments.
@@TheDCCGuy HI Larry, The wire used on the JST 1.5 connector set is finer than that used on the 2.0 set and should prove flexible enough to allow use of the 4-pin connectors with little problem. They are inexpensive enough to purchase a few and try 1 or 2 installations with them and see how well they meet your needs. I will be trying this with some of my EMD F-series lashups to see how well they work and update you accordingly. Again, an excellent video. Best of luck and stay safe, Bruce
The 2-pin and 4-pin Micro Connectors from TSC are the smallest I've ever found. It's really difficult to find them between locos in HO scale. See my article in Model Railroader, April 2021. Further, the wires are nicely rubbery and flex well between units on curves. I have broken only one wire in many years in my consists.
I have done that with my DC locomotives and a few locomotives with electrical pick-ups on the trucks. I have also used it with a pair of trolleys where I wired the trailer trolley to the powered trolley.
Hi Larry, great idea on the doubling pick ups. On decoder damage I would look to change to a connector pair that protects the exposed male pins and ensures you cannot connect other than intended (stops reversals or offsetting of pins). Otherwise just use for track pick up only. I would use pins 1 and 2 leaving pins 3 and 4 blank. Thus worst you would get if offset or male hits the track of opposite polarity it trips the supply only! Stephen
@@greeneyedggirl I know that hence two alternative improvements suggested - one with sound and one without.I personally would not risk the destruction of my precious sound decoders and I think there is room for improvement on what Larry has suggested.
Thanks again Larry, Only now, I'm now opening up and putting into service my fleet of ancient 50-year-old Bowser chassis, subway cars. They have your old 8-wheel pickups, using brass Wheels. Installing DCC, into multiple units, after isolating the motors. This may be a better solution rather than attempting to install, "keep alives", in individual multiple unit installations. (Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way as I installed a series of one farad home made capacitor ckt. arrays, into a "Digitracks" sound decoder where they're 330 microfarad capacitor usually is located). This seemed to have no effect except. Starting and stopping, on it's own, along a test track). (Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way as there might be another circuit access point on the digitrax sound decoder board for motor use. Anyway another solution might be to totally change out a trailers passenger trucks with new ones that I've installed 8-wheel pickups and connect that to one of the motor units for the sound decoder rail input pickups. Just curious, Any Digitrax keep alive location thoughts? Thanks again Larry.
@@TheDCCGuy Thanks Larry, Yeah, evidently when I inserted one of those good, home made, " keep alive" circuits in lieu of the Digitrax 330 microfarad capacitor, in the digitrax decoder, the locomotive then, started to turn on and off, every few seconds. (I actually tried different homemade "keep alive" circuits that works ok, with soundtracks Decoders, substituting these keep alive ckts., for the digitrax 330 microfarad capacitor, however they all resulted in the Decoder, turning on and off, moving the loco, every couple of seconds. This perhaps raises questions as to what is really being turned on within the digitrax decoder itself... Wether for example a software issue should be changed, like in the ESU Decoder, or perhaps another unknown ckt. location may be more suitable for the digitrax decoder). Anyway, Thanks again Larry for your thoughts.and great videos,!
It occurs to me that using the exposed pin connectors as you show, another possible way of inadvertently shorting might be when one inserts an uncoupling tool between engines where the pins aren't covered, and pushing a pin down onto the powered track. Also, gaining an additional pair of trucks to pick up power from instead of using any capacitors will let you put the coupled set on a programming track without worrying about having to disable the keep-alives.
Hi Larry, I have two streamlined Lima units which I could couple semi permanently as you have with your A B units. If I only fitted sound to one unit, I am thinking I could fit a decoder to the first unit only and use the four pin connector to collect track power from the second unit and supply motor power back to the second unit. Regards Peter.
Great video. Any chance you could do a video on how to connect a decoder to a Mashima motor? Thanks for doing these videos. I have learned a lot from you and look forward to learning more.
That's great Larry. I have 3 csx gp- 40's that are dcc without sound. I was thinking that I would have to put sound decoders in each along with speakers. So now I think all I need to do put in one sound decoder and then a speaker in each and a 4 wire harness. Do you have any speaker recommendations? Thanks, Chuck
Careful on how many speakers you try to use with a decoder. Using three would give you an imbalance and I am not sure what the impedance would be. See my videos on speakers and how to wire them. The Soundtraxx folks are now recommending only wiring them so as to give you either 8 or 16 ohms with their 1 watt decoders.
Hi Larry, great information you give. I'm doing an ABBA consist with 4 Hallmark FT units. All of them have wow decoders with stay alive. I'm doing this trick too. Wondering if you would program all the decoders to 1 number or have each different?
I have done it by giving them all the same address and also using advanced programming. Advanced programming allows more flexibility with controlling the lights and sounds. Just remember with that long a lashup don’t stop across and turnouts or other locations where polarity can be reversed. I did that one time and ended up melting the insulation off my wires! Luckily I didn’t fry the decoders.
@@TheDCCGuy Thanks, I've seen and done that too. Haha. I have another issue I'd like your opinion on. I added stay alive to 2 Broadway limited switchers. They have long addresses, cv29 is set to 34, cv182 is set to 2. Not every short, but some shorts will reset both engines (and other BWL engines without stay alive) to factory reset. Sometimes the only way to get them going again is to mash the reset button on the board. I've researched a little and seen where cv217 can be reduced to 70 might help. I have a digitrax dcs 200, also read about a battery change in this that might be causing strange things. Any thoughts or ideas on this. Thanks for your time.
The DCS200 has an internal battery (I think a 2032) that keeps the memory alive when power is shut off. If you are losing consists between operating sessions then that is a good sign the battery needs replacing. The manual discusses replacement. As for the BLI switchers I have a pair of their SW7s and have never had any issues with them so can’t really offer and advice.
Good question. It is not a good idea to ever leave a loco or even a lighted passenger car sitting across block gaps. It is less of an issue if the two blocks are the exact same track voltage. I discovered this when I was working on the layout one day and heard a buzzing sound. After exploring with my ears, I found a lighted passenger car straddling the block gaps as the source. I asked AJ Ireland, owner of Digitrax about it and he explained the voltage disparity problem. There is a warning about this issue buried deep in their manuals somewhere. He never did tell me what it would do other than sit there and make noise though, just not a good thing to do. Consequently I put my block gaps in areas where locos are unlikely to stop. By the way this is no different than stopping an articulated loco across block gaps. The other scenario is if you leave them straddling the gaps at a power routing turnout and then flip the switch creating a phase difference under the locos. If your layout is properly wired then the resulting short will cause your booster or command station or circuit breaker to trip and kill power so there will be no problems.
There is no trouble whatsoever, as long as the two power districts operate at the same track voltage. I worried about this, too, when I first started doing this 10+ years ago. But then it occurred to me that this is the same "dilemma" as when a single loco spans a gapped power district while in motion: the lead truck has entered District B while the trailing truck is still in District A. The loco rolls across the span without incident. All we're doing by slaving one loco to another with interconnectors is making one long locomotive out of two shorter ones. This does not bother the DCC at all.
I will add that I’ve been using this method since the late 1980s at the Northern Virginia Model Railroaders. I installed CTC16 receivers in dummy units and interconnected the track power pickups back then. Since then I have used it with DCC. Never have had any issues in over 30 years.
Believe it or not even though they are producing the exact same sounds the stereo effect is notable and does make it sound louder than using a single speaker set to a higher volume.
Hi Larry. On the subject of keep alive's, is there an easy way to identify where a keep alive / current keeper can be attached to a decoder PC board that doesn't have a clearly identified attachment location? Is it even even possible?
I see now. 10seconds later you explained why. lol gotcha. Also if you have a new Soundtraxx decoder and you accidentally fry it while installing they will fix it for free under warranty
Wouldn't it be safer and cheaper to just buy and install a keep alive circuit? Frying a decoder is much more expensive than the keep alive. Too many things can go wrong with your work around.
As long as you do it the right way it is safe. And if you use a polarized connector like the 2 pin JST I showed in the first video where no contacts are exposed there should be not potential for damage. It is only when you use connectors with exposed pins that the issue crops up. My point is do it the right way and save money safely.
This is an interesting idea. But your continued insistence to feature a certain brand and style of connectors, that is obviously the wrong choice, is difficult to understand. Others have already suggested protected and polarized connectors that are a much better choice for this project. And myself and others have also observed that flexibility of the wiring is not a real concern. You multiple warnings about how not to destroy multiple decoders as you apparently have could be replaced by a single, simple suggestion to choose the better connectors.
No, my job is to present the options that I have found that work and then make sure you understand any potential problems. It is then up to you to decide which path to follow, or that you do a little research yourself and discover other options. I hit the issue of damaging decoders hard because down the road someone will manage to do it anyway and they won’t be able to say I didn’t warn them. As others will tell you the TCS connectors work well within their limitations, so if you think otherwise then do your research and give it a try.
I have done this with all my dcc locomotives for over ten years now, a good friend of mine showed this to me over 10 years ago, we call it "enriquizar" in honor to him, great tip.
Yes, it is an old trick, I was introduced to it in the late 1980s when my club used it with CTC16 receivers even before there was DCC.
@@TheDCCGuy Hi, I was not criticizing, not sure if that is the word, I was just stating that I have used for a long while and that it works great, I am sorry if my comentary sounded anything but that.
No offense taken, I just wanted to give some perspective on how long this or similar methods have been kicking around.
@Bill Chisholm It may be set to address 3 and you may have address 3 in the PowerCab set to a nonzero value. Try calling up that address on your throttle and make sure the speed is at 0.
Also, in the future please create your own comment thread instead putting it in another one. It took me a while to find it since it was buried under another topic.
Thanks Larry, well done video.
This is great! You're essentially repurposing MU hoses! I love it!!!
Hi Larry,
Thank you for providing so much information and enabling the rest of us to progress our hobby.
I've thought I thought up this idea, WRONG. I did this on several of my "G" scale trains. I have a couple of train set ups which certain passenger cars are pulled with a particular engine (unit train). I only have steam engines BTW. Passenger cars have lights, get power from the track. The have trolley cable connections, so the entire train gets track power for the entire train. This started with 2, twin car trolleys so lights didn't flicker. I also wanted to sometimes run a 4 car trolley setup at my clubs public displays, so I included the ability to "trolley" connect all 4 cars together. My club outdoor displays always have dirty spots, whether from overnight sitting or all day running. There's a variety of engine set ups, DCC track power & battery. I have a reputation of most reliable track powered train on display (all cars have ball bearing wheels) & power pick up. Yes expensive, but was done over time. I also have very short engines in inventory which was why I worked out this idea.
I get dangerous with a cup of coffee, time, stare at running trains, pencil & paper. My wife once said "Me or the trains"! I don't miss the bitch at all.
Glad to hear this worked well for you!
@@TheDCCGuy She doesn't mind you play with the toys. My ex complained because our son liked doing anything trains with dad. He liked that I let him paint the cars I scratch built (from scrap wood from home repairs). My favorite was "What if he breaks them?" Did I mention I scratch built the cars? Only money spent was on trucks. At 5 he was more careful with the cars than I was. PS: She divorced her 2nd husband, our son hates talking with her because of her thinking. Also I collect cans & bottles, I turn in for deposit money so my hobby didn't take from family funds. Save enough, buy an engine or decoder.
Thank you Larry, what a neat way of getting the best out of your Motive Power Units.
That was wonderful n now you can convert regular athearn ho locomotives from the old way to the new DCC n Sound technology which it took years to develope until early 2000 when they expired it on steam and diesel locomotives n it worked this is worth investing money into ho locomotives, o gauge, o scale, American flyer, s scale, n garden scale locomotives.
Larry, great video on MUing DCC locos with a single sound card and multiple speakers and getting the effect of a keep-alive.
Great video Larry. I really appreciate all the warnings you provided. Since I model in N-Scale I think I will look into your suggestion about sharing pickup between two locomotives.
Are there plugs small enough to use in n scale? Great video, by the way!
Sort of a functional MU cable set. Neat idea. Would work with any of the early Diesels that were configured ABBA and with properly tuned consisting could be awesome to run.
Hi Larry,
I recommend that you use JST 1.25mm 4-Pin Connectors, readily available on eBay. I've been using the 2-pin version for connecting speakers to my decoders in my HO locomotives.
The pins are protected from contact with the rails and misalignment by the connector body. The body is white but can easily be made less obvious with a black Sharpie.
I think you'll find that there connectors are an excellent option for joining your locomotives together.
As always, an excellent video. Best of luck, Bruce
Yes, I showed those in the last video and used them in my FP7s that I showed. They work fine with a 2 pin setup but if you go to 4 pins then I would be concerned the heavier wires would be less flexible and lead to derailments. Of course you could use one 2 pin harness for sound and another for power, but as I said I mainly use this trick with switchers. If I were to do this with N scale locos I would be even more concerned with derailments.
@@TheDCCGuy HI Larry,
The wire used on the JST 1.5 connector set is finer than that used on the 2.0 set and should prove flexible enough to allow use of the 4-pin connectors with little problem. They are inexpensive enough to purchase a few and try 1 or 2 installations with them and see how well they meet your needs. I will be trying this with some of my EMD F-series lashups to see how well they work and update you accordingly.
Again, an excellent video. Best of luck and stay safe, Bruce
9
The 2-pin and 4-pin Micro Connectors from TSC are the smallest I've ever found. It's really difficult to find them between locos in HO scale. See my article in Model Railroader, April 2021. Further, the wires are nicely rubbery and flex well between units on curves. I have broken only one wire in many years in my consists.
Correction: make that TCS. My bad.
Thanks Larry. 😊
I have done that with my DC locomotives and a few locomotives with electrical pick-ups on the trucks. I have also used it with a pair of trolleys where I wired the trailer trolley to the powered trolley.
This is a great idea😮
Hi Larry, great idea on the doubling pick ups. On decoder damage I would look to change to a connector pair that protects the exposed male pins and ensures you cannot connect other than intended (stops reversals or offsetting of pins). Otherwise just use for track pick up only. I would use pins 1 and 2 leaving pins 3 and 4 blank. Thus worst you would get if offset or male hits the track of opposite polarity it trips the supply only! Stephen
Except in this case he's using the other two pins for sound.
@@greeneyedggirl I know that hence two alternative improvements suggested - one with sound and one without.I personally would not risk the destruction of my precious sound decoders and I think there is room for improvement on what Larry has suggested.
Thanks again Larry,
Only now, I'm now opening up and putting into service my fleet of ancient 50-year-old Bowser chassis, subway cars.
They have your old 8-wheel pickups, using brass Wheels.
Installing DCC, into multiple units, after isolating the motors.
This may be a better solution rather than attempting to install, "keep alives", in individual multiple unit installations.
(Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way as I installed a series of one farad home made capacitor ckt. arrays, into a "Digitracks" sound decoder where they're 330 microfarad capacitor usually is located).
This seemed to have no effect except. Starting and stopping, on it's own, along a test track).
(Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way as there might be another circuit access point on the digitrax sound decoder board for motor use.
Anyway another solution might be to totally change out a trailers passenger trucks with new ones that I've installed 8-wheel pickups and connect that to one of the motor units for the sound decoder rail input pickups.
Just curious, Any Digitrax keep alive location thoughts?
Thanks again Larry.
Digitrax provides wire connections fir their power extenders but I have never tried to use one of my own stay alives with them.
@@TheDCCGuy
Thanks Larry,
Yeah, evidently when I inserted one of those good, home made, " keep alive" circuits in lieu of the Digitrax 330 microfarad capacitor, in the digitrax decoder, the locomotive then, started to turn on and off, every few seconds.
(I actually tried different homemade "keep alive" circuits that works ok, with soundtracks Decoders, substituting these keep alive ckts., for the digitrax 330 microfarad capacitor, however they all resulted in the Decoder, turning on and off, moving the loco, every couple of seconds.
This perhaps raises questions as to what is really being turned on within the digitrax decoder itself...
Wether for example a software issue should be changed, like in the ESU Decoder, or perhaps another unknown ckt. location may be more suitable for the digitrax decoder).
Anyway, Thanks again Larry for your thoughts.and great videos,!
I suspect they have a proprietary circuit for their stay alive and your results seem to confirm that.
@@TheDCCGuy
Thanks again Larry for taking the time for your thoughts, about the keep alive, and the digitrax sound Decoders.
It sure was a lot to take in . But you know I did learn something and it was well done for this video. Thank you for doing it take care!!!!
Very clever. Thank you.
It occurs to me that using the exposed pin connectors as you show, another possible way of inadvertently shorting might be when one inserts an uncoupling tool between engines where the pins aren't covered, and pushing a pin down onto the powered track.
Also, gaining an additional pair of trucks to pick up power from instead of using any capacitors will let you put the coupled set on a programming track without worrying about having to disable the keep-alives.
I doubt you’d be uncoupling locos that are connected in a consist. And you can easily uncouple them for programming.
always great videos,thankyou
Awsum video 🚂😎❤️👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Hi Larry, I have two streamlined Lima units which I could couple semi permanently as you have with your A B units.
If I only fitted sound to one unit, I am thinking I could fit a decoder to the first unit only and use the four pin connector to collect track power from the second unit and supply motor power back to the second unit.
Regards Peter.
Sounds like just what I did. You can also fit a second speaker in the second unit.
Great video. Any chance you could do a video on how to connect a decoder to a Mashima motor? Thanks for doing these videos. I have learned a lot from you and look forward to learning more.
Please make a video on all the different reverse loop options. Especially other than the AR1, the advanced ones that flip turnouts automatically
That's great Larry. I have 3 csx gp- 40's that are dcc without sound. I was thinking that I would have to put sound decoders in each along with speakers. So now I think all I need to do put in one sound decoder and then a speaker in each and a 4 wire harness. Do you have any speaker recommendations?
Thanks,
Chuck
Careful on how many speakers you try to use with a decoder. Using three would give you an imbalance and I am not sure what the impedance would be. See my videos on speakers and how to wire them. The Soundtraxx folks are now recommending only wiring them so as to give you either 8 or 16 ohms with their 1 watt decoders.
Hi Larry, great information you give. I'm doing an ABBA consist with 4 Hallmark FT units. All of them have wow decoders with stay alive. I'm doing this trick too. Wondering if you would program all the decoders to 1 number or have each different?
I have done it by giving them all the same address and also using advanced programming. Advanced programming allows more flexibility with controlling the lights and sounds. Just remember with that long a lashup don’t stop across and turnouts or other locations where polarity can be reversed. I did that one time and ended up melting the insulation off my wires! Luckily I didn’t fry the decoders.
@@TheDCCGuy Thanks, I've seen and done that too. Haha. I have another issue I'd like your opinion on. I added stay alive to 2 Broadway limited switchers. They have long addresses, cv29 is set to 34, cv182 is set to 2. Not every short, but some shorts will reset both engines (and other BWL engines without stay alive) to factory reset. Sometimes the only way to get them going again is to mash the reset button on the board. I've researched a little and seen where cv217 can be reduced to 70 might help. I have a digitrax dcs 200, also read about a battery change in this that might be causing strange things. Any thoughts or ideas on this. Thanks for your time.
The DCS200 has an internal battery (I think a 2032) that keeps the memory alive when power is shut off. If you are losing consists between operating sessions then that is a good sign the battery needs replacing. The manual discusses replacement. As for the BLI switchers I have a pair of their SW7s and have never had any issues with them so can’t really offer and advice.
@@TheDCCGuy thank you
Was wondering why you used a 4 pole connector between the units 😁
THANK YOU FOR YOUR VIDEO
What happens if your consist spans a track block insulation point? With one loco on one power district, and the second on another district?
Good question. It is not a good idea to ever leave a loco or even a lighted passenger car sitting across block gaps. It is less of an issue if the two blocks are the exact same track voltage. I discovered this when I was working on the layout one day and heard a buzzing sound. After exploring with my ears, I found a lighted passenger car straddling the block gaps as the source. I asked AJ Ireland, owner of Digitrax about it and he explained the voltage disparity problem. There is a warning about this issue buried deep in their manuals somewhere. He never did tell me what it would do other than sit there and make noise though, just not a good thing to do. Consequently I put my block gaps in areas where locos are unlikely to stop. By the way this is no different than stopping an articulated loco across block gaps.
The other scenario is if you leave them straddling the gaps at a power routing turnout and then flip the switch creating a phase difference under the locos. If your layout is properly wired then the resulting short will cause your booster or command station or circuit breaker to trip and kill power so there will be no problems.
There is no trouble whatsoever, as long as the two power districts operate at the same track voltage. I worried about this, too, when I first started doing this 10+ years ago. But then it occurred to me that this is the same "dilemma" as when a single loco spans a gapped power district while in motion: the lead truck has entered District B while the trailing truck is still in District A. The loco rolls across the span without incident. All we're doing by slaving one loco to another with interconnectors is making one long locomotive out of two shorter ones. This does not bother the DCC at all.
I will add that I’ve been using this method since the late 1980s at the Northern Virginia Model Railroaders. I installed CTC16 receivers in dummy units and interconnected the track power pickups back then. Since then I have used it with DCC. Never have had any issues in over 30 years.
Hi Larry could you make a video for analog locos?
Won’t work with analog, sorry.
Hi Larry. What happens when the "poor man keep alive
" is used going over an auto reverser? Rick Naudain
It is no different than running a really long loco such as a Challenger or Big Boy.
I do this with British N gauge diesel multiple units - it works.
James, thanks for that feedback. I always assumed it would work with N scale so I’m really happy to hear of your success.
@@TheDCCGuy Excellent! I should note that I only use a two pole connector, however: just track power. 4 poles would be hard to fit in that scale.
Can you tell me where to put the two wires on a Bachmann DCC Sound Value HO S4 item number 63208
Do you mean for installing a stay alive device? I did a video,on how to identify those a couple of years ago.
@@TheDCCGuy yes i do can you show me the video
@@petelaguardia945 video #32. Also,since I think these were made by Soundtraxx their tech support guys may be able to show ypu the exact locations.
@@TheDCCGuy thanks
Great idea Larry, but I don't see the advantage of the speeker in the second locomotive as it is giving you the same sound as the other speeker. 🥴
Believe it or not even though they are producing the exact same sounds the stereo effect is notable and does make it sound louder than using a single speaker set to a higher volume.
Hi Larry. On the subject of keep alive's, is there an easy way to identify where a keep alive / current keeper can be attached to a decoder PC board that doesn't have a clearly identified attachment location? Is it even even possible?
Yes, you can and I covered that in video #32.
@@TheDCCGuy THANK YOU!! I will watch #32.
I see now. 10seconds later you explained why. lol gotcha. Also if you have a new Soundtraxx decoder and you accidentally fry it while installing they will fix it for free under warranty
Wouldn't it be safer and cheaper to just buy and install a keep alive circuit? Frying a decoder is much more expensive than the keep alive. Too many things can go wrong with your work around.
As long as you do it the right way it is safe. And if you use a polarized connector like the 2 pin JST I showed in the first video where no contacts are exposed there should be not potential for damage. It is only when you use connectors with exposed pins that the issue crops up. My point is do it the right way and save money safely.
This is an interesting idea. But your continued insistence to feature a certain brand and style of connectors, that is obviously the wrong choice, is difficult to understand. Others have already suggested protected and polarized connectors that are a much better choice for this project. And myself and others have also observed that flexibility of the wiring is not a real concern. You multiple warnings about how not to destroy multiple decoders as you apparently have could be replaced by a single, simple suggestion to choose the better connectors.
No, my job is to present the options that I have found that work and then make sure you understand any potential problems. It is then up to you to decide which path to follow, or that you do a little research yourself and discover other options. I hit the issue of damaging decoders hard because down the road someone will manage to do it anyway and they won’t be able to say I didn’t warn them. As others will tell you the TCS connectors work well within their limitations, so if you think otherwise then do your research and give it a try.